Man Arrested by Circuit City....is Chairboy still posting?

[RightF00T]

Still no sign of Chairboy....

[storch]

he's in a hoosgow in the people's republic somewhere.

[Engine]

Originally posted by FiLtH
Put yourself in their shoes for a minute and say you own a store, and you thought a guy was walking out with something you owned. Wouldnt you want it back and him punished?  

I worked for a major record store for a little while right out of high school. The security guys never stopped anyone without the go-ahead from the camera room, which meant they had evidence of theft. No one's arguing that stores shouldn't protect their merchandise, but it is the store's responsibility to prove that I stole something, not my responsibility to prove I paid for it at the register 5 feet away.

[Vudak]

Originally posted by RightF00T
Still no sign of Chairboy....

Actually, he just started a thread about the percentage of atheists in prison, so this very well could be him

[Vudak]

Originally posted by FiLtH

 Put yourself in their shoes for a minute and say you own a store, and you thought a guy was walking out with something you owned. Wouldnt you want it back and him punished?

 

If the alarm goes off it's a different story...  Otherwise you're just operating from...  Gee...  What's that word we all hate?  I forget?  Pr...  Pro....  Profiling?  Oh yeah, that's the ticket.

And John9001, stores with membership agreements have different rules, they're like clubs.

[Shamus]

I suppose being a private company they can check receipts if they choose, so don't shop there, I don't set foot in a Circuit City though for other reasons.

It is common for employee lunch boxes to be checked for tools, parts etc. on the way out of a plant is this illegal?

As for what happened when the leo got there there is always a catch all statute that can be used, we have hashed this out before.

What probably happened is that this guy is miffed because he is a middle class upstanding citizen and figured that the catch all statute would always be used against "one of them or those criminals" and not him.

I see it all the time, those died in the wool law and order conservatives get real sensitive about the Bill of Rights while walking out the back door of the jail with all their personal stuff, including their shoelaces in a little plastic bag

shamus

[Mickey1992]

Originally posted by Gunslinger
A store has no right to accuse you or detain you.  They are not working in any official capaicity as law enforcment.

In Ohio they do.  They question is if the store had probable cause.

http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2935.041

[Mickey1992]

The funny thing is that Ohio case law has set a precedent that until you walk out the door with a stolen item, it isn't shoplifting.  So even if you have a bag full of stolen stuff, and the receipt checker catches it, you are not shoplifting.

[Engine]

Refusing to show a receipt is not probable cause.

From Mickey's link:
"Any peace officer may arrest without a warrant any person that the officer has probable cause to believe has committed ...  an unlawful taking in a mercantile establishment ..."

Circuit City screwed up, IMO. No probable cause, no evidence of theft, and therefore no right to detain. But the bigger problem is that stinking catch-all law the cop used to arrest this guy for not showing his driver's license, which it appears he is not required to do if he is not driving.

[lasersailor184]

Originally posted by Obie303
RPM, I'm not trying to be disrespectful when I say this but I hate that BS everyone says....."It's a free country.  You are violating my Constitutional Rights!"  This is the greatest country on the Planet!  I truely believe that and do everything in my power to protect a persons civil rights.  

What I read out of that article was a young man's bruised ego.  "How dare they stop me and acuse me of stealing!"  First of all, I'll be the first to day I don't know anything of Ohio's criminal law.  But the police officer did have the right to stop and question the man.  A call for service by the business warranted a threshold inquiry.  

Let me put it this way, sombody breaks into your house or car and take a baseball cap out that you had.  You call the police and they show up.  You point out somebody walking down the street wearing a baseball cap just like you had.  The police officer then says to you, "So, its a very popular cap"  and walks away without talking to the person.  Wouldn't you be saying "WTF"?

What happened to Mr. Righi was he first questioned the police officers authority.  The police officer had the right to ask for identification.  That means name, date of birth, and address.  Where is all that information conveniently found?  On a driver's license.  Failure to provide this information will result in a person being arrested.  To a civilian that sounds pretty harsh.  Put yourself in the police officer's shoes for a few minutes.  He/she is conducting an investigation and wants to complete it as quickly and thouroghly as possible.

Miranda Rights.  This always gets me too.  People watch too much TV.  Miranda is used only during an interrogation.  What that means is if I'm going to question you about a crime that you may be involved in, I need to advise you of your rights.  Thats where Miranda comes in.  I do not have to advise anyone of their rights when they get arrested.  Note that Miranda doesn't apply to booking questions though.

As far as who was right in this incident, I wasn't there.  There are always two sides to a story and so far I've only heard Mr. Righi's side.  I'm sure the arresting officer would have a different version.  

Let me put this question out there as well.  You go out to buy some beer.  To buy beer, the clerk says they need to see some identification.  What would you had over?  A birth certificate?  Driver's license?  State Id card?  Isn't the clerk violation your right of privacy as well?  

All of those questions are hypothetical though.  You want the beer, you show your identification.  Same thing applied to Mr. Righi.  He just chose to argue with the wrong person.

