I’ll take the deal. Of course, you won’t catch me shoplifting since I don’t do it. But this sounds like a good deal to me versus a ride downtown and booking at a police station. For all the lawyers and activist complaining about it, the answer is simple... tell your people to tell the store they’ll take the “call the cops” option.
Call the cops.
“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.