Posted on 04/18/2014 7:17:46 PM PDT by grundle
If you’re an employee of a chain store and you see a shoplifter, don’t confront them. It’s been proven again and again and again and again that no matter how noble your intentions are, you can be fired from your job. As KDFW FOX 4 News reports, this is exactly what happened to one Kroger grocery store manager in Arlington, Texas.
A customer in the parking lot of the Kroger recorded the incident on their cellphone. In the video, you can see the unnamed manager approach the shoplifting suspect. The suspect appears to have a knife in his hand. The manager shoves him into a parked car and gets the knife out the suspect’s hand before eventually slamming him down to the ground.
The alleged shoplifter is 51-year-old Claude Medlock. According to KDFW, Arlington Police say that Mr. Medlock has a, “lengthy criminal history that includes theft and robbery convictions.” They didn’t consider the manager’s actions a crime, but that didn’t matter to Kroger. Kroger sent a statement to KDFW, which read in part:
“The incident…is not a reflection of our company’s fraud prevention protocol, procedures or training…He is no longer employed by our company.”
The manager told the station that he had worked in loss prevention for 13 years, and “believed he handled the situation properly.”
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
We shall not defend ourselves...
In a sane world, the loss prevention guy would have been justified in pulling a gun and shooting the thief the moment he saw a knife but we don’t live in a sane world.
Blame the lawyers.
Start growing all of your own food then, including meat because this is most likely the rule for all grocery stores, certainly the chains anyway.
So how do they do fraud prevention? Fire the employee who’s trying to stop fraud. Okay.
While I respect your opinion mine is the opposite view. Having owned two retail stores for ten years, I finally sold them both due to shoplifting both from customers and employees.
Approximately 5% of the retail price of everything was set aside to cover these thieves.
So, Kroger execs are effectively flipping the bird at their paying customers and one day they will lose these customers and go broke because their competition will bust these bastards as we did and pay their lawyers to aggressively fight off lawsuits and sue law firms filing such suits as Chevron is now doing on enviro issues.
Shrinkage!
“Pardon one offence and you encourage the commission of many (Invitat culpam qui peccatum praeterit )” - Publilius Syrus.
I went into a Kroger in the DFW area in February. They are over-priced.
idiot store.
let’s all just take stuff and walk out of krogers. what a policy, how could it go wrong?
!
In Texas?????
I guess that if you work for someone else, it’s best to follow their policies unless it result in damage to yourself or others. They may still fire you for fending off an actual attack on your person or for keeping someone else from being killed, but it doesn’t make sense to protect assets that the owners don’t want protected.
Five months ago, I was at Stop N Shop. This man wasgoing through the “Self Check-out” line with 8 cases of beer. You cannot do this. So I start raising hell, the man proceeded to run to the exit, and I continue asking for help. This frail old woman, who I could surmise was the front end manager asked me what is wrong. Meanwhile the mans truck was at the curb, the beer was loaded and he was out the parking lot, but the time she even came up to me.
Apparently this is the type of shopping lifting policy that Stop N Shop needs.
My wife is a front-end manager at a supermarket. They do their best. They're told by management not to try to restrain shoplifters. For the salary they're making, it makes sense.
They have disguised store security, but they're not always on duty. The managers ban known shoplifters from the store.
Still, I prefer the old system, when known shoplifters would accidentally walk into a door at the police station. We should bring back corporal punishment.
Anyway, funny story. Last month four teens came into the store where my wife works and drove the handicapped carts around until the batteries ran out. The workers and customers were furious. My not-so-youthful-anymore wife followed them outside after they left. She found them in the parking lot and gave them a lecture. They apologized, came back, and pushed the carts back to the front of the store.
When she came back, everyone wanted to know what happened. She was hailed as the conquering hero. Still, I wouldn't want her to do it again. It's not worth dying for.
I am sure Stop N Shop do their best. My father worked at Publix as a manager. He was there 40 years. He would have ripped the cart of beer out of their hands.
Yes, these days, they may shoot him.
I was just surprised they would have such a person watching the front. That isn’t who they have all of them time. They have a body building guy there most of the time.
They call it “Risk Management”
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No life or limb at risk, my version of risk management says take a photo of the guy and his car.
Dad raised me with a few simple rules to remember - get into a knife fight, you’re gonna get cut.
Not for a few Krogers items, thank you very much.
I agree.
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