No, but you did misinterpret the Arkansas statute.
That statute is about loitering, a crime (class 3 misdemeanor in AR). The refusing to identify oneself is not an offense in itself but a determining circumstance coupled with the previous mention factors. So it’s talking about a guy who is hanging around outside of a store that’s closed, not about a person trying to exit a store minding his own business.
Albeit the Arkansas statute is about as poorly written as any, and the courts routinely hate loitering statutes, it is not talking about just stopping a random person not doing anything and demanding they identify themselves. The loitering is first the reasonable suspicion that a crime is, was, or is about to happen. Requiring identification is secondary to that.
Wouldn’t a missing child be enough of a reason to ID people? I am sure you are correct about my understanding of the law. If my child was missing I would want to know about everyone in the near vicinity. Seems reasonable, to me.
ETA also can’t LE assume you are hindering an investigation if you refuse to ID?
First of all, you are aware I am a LEO of 36+ years. I do bow to that I can’t state as an expert of the law of every state, but seeing that they have to be written under constitutional constraints they are mostly similar in one way or another.
We get missing children calls all the time. Mostly it’s at parades, fairs, festivals, etc… Sometimes it’s a kid hasn’t come home yet, and sometimes it’s they can’t be found at a business/store.
A missing child is not in any way in itself RS or PC to ID anybody. Even if it was, attempting it would create far, far more problems. It simply doesn’t work this way.
NO! In fact, there is an active case on this in my area. I can’t give specific details because I wasn’t involved and it is an open case. But last summer an officer got pissed off because a potential witness wouldn’t ID themself so he arrested him. Not only is there a lawsuit over it, that officer was severely disciplined for violating department policy.
My best advice to you is to ignore what you see on TV shows. It’s all bullshit fiction.
Oh, I realized you were LE right off the bat. You are seriously telling me that EVERY lost child call is not taken as an emergency? That’s really sad. I hate to hear that.
What are the police for if not to protect and serve? Surely not to just give traffic tickets and serve warrants?
Oh, and I reread the law. In Arkansas if law enforcement asks you to ID yourself and you refuse, that CAN be a consideration for arrest. I’m telling you that’s what it says. I’m not gonna refuse.
It’s not handled in the way you apparently want it too, where everyone loses their shit, stores and other venues are immediately locked down, and everyone in the vicinity is detained and shook down for identification. Doesn’t happen that way, mac.
For example, say the city is having a fall harvest fair at a park. 2K people in attendance at the time someone approaches an officer and says they took their eyes off their 4 year old for just a minute and now he’s gone. What happens is we get a description, put it over the radio, and then triangulate the area on a search. If there are officers at the gate they’ll be on the lookout as well. But we don’t start FIing everybody and we don’t lock down the park. Since 1982 I’ve yet to not find a kid in these situations and I worked events at several parks in Milwaukee County including Summerfest and State Fair Park during my 2 seperate careers. Those are huge parks with massive crowds.
That is a qualifying addendum. It’s in addition to the first list of what defines loitering. Guy hanging out at a school for no reason and then refuses to ID himself? Loitering (a crime in your state). Guy walking down a public sidewalk minding his own business during daylight hours? Not loitering, not a mandatory ID situation. Ask your local DA or state attorney general if you don’t want to believe me.
No, not at all. But there are also considerations that include the length of the means of egress path, alternate egress paths (a person must have the option for an alternate egress path after traveling a certain distance), and the fact that an egress path must ultimately end at a public location (i.e., not dumping someone into a closed terrace or similar enclosed area).
But I think we’re missing the point. My original response was targeted at the idea that an owner could lock all the doors except one and force everyone to exit through that door under supervision. And I don’t think we are talking about that now.
Yes. The main doors (customer entrances) are permitted to be equipped with key-operated locks, and local Code authorities generally permit these doors to be locked against egress while store staff and contractors remain inside after open hours. This assumes, of course, that all other exit doors are functional. (IBC does not permit locks to be installed on those exits at all, even if the intention is only to lock them after hours.)
An important factor in the means of egress requirements for Group M is that the customers are invitees who may be completely unfamiliar with the store layout. It’s natural (and expected) that the customers will turn to the entrance that they came in if they encounter a fire or other emergency situation. IBC makes it very difficult to stop customers from leaving the same way they came in.
Occupants of Groups B and F, on the other hand, usually have more familiarity with the building and may even participate in regular evacuation drills.
