Posted on 02/28/2015 3:13:00 AM PST by rickmichaels
Imagine you’re browsing at Bloomingdale’s when a security guard taps you on the shoulder and accuses you of shoplifting. He takes you to a private room, sits you down, and runs your name through a database to see if you have any outstanding warrants. Then he tells you that you have two options. The first involves him calling the police, who might arrest you and take you to jail. The second allows you to walk out of the store immediately, no questions asked—right after you sign an admission of guilt and agree to pay $320 to take an online course designed to make you never want to steal again.
Which would you choose?
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalpost.com ...
This is obviously oriented to shoplifters who have the money, and are shoplifting for thrills or mental illness, like Winona Ryder. There are far more of this type shoplifting in upscale stores, because poorer people stand out in such places and are carefully watched, and they know it.
I also noted that the stores are not attempting to blackmail them, which is smart, but sending them to a diversion program, so they cannot be accused of anything illegal.
And there is a big accent on video evidence. Importantly, such cases are usually slam-dunks for prosecution, and they do tend to clog the system. A wild guess is that it might cost taxpayers $5,000 for a single prosecution. So this is pretty close to a win-win-win.
Sins like crimes have different penalties.
Went to Catholic school and had a mean 8th grade Dominican Sisters, Nun for a teacher. There are Mortal and Venial sins.
She had a great line about mortal sins. In a deep Irish brogue she would say “ don’t go to hell with a single mortal sin....go to hell with a million mortal sins! GO TO HELL GLORIOUSLY!!”
I don’t stop. A local Walmart put an older female employee at the door to check receipts and I just refused to stop. She had a line of people and I just went around them. She said something to me and I just said no thanks.
If not guilty, call the cops yourself while being "interviewed' by "security".
The problem with the “let them go” policy is that the stores in fragile neighborhoods, and then in the nearby areas with public transportation to them, end up shuttered. We all suffer.
About 3 years ago I got a call from a neighbor about 11 at night he said he heard shots and could see a spotlight working on the ranch. One of my pumpers had left a gate open and that’s where they came in. I found three high school kids with beer, 2 rifles, spotlight and a whitetail doe in the back of the truck. I relieved them of all four and escorted them to the gate. When we got off the ranch I told them to bring their fathers to my office Monday morning and we would discuss what it was going to take to get their gear back. They showed up with their fathers that morning and we discussed their penalty. The following Saturday them boys were up bright and early and fixing water gaps on the ranch. Around noon I broke out their cooler with some fresh ice and me and the father enjoyed that cold beer in the 90+ degree sun. When it was done we went to the gate and I gave them back their gear and they all shook my hand. No jail, no criminal record and a lesson learned.
Yeah, yeah, I admit it!
When I lived in middle GA, the Perry Walmart had a period where they might ask to see your receipt when you left the store. I’d just say “no” and sail right on. In some instances I’d just come from the nearest register and then out, so they’d seen me the whole time. I admit I had to train them in the beginning. They argued with me. Wrong move!! haha. But soon I guess they got the word, because they stopped asking me.
“These outfits are focused on employee theft (aka shrinkage) and the public is robbing them blind.”
Last time I saw any figures, it was the employees who were robbing the stores blind. The stores don’t want the employees getting into fights with customer/shoplifters because it’s not worth the legal downsides.
“Call the cops..”
I read the article and it said, “suppose you are browsing at Bloomingdales..” In order to prove/be arrested for shoplifting, you have to go outside the store or touch the door handles to leave. In our county, we are charged for bags so everyone brings in their own. I have filled a bag (and others) prior to going to the checkout. Believe you me... if some minimum wage security cop wanna be detained me and “offered” me a deal... I would make darn sure I have his/her name. I’d say call the cops and we will work this out in court. IMHO.
Yes...by all means, have them call the cops. But don’t stir one step from where you were “apprehended” and make sure you don’t let the store personnel near your purse or pockets until the cops arrive.
I had a friend who was detained and the store employee who fingered her had slipped a ring into my friend’s pocket. She called her brother (a cop) on her cell and he came right over. They had to let her go when the video footage in the jewelry area showed she hadn’t been there at all...plus, she had not left the store so she couldn’t be accused of shoplifting. Turns out the employees were stealing and trying to frame customers to explain the “shrinkage.”
