Posted on 01/14/2005 5:48:12 PM PST by NJ Neocon
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - A division of the retailer Macy's has agreed to pay $600,000 and make sure its security officers adhere to store policy which prohibits using racial or ethnic profiling in detaining suspected shoplifters.
The agreement between Macy's East Inc. and state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer was announced Friday and covers Macy's stores in New York State
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.tbo.com ...
Don't know NY Law but personally I would not agree to be detained, questioned and certainly not handcuffed by a mall security guard. I would resist, forcefully should they try this on me. I would certianly do more than file a complaint after the fact. (It goes without saying I am not a shoplifter). If asked I'd probably give a smart answer. If detained forcibly I would certainly file both a civil lawsuit and ask the DA to prosecute them for illegal detainment or kidnapping or whatever.
Now if the people that Macy's were detaining were actual shoplifters, this is assinine. However if all they had was a suspicion, which then proved unfouded and they were detaining, searching and arresting innocents then they were wrong and Elliot (who I'm no fan of) did good.
Not enough info in the story to tell.
Employee theft is worse than retail theft...on the other hand if their accountants are Arthur Anderson.....
Attention shoppers! It's be nice to shoplifters week!
<< "The payment is designed to defray the state's costs of examining complaints from [Thieves] who said they were more often detained and questioned, searched and handcuffed than .... customers." >>
Where's the beef?
The answer is obvious: classical music lovers are not the type to steal CDs or records. GASP! I'm guilty of profiling!
Exactly. In today's society, though, we must pretend that there are no racial differences in the propensity for criminal behavior. To do otherwise is to be considered a "racist," even if telling the truth.
Racial profiling is perfectly acceptable when it's done by minorities, like the TV ads that run telling certain races they should be tested for sickle cell anemia.
This legislation is designed not to "redress the imbalance"
of what they're incorrectly calling "profiling", but instead to inaugurate a hands-off policy toward black and latino customers. Unless a store security guy SEES an actual theft, I would guess he would hang back and not even approach the minority customers. They will instead go out of their way to question caucasians,(and Asians, probably) all out of proportion to the minorities in question, much in the same way they are still going overboard in questioning and examining 80 year old grannies with artificial hips in airports. The people behind this kind of legislation wind up being the FRIENDS and ENABLERS of criminals, whether it's another potential terrorist boarding a jet, or a necktie thief at Macy's. This does not bode well for the integrity of Eliot SPitzer, who is showing himself to belong to that John Edwards fraternity of ambulance-chasing trial lawyers. They are determind to see to it that they never run out of litigation opportunities. Still and all, the most lamentable, head-shaking detail is that Macy's coughed up all that dough for the purpose of "defraying costs of the investigation". It's as though we're in a British Court of Law, and it was Macy's that brought the frivolous and unprovable charge against the minority community. I AM SO GLAD I AM IN THE BUILDING TRADES, AND NOT PART OF THIS SICK WORLD OF LAWYERS.
Its a moot point. I know a security manager at one of the May stores. Her frustration is that the perps are rarely given time in jail and usually out on the street before she wraps up the paperwork on the theft. She has a casefile of *repeat* offenders to be on the look out for (and yes, 90% are of one race, whatever that means). I've seen the book & photos - the majority of these *repeat* offenders have multiple arrests around the city (crime ring vs malls). The worst that happens to them is being "banned" from ever entering the store again.
Of course, you and I get to pay extra money to offset the losses...
Maybe you've hit on the REAL problem...relying on statistics rather than the more arduous task of digging for the truth.
I wonder if they're still allowed to profile based on age. Evrey store I know of will allow a 40 year old woman to carry a large purse into the store. But if her teenage children want to stop by the store on their way home from school, a lot of stores will make them leave all bags outside.
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