Your need to locate your child has to be balanced against the rights of other people to not be unduly hassled by law enforcement. If your kid goes missing from your backyard, you (and the police) are not allowed to force your way into every house in the neighborhood looking for him. I am not a LEO, but I likewise wouldn’t think it’s legally permissible to detain (and demand the identity of) every person in a store where a child is missing. For starters, we don’t even know that a crime has been committed; we know a kid is missing, but we do not know whether that kid has actually been abducted. Beyond that, I don’t think “you are one of a few hundred nondescript people in a 50,000-square-foot retail establishment where a child has gone missing” counts as the reasonable, articulable suspicion (of a crime having been committed by any random one of them) that justifies a detention. I don’t even think “you are an adult escorting a nondescript child out the door” is adequate.
OTOH, If someone is observed walking out the door with a child who matches the description of the missing child in some meaningful way (e.g. “5YO boy with short blond hair”), then I would think that does justify a brief investigative detention. And according to the Wikipedia page, stationing store employees at exits to observe egressors is part of formal Code Adam procedures. There’s no mention of detaining egressors unless the missing child is found in the presence of someone other than their parent/guardian.
I think we are - and we aren’t at the same time. I think you are talking about something a little different than I am, in the sense that I am talking about stores as I see them commonly exist and you are talking about theory. There are a few different set-up for stores in my experience - and there’s only one set- up in which I think you couldn’t funnel all the customers through a single exit. And that set up is a store with multiple, separated entrances, like a Macy’s or a Sears. But in my experience , stores with that type of set up are a minority. Most stores either have a single customer-accessible exit, the “mall door/street door set-up” which probably exceeds the number of exits required by code and therefore allows the mall exits to be locked, or multiple doors adjacent to each other (like a Target), all of which serve the function of “forcing everyone to exit from a single location under supervision” even if that “single location” is four doors in the case of the Target.
As I recall (IANAL) not even detained. The case was a pair who had been in a heated dispute and cops were called by third parties. So - reasonable suspicion of a crime (was one intimidating the other to say “It’s OK”?) and a need to investigate. SCOTUS said in the case where the police were investigating a crime and there was a reason the believe the persons in question were involved in the possible crime, they must provide their names to the police. No requirement for ID, no requirement to be detained. Just satisfy the police that if future development warranted, they could be properly identified.
That’s a lot different than being one of 100 people in a store, or some guy just walking down the street.
OTOH, there have been cases where people were stopped as people of suspicion based on trivial details like melanin level matched a wanted suspect and nothing else, or NYC’s notorious “stop and frisk” where random people are stopped based on nothing but officer’s “gut feeling” that they are suspicious.
I guess in the end, the lesson is - you can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride. If a police officer decides they want to do something they technically shouldn’t, unless it is particularly egregious, the best you get is an apology.
This is one of the areas of the law that is highly fact specific and the opinions are all over the place.
If a woman said that a black guy kidnapped her child, and 12 out of 100 customers in the store are black, can you detain them all? Probably not. Courts hate racial distinctions.
If the same woman said that a guy in a red shirt kidnapped her child, and 12 out of 100 customers in the store were wearing red shirts, then you probably could get away with detaining all twelve.
If you are in Alabama in a county that is 40% black, and a bank teller says that a black guy robbed her? You probably cannot get away with detaining the first black person you see. But what about a rural county in West Virginia that has absolutely zero black residents? Meeeh, maybe. Probably.
But I agree with your general proposition: a person claiming that his child is missing in a store is not suspicion that anyone has committed any crime at all, nor is a person leaving the store with any child such a suspicion.
It would be an interesting case. As noted above, false imprisonment requires a complete enclosure in a confined area. But how is it any different if the store is locking doors, “delaying” people, and making them walking in circles until they get to a single exit where they must line up for police inspection?
I mean, it would certainly be false imprisonment if I confined you to an area by bricking you in but gave you a pick axe which I knew that based upon your physical condition, you could break down in 20 minutes. How is it different if I just delay you otherwise for 20 minutes?
The argument may be made that my position would require any establishment to provide a speedy, road runner-style checkout such that if a waitress did not take my payment for the bill immediately, then I could argue false imprisonment. But that is different; that is a customary wait that is implicit in the process of eating at a restaurant. Our example is a purposeful intent to confine someone in the building.
I have to say, I may or may not produce my ID, but I would certainly give my name. That’s because this is rather tenuous and kinda tricky, and I’d rather not spend a nite in jail.
And you do that because of a personal belief that you should not have to produce ID on demand to a police officer. That is exactly why any officer who deems that a refusal to produce ID is suspicious is doing the investigation wrong.
The kidnapper flashes his ID and walks out of the store while the officer is sweating down 4 sovereign citizens and 2 Libertarians and grilling them on failure to produce ID while the kidnapper has hit the county line.
somewhat related: does LEO have to tell someone the RS or PC when they initiate the encounter? and is that the indication that the encounter has gone from consensual to detention?