警察用3D打印机做了个假摄像头当诱饵。砸了它的年轻人，被控三条重罪。

First, what this kind of camera actually does.

It is called Flock. It sits by the road, and it photographs license plates, not faces.

Every car that passes has its plate number and the time recorded, and stored in a database you can search.

Police can use it to find a car that fled a scene — or to line up everywhere a person has been for the past six months.

That is why these cameras have always been controversial in America.

This summer, in a small Florida city called Oviedo, something happened along Lockwood Boulevard.

Between late July and early August, several Flock cameras on that road were stolen or destroyed.

The police could not work out who was doing it.

So they came up with a plan, and the plan is what makes this story worth telling.

They made a fake camera.

Not bought from the manufacturer — an officer at the department printed it at home on a 3D printer.

A plastic shell, shaped exactly like a real Flock unit.

When it was ready, they mounted it beside that road, and waited.

About two hours after it went up, just past midnight, a man appeared.

His name is Evan Meyer, twenty-four years old.

He used a pair of garden shears to cut the fake camera down, and then smashed it.

The police arrested him on the spot.

What comes next is the part worth stopping on: he was charged with three felonies.

One: criminal mischief, with damage over one thousand dollars.

Two: grand theft, for property worth between seven hundred fifty and five thousand dollars.

Three: damaging or stealing computer and electronic equipment.

The three charges have one thing in common — every one of them is built on what the object was worth.

Over a thousand dollars, or the first charge does not hold.

Over seven hundred fifty dollars, or the second one does not hold.

So here is the question: what was the thing he smashed actually worth?

He believed it was a real Flock camera, and installing one can cost thousands of dollars.

What he actually smashed was a plastic shell an officer had printed at home on a 3D printer.

The cost was a few dollars of plastic, plus a few hours of printing time.

In his head, he destroyed thousands of dollars.

In reality, he destroyed a model worth a few dollars.

Which one should the law use?

This is not a word game. It is the line the three felonies stand or fall on.

Judged by what he thought it was, it is a felony.

Judged by what it actually was, perhaps not even one charge holds.

And there is one more layer that makes it look worse.

The mayor of Oviedo says she had no idea the police were doing this.

A mayor did not know her own police department had put a fake camera by the road to bait someone.

She also said publicly that these charges are, legally speaking, very interesting.

So this is where things stand:

To catch someone destroying surveillance equipment, the police built a piece of fake surveillance equipment.

And that fake object bought them three real felony charges.

Think about it:

If a man thinks he smashed thousands of dollars but actually smashed five, how much should he answer for?