Again, I don't mean to disrespect anyone.  I just think the jury is still out on this one.  

Obie

There's a clear difference.  If you caught the man stealing from your house, and called police, then it's legal.  However, if you have no proof nor probably cause to believe that the man stole something, it is illegal to detain him to check him.

[Maverick]

We've only heard one side of the story. I know that's plenty in the O'club but it's still only one side and certain to be slanted towards the person providing the story.

Just a couple points here. In AZ. and some other states, "willful concealment" is sufficient for shoplifting. That means putting the package beneath your clothing, consuming the product before paying or hiding the item in a place for later retrieval. Almost all stores will wait until the suspect has bypassed the register before attempting to stop. The suspect does not have to get out of the door before being detained.

The receipt check annoys the hell out of me too in place like Best Buy and even wallyworld. I've refused to stop, particularly when the individual has just seen me go through the register and pay for all of the items in the bag. from just a few feet away.

If, and I say IF, the guys story is true in the blog then the store folks are looking at an unlawful imprisonment situation and a law suit as long as all they have is a failure to produce receipt or allow inspection of the contents and no other indication or proof of theft. There are times to pick and choose your fights, and this one shouldn't have gone that far if that was ALL they had. There would have been no reasonable suspicion of a crime in that case.

As far as failure to ID to a Police Officer is concerned. You are required to provide sufficient information to establish your identification. That means a picture ID with name, DOB, address etc. on it or to verbally provide that info. If this guy merely provided his name he didn't comply with the requirement. In that case the arrest will likely stand if the prosecutor doesn't drop it because they don't want to deal with it. All the Officer had at this point was a possible shoplifting, depending on what the store personnel told him.

If it had been me responding and all they had was a refusal to show receipt with no other indication of shoplifting I'd have stopped right there after getting the ID info from the guy. A name, address and comparison from the license plate would have been sufficient as there was no basis for an arrest or stop by store employees in the first place. It would now be a civil problem between the store and the individual.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by rpm
Invasion of privacy and illegal search to start with. Call me crazy, but I believe in The Constitution.

The Constuitution does not limit a private person from searching others, it limits the government from searching citizens.  Statutory law, not constitutional, limits private behavior.

Originally posted by Engine
Refusing to show a receipt is not probable cause.

Probable cause is what a government representative needs to perform a reasonable search and seisure... it does not apply to a private citizen.

Originally posted by Gunslinger
A store has no right to accuse you or detain you. They are not working in any official capaicity as law enforcment.[/B]

A private citizen can accuse anybody they want to.

At least in California,

A citizen's arrest is a formal arrest by a citizen has no official government authority to make such an arrest as an agent of the government. The California Penal Code gives any citizen the right to make a citizen's arrest of another citizen in three alternative situations:

A public offense was committed or attempted in the citizen's presence.

The person arrested has committed a felony, although not in the citizen's presence.

A felony has been in fact committed and the citizen has reasonable cause for believing the person arrested has committed it.

It is common in other jurisdictions as well.  So if Circuit city sees you shoplift something, they can arrest you under the first of the three situations quoted.

In Mayberry, there is a famous precedent.


This guy arrested Deputy Fife and Barney had to write himself a ticket for an illegal U-turn.

[Engine]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
Probable cause is what a government representative needs to perform a reasonable search and seisure... it does not apply to a private citizen.  

Hiya Holden. I was referring to Circuit City.

The Ohio law I think applies to this situation:
"(A) A merchant, or an employee or agent of a merchant, who has probable cause to believe that items offered for sale by a mercantile establishment have been unlawfully taken by a person, may, for the purposes set forth in division (C) of this section, detain the person in a reasonable manner for a reasonable length of time within the mercantile establishment or its immediate vicinity."

I was saying that refusing to show the receipt can't possibly be probable cause.  It looks like they had no right to detain him.

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
It is common in other jurisdictions as well.  So if Circuit city sees you shoplift something, they can arrest you under the first of the three situations quoted.

Sure, if they see you shoplift. If they don't, what right do they have to arrest you?

[Engine]

Originally posted by Maverick
If it had been me responding and all they had was a refusal to show receipt with no other indication of shoplifting I'd have stopped right there after getting the ID info from the guy. A name, address and comparison from the license plate would have been sufficient as there was no basis for an arrest or stop by store employees in the first place. It would now be a civil problem between the store and the individual.

Mav, do you know if a citizen is required to show you ID, or can he just give you name, address, DOB, etc verbally?

[Eagler]

if you don't like it - shop somewhere else

a store has the right to do whatever it feels is in it's best business, what right do you have to tell them otherwise?

I think it's a joke when the old lady checks off the items as I leave my local Sam's club but if Walmart wants to pay her $10 an hour to stand there and do it, more power to them. If I didn't like the hassle, I'd shop somewhere else. No big deal - but some of you aren't happy unless you are making a mountain out of an ant hill.