Even worse, if so. Committing illegal violence without even having the excuse of being overcome by rightful fury provoked by the other party’s destructive criminal behavior gets no sympathy from me at all.
There was a brief moment early in the video where the would-be thief pulled a knife from his back pocket. During that time, anyone near him might have been legally justified in using deadly force in the name of self-defense.
Shopkeeper’s privilege allows shopkeepers in the US to detain persons reasonably suspected of shoplifting, but the force must be reasonable.
These shopkeepers weren’t defending themselves from an immediate threat by a violent assailant; they went out of their way to grab him, hold him on the ground, and beat him while he was on the defensive. They also weren’t detaining him for an investigation of the facts or to hold him until police arrived. What they did was assault/battery, and they could be criminally charged for it.
Could they be sued? Sure, anyone can sue anyone for anything. Could the thief win? If he’s got injuries that needed costly medical treatment or never fully healed, he might have a case for damages, but my guess is that it’d be hard to find a sympathetic jury.
If something like this happened in a Target store, the employees would certainly be fired. A 7-11 is a franchising operation, so one or both of these guys who administered the beating are likely the franchisees. As such they can’t really be fired, but they’ve probably violated the terms of the franchise contract. If so, then 7-11 now has to decide whether to terminate the franchising contract and lose all future revenue from that location, or look the other way and keep making money from that location.
Would it help if they sang a song while doing it?
That’s why I am wondering if he still had the knife on him during the struggle with the employee. Early on the video, the thief has not yet (as far as we see in the video) physically assaulted the employees. Later in the video, he does assault an employee, and if he still had the knife that he pulled earlier, then the employees used appropriate force to counter that threat. And I don’t believe it matters if he didn’t pull the knife out at that point, the threat was that he had it available and had pulled it out earlier in the confrontation. It might be argued that he didn’t pull it out later only because he was distracted by the beating. The employee without the stick was the one to have been likely injured by the knife if the thief had used it.
Whoever recorded the video seems to think the guy didn’t understand English well (or maybe he thought he had a learning disability or something). Of course, some people think that’s a good enough reason for a beating or worse.
By the end of the video, with the guy on the ground and crying, it’s just torture.
When did this assault happen? At 1:07, I’m seeing him trying to get away, and one of his assailants just grabs him and holds him while the other starts whaling away with the stick. There’s no attempt to get the knife away from him; from that point on, it’s just one guy holding him down and keeping his hands under control while the other guy hits him over and over. I doubt any charges will actually get filed, but if they did, I can’t imagine a jury buying the claim that this was an act of self-defense.
Do you have a cite for this? How is the shopkeeper’s heritage relevant?
this resulted in LA riots from Korean shopowner MURDERING a $1 shoplifter in back of head walking away, and White judge letting her go unpunished–Google it
No. You made the claim.
I didn’t make the claim, but in the interest of furthering the discussion, here ya go:
It doesn’t look like it. During pauses in the beat-down, there were a couple of occasions where he half-heartedly reached toward his back pocket (where the knife was).
Everyone knows this, “vigilante justice” and violence is anathema to Everything We Hold Dear. This is after all, precisely why we have a court system, a justice system and a county Sheriff, a Police Department.
I read the editorial in the Modesto Bee yesterday, and it started out with the assumption that the clerks have legal options to exhaust. The problem is, this was the 3rd time that happened in 24 hours, in this particular store. For whatever reason “calling the cops” is no longer effective.
Now what?
This is the result, front and center. Didn’t say I liked it. It is HORRIBLE, but it is disingenuous for an editorial board to wring their hands and say “Oh Dear they should have called the police, don’t take the law into your own hands” etc. This doesn’t work. That mechanism is broken. That ship has apparently sailed in some locations. An old fashioned beatdown is historically how things are handed.
What do you suggest is the remedy for this?
This is simply not true and GOP scare propaganda.
Right. If he hadnt pulled and threatened deadly force, the beating would simply be wrong, illegal and out of line.
But he did. That doesnt excuse the beating fully, but it would be a critical defense.
Now keep on not resorting to illegal violence?
If the store owners consider that they have absolutely no other workable options besides illegal violence, then I think they need to close their store, as other store owners in the area have done.
And yet, another news story from just a few months ago talks about Modesto police cracking down on shoplifting with dozens of arrests. I understand the point you’re making that local crime rates are much too high and not being dealt with effectively overall, but I’m not taking your word for it that there’s simply no way to deal with it other than administering illegally brutal vigilante beatings to criminals.