My friend didn’t end up in trouble but it was an unpleasant afternoon for her.
Ted Kennedy must have heard her.
It had to be a frightening and overwhelmingly stressful afternoon for her! Thank goodness her brother came to her aid and (I would imagine) demanded to see the video. Your friend’s story is a good warning as to what could happen.
Prosecutorial discretion seems to be all the rage these days.
Problem is most of them likely don’t have the $320. I’m not sure I like the strategy. I think just call the cops and have them prosecuted.
My wife gets mad at me when I do that. I say it’s up to them to prove that I do not own the merchandise. Basic 4th Amendment.
If not guilty, explain nicely to security that you will not be answering their questions, invite them to call the cops if they want to, and remind them that you carry.
Depends on if I was shoplifting or not.
“Of course, you won’t catch me shoplifting since I don’t do it.”
You are living in a dream world if you think that you will never be “caught shoplifting” just because you “don’t do it.”
Lots of people get “caught” shoplifting even when they didn’t do it.
I went to Home Depot and bought a $500 water heater and the stuff to go with it. My friend who was with me had attached a $12.50 connection, which was size of the one back home the water heater needed to mate to, to insure the right fit.
He inadvertently forgot to remove it (he had cut the box open to make a small hole to access the connection so you couldn’t easily notice it). We spent about another 30 minutes making sure we had everything. Meanwhile the store Crime Fighter saw this, presumably on camera. He waited.
We paid for everything except the small connection we had forgotten about.
Then we went to leave the store. We passed the “alarm” point at the exit. The alarm went off. The security guard stood there like a zombie, uninterested. We moved back across the “alarm” line back into the store. We checked everything. We took out the sales slip, and went through everything one by one. We exited. The alarm went off again. The guard did nothing. We went back in. We checked again. We exited again. The alarm went off. The guard did nothing. We went through this three times. Finally we went several steps beyond the exit point when the Crime Figher swooped in, stuck his hand in the hole in the box, disconnected the $12.50 connector, and dragged my friend in for shoplifting.
I convinced my friend to wait for the cops to show up. They finally did. One of the cops told me that although they had to book my friend, the D.A. would not prosecute. He also told me that the cops often had quite a bit of trouble because of the heavy handed antics of the Home Depot Crime Fighters. My friend decided to sign the paper rather than go down to the station to get booked, even though I told him I’d be right behind him to bail him out.
In California the paper they make you sign can allow them o sue you in small claims court for civil something or other, and it’s a slam dunk. Your admission of guilt means that you have no defense.
But Come to Find Out, This is a Rigged Game Home Depot Does on Purpose:
This article in 2013 below describes almost the same thing that happened to my friend. Major purchase. Inadvertence in regard to a trivial item. The only difference here is that rather than having the security guard ignore the alarm as we passed by three times, the checker omitted to ring up the trivial item which was in plain sight among the other purchases.
Article:
Home Depot has intimidated thousands of customers accused of shoplifting into collectively paying millions of dollars to have such accusations dropped, even though the company has no intention of suing, a class-action suit alleges.
The suit claims that the big box retailer is using California’s Civil Shopping Law as “a profit center” by arbitrarily seeking “damages” from accused customers.
According to the complaint, filed in Alameda, Calif., Superior Court, Jimin Chen and a friend went shopping at a Home Depot in San Leandro on June 6. Before loading lumber onto a cart, each man put on a pair of $3.99 work gloves, to protect their hands.
Before Chen’s $1,445.90 purchase was rung up, says the complaint, he removed his gloves and left them on top of the merchandise in his cart, where they were plainly visible. The checkout personnel, however, failed to scan the gloves.
Immediately after Chen paid, and before he had left the store, he was accosted from behind, according to the complaint, by a Home Depot security guard, who told him he had failed to pay for the two pairs of gloves. Chen and his friend were taken into custody by Home Depot security for about 30 minutes, during which time Chen, because of stress and lack of air in the holding room, suffered an asthma attack.
“As panic set in due to plaintiff’s asthma attack,” says the complaint, “Home Depot’s security guard placed plaintiff, who weighs about 115 pounds, in handcuffs.”
Don’t think that because you are a law abiding citizen, you will never be treated this way, any more than because you’re a law abiding citizen, you’ll never be the victim of a crime.
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