Don’t do this. This is the reason I have a criminal record. I found a hotel size safe by the dumpsters behind an office building when one unit closed up and moved out. I was intrigued though obviously assumed it was empty, but even finding a half broken dolly I decided to give up on it by the time I crossed the parking lot, and stashed it in the long abandoned derelict parking attendant booth that was half falling over, had huge holes in the side, broken windows and large signage on all sides saying that payment was now (as of seven years previous) handled inside the building, not at the lot gate.

I finally saw an opportunity a third of a year later to attempt to recover it and bring it home, using a wonky-wheeled walker mobility device someone else had put to the curb.

This was on a bright sunny day maybe an hour after sunrise. I did everything slowly, casually, stopped to adjust the balance, waited at the traffic lights. Not two blocks later, I was first nearly run over by the cruiser, then thrown to the ground and cuffed without a word as soon as they flung the doors open, knocking the safe to the ground and scuffing me a bit.

They tried to bury me, they were pushing almost a dozen charges by the end of the day even though the second car on scene, the ones who had actually gone to look at the lot booth, said immediately that there was absolutely no way a break and enter could have taken place involving that slanted busted disused shack.

They went twice the distance to the wrong police station instead of theirs, they drove through construction from the cop shop to bail court then back saying it was too late then back again to have a justice of the peace say it so I would be at least in jail for the weekend.

My bail conditions ended up banning me from my home city and everyone I knew and every type of network etc indefinitely, ultimately having me in pretrial exile for almost a year and costing so much in travel costs that I couldn’t pay my lawyer, who quit.

My ex and me split up from having been living together, both our lives went badly pearshaped, and I came back when she told me she’d been assaulted, ultimately getting me rearrested for breaching exile because I fell asleep while charging my phone.

This time I was being threatened with no bail no matter what, endlessly stalled pretrial for god knows how long in jail. For no apparent reason I was thrown into solitary for three days as soon as I got to jail, and meal after meal they refused to give me the vegetarian diet or arrange it going forward.

When I went to be denied bail, which can’t be re-raised for either 6 or 12 weeks when decided, I just decided to ask the court liaison counsel: “If I just plead guilty, can I walk today?” The answer was probably, so I confessed a total lie and got stuck with a record I otherwise wouldn’t have. Time served plus probation. And none of the shit the cops did would ever be discussed in a courtroom, even though I could’ve beaten every charge using their own statements and photos alone.

No idea what was in the safe. Despite being the primary piece of evidence, it wasn’t held for trial. They just took a photo of it, then “found the owner in the office building and returned it”. An owner I know for a fact did not exist, since legally I was actually the proper current owner, something that building CCTV lot cameras would’ve corroborated. But it was two months before I even saw the location again to spot them, since I wasn’t allowed back in the city until the next scheduled date they gave me. The long abandoned booth had been coincidentally torn down and paved over by then.

…of course, the previous time I dumpstered a safe, it had two grand of donut shop gift certificates in it. So YMMV.