Like I said, I am very sympathetic to the fear and trauma and fury felt by store owners and employees being victimized by criminals. But your constant nudging to try to get agreement with your position that “Oh Dear, it’s HORRIBLE that they ‘have to’ take the law into their own hands but there’s NO OTHER OPTION” is itself disingenuous. We can, and IMHO should, consider the situation with the fundamental premise that illegal violence is ruled out as a solution.
And an old-fashioned battering is historically how many husbands “handled” the issue of having an insufficiently subservient or overly critical wife, too. Didn’t make it right then, doesn’t make it right now.
No illegal violence, full stop. That’s a pretty low bar to set for acceptable behavior by the law-abiding.
Here is an update.
The police have placed the shop keepers under investigation for possible assault: Click here to view recent article.
In the approximately 24 hours before the beating the thief was in the store twice
claiming he had a gun and taking items without paying. Perhaps the beating did
go on too long. But to have this happen - even when your store is across the street
from the Police Department Building - makes my sympathies go to the store keepers.
If the thief is mentally ill then this is another sign of how poor our mental health
system is here in the USA.
So let’s break your argument down here - when the rule of law breaks down it’s the victims that had better not be doing anything “illegal”, by gumby, and so therefore on balance it would be best for everyone involved really, for those businesses to simply close down. Do I have that about right?
No, your interpretation of what I said is severely distorted.
You’re right about the one specific point that I’ve repeatedly stated, and still maintain, that even victims of crime should not respond by engaging in criminal behavior themselves. That doesn’t mean that crime victims have to remain helplessly passive. There are many defensive actions, including where necessary some level of violence in self-defense, that are legally permitted to crime victims. I’m totally fine with those.
Let’s break down the rest of your statements, hopefully more competently than your post did to mine:
That apocalyptic phrase is doing a lot of uncompensated work here. Exactly where are you drawing the line between the rule of law “breaking down” and “still being in effect”? In your view, are angry vigilantes excused from following the law any time cops are slow in responding to a complaint, or any time they don’t manage to prevent a repeat offense by the same criminal, or what?
Even Stockton CA is clearly not at present a literally lawless war zone with a complete breakdown of social stability. How infallible does a law enforcement system have to be before you’re willing to concede that even justifiably outraged crime victims should abide by the law rather than committing illegal violence?
Obviously, nobody ought to be doing anything illegal. (And the word “illegal” has a perfectly clear literal meaning that applies here, despite your apparent attempt to make it seem like a mere matter of opinion by putting scare quotes around it.)
Yes, equally obviously the thieves stealing from stores are doing something illegal, but that doesn’t justify their victims in responding with illegal actions.
No, again, that’s a misrepresentation of what I said. What I said is that if “the store owners consider that they have absolutely no other workable options besides illegal violence”, then they should close their store in preference to committing illegal violence.
I’m not persuaded that the store owners in this situation actually do have absolutely no other workable options besides illegal violence, so I’m not asserting that they should close down. But if it really is a stark unavoidable choice between becoming criminals themselves and closing down, I don’t think choosing the former option is defensible.
You seem really invested in the argument that these crime victims have ABSOLUTELY NO CHOICE but to respond to their criminal victimization with illegal violence, and therefore we should approve of their illegal violence (with a perfunctory fig leaf of pained tut-tutting about how dreadful and horrible it is that they’re “forced” to go down that path).
But this is smelling more and more like flimsy rationalization of an unethical position. They do in fact have a choice. The fact that you personally think they made the right choice in choosing to engage in illegal violence doesn’t mean that they had no choice but to do so.
That raises an interesting question: in the Texas penal code a person may under certain circumstances legally use force, including deadly force, to protect property and/or keep the thief from getting away with the loot. So, leaving California aside for a moment, would the fact there is “legal violence” change this discussion any? Even in Texas the property owner may find themselves having to convince a jury their actions were reasonable.
You realize the thief threatened the store employees with deadly force? He could have been shot, legally, in many areas of the country.
Is it? Any arrests? Charges? After all, the threat of a knife turned it into a response to deadly force. Did they go too far? Sure. But illegal? Prove it. An investigation is being considered sure, but until I see arrests and of course convictions, I wont concede this.
Thanks for that, but it is the New York Post, a half step above the Weekly World news and National Inquirer.