Safeway unbanned the couple, which I doubt they would have done if they thought they were legit shoplifters.
Do we know how they even got caught or why the issue wasn’t just brought up at the cash register? Like, hey what about those sandwhiches you ate?
I’m willing to cut a deal. If they make a mistake and ring up something twice, input the incorrect fruit code, or the price doesn’t ring up as labeled, I won’t have the manager and sales clerk arrested for fraud. In return, when I make a mistake and overlook something in my cart, they won’t call the cops, arrest me, and send me kid to CPS for 18 hours.
You keep making straw man arguments like this. NO ONE is denying that she is not guilty of a crime that she has not been found guilty of in court. “The point” is something you keep ignoring and pretending something else has been claimed (and pretending you didn’t make claims that you did).
You say this as if we’re all jurors and we’ve heard all the facts of the case. We don’t know how much evidence there is. We do know that TWO wrapped sandwiches went unpaid for and store management thought there was enough evidence of a crime to detain two people, that at least one police officer thought there was probable cause to arrest them, and that a Safeway spokesperson said “management followed routine shoplifting procedure by contacting police.”
You want me to produce evidence that a major grocery store chain’s policy for detaining someone doesn’t include detaining someone when there is reasonable evidence that shoplifting hasn’t occurred?
You’re ignoring almost everything I said and your own incorrect statements about what Safeway admitted. I guess I don’t blame you.
Sure. You’re working under the assumption that Safeway has a policy of only detaining someone when they are sure that someone has intentionally shoplifted, rather than simply forgetting to pay for a small item. I think it is equally plausible that this store has a policy of detaining anyone who walks out with unpaid goods for any reason, even when store management are reasonably certain it was an accidental oversight. But there is no solid evidence backing up either scenario.
At this point, surely they’ll do whatever they think makes for the best PR regardless?
What in the world are you talking about? Several people in this thread have concluded she stole, and have simply said that all shoplifters say they forget. That’s a shift in the burden of proof. It has gone from a presumption of innocence to a presumption of guilt.
Did you not read the posts where people who worked retail say they call the cops whenever someone doesn’t pay? There is no determination of intent allowed. Which means people not guilty of shoplifting get the cops called on them.
Yeah, it sucks sometimes to be a shopper in a retail culture where merchandise is openly displayed on shelves and tables for customers to examine at their leisure. But being a little more vigilant that we don’t do anything that could be perceived as shoplifting is the price we have to pay for not having things stored behind counters and only available at request.
I said nothing about Safeway being “sure” of anything.
It’s not equally plausible. Detaining someone is a pretty big deal. Believing that store policy includes detaining someone even when they think it’s obvious that person committed no crime is not equally plausible. Employees are not going to get in trouble for exercising common sense when deciding when to detain someone.
“Hello, is this the Honolulu police department? Yeah, hi, I’m a manager at Safeway. We have store employees that witnessed what they are reasonably certain was not a case of shoplifting and our security guard detained a family because of this. Can you please come and arrest these folks that we believe are innocent? Thanks.”
Quote several people that have concluded that and I’ll retract my statement.
No determination of intent is allowed? Where did you get that from? If an employee is reasonably certain that someone forgot to pay for something, an employee is going to say, Oh, excuse me miss, you forgot the sandwich." I’ve witnessed similar occurrences on multiple occasions. You’re ignoring the part about a police officer that found probable cause for arrest. Is determination of intent allowed there?
Your opinion. Not based in evidence.
My opinion is that I find it entirely plausible that a store would have a zero-tolerance policy about people leaving with unpaid items, and further that store employees (particularly lower-level ones) might be concerned about getting into trouble if they don’t follow the letter of this zero-tolerance policy.
Mind you, I’m not saying I think this is definitely the case. But I find it plausible.
From the article:
I don’t know, man. Sounds like they don’t believe the couple to have been shoplifting.
I don’t know what the store policy was, but from the article, it appears someone at the store screwed up.
Whether that screw up was due to poor training or poor policy is unclear. But the store acknowledges that a mistake was made.
They dropped charges after headlines like these (actual headlines):
*“Couple jailed, lose custody of daughter, over stolen sandwiches”
“Hawaii couple’s daughter taken away over sandwich”
“Safeway calls cops on Hawaii parents over $5”
“Couple jailed, lose custody of daughter, over stolen sandwiches”*
This was not good publicity for the store. Good publicity is the reason a spokesperson decides to publicize that charges were dropped. It wouldn’t make any sense to say, “however, we believe the couple really are thieves but we decided to let them go anyway.” It makes a lot of sense to claim they “accept” someone’s story.
Please go ahead and quote “several people” in this thread who concluded that she stole. Not that I’m holding my breath.
Note: Saying that some shoplifters say they forgot is not the same as *concluding *that she stole, it’s just saying that it’s a possibility. For all that you’re repeating going on about “presumption of innocence” and accusing others of “presumption of guilt”, I think you’re just reading too much into other poster’s statements when all they’re saying is that we weren’t there, and depending on exactly what happened the police may or may not have been reasonable to arrest her.
Also, presumption of innocence and the fact that the charges were dropped does not mean that she is factually innocent. And accusing someone of “presumption of guilt” is ridiculous when all they’re saying is that it’s possible she’s guilty.
Actually we still don’t have a police report. The exact reason they were arrested is unclear. How do we know they weren’t arrested for an unrelated incident that involved a shooting or an act of arson? All we know is the woman’s story on why she was arrested, which may or may not be true.
Rather then debating endless hypothetical about what may or may not have happened I’d rather see real journalism, which at this point we have very little of. We have an emotional human interest story that has sparked people to come to opinions based on their emotional ‘gut’ feeling.
I find it unlikely that Safeway would fail to mention this in their official response.
Lots of people are saying that shoplifters always use the excuse ‘I meant to pay for it.’ Isn’t this because it’s a plausible excuse, given that people often do forget to pay for things, especially small items? I mean, it wouldn’t be such a popular excuse if it didn’t have an element of truth to it.
My daughter usually used to sit in the child seat eating a loaf of French bread while we shopped. IIRC, I asked the first time then just let her do it. It kept her happy and occupied while I shopped and I always had the cash to cover it.
She did also twice steal things when she was a toddler in a pretty low buggy. Once it was a Cthulhu doll (heh, proto-Goth :D) and when I took it back to the shop the server was really, really annoyed with me. It still had the tags on and was unmarked, so there was no reason for it not to go straight back on the shelves, but he argued with me for ten minutes before I left mid-sentence.
Because of that I didn’t go back the second time she shoplifted (a frog bath mitten from the body shop that she’d cuddled up with and I didn’t notice till we were waiting for the bus).
Nor did I go back when, a couple of years ago, I arrived home and found that the hoover I’d purchased at Sainsbury’s hadn’t rung up despite me pushing it towards a manned checkout and mentioning my hoover-buying woes during the long, long time I was at the till (I tend to do a lot of shopping at once - it was a huge bill). It was the server’s mistake, but no way would I have been certain enough of them assuming my innocence, at least until I’d gone through all the hassle of a court case - no way was I going back.
This was also after a friend of mine had been on a jury and told me about the case once it was resolved. My friend is a very intelligent, observant person - a medical doctor - so I’d trust her opinion on the evidence she saw.
The ‘thief’ had spent a lot of money at Marks and Spencer’s and had one pair of trousers unpaid for, identical except for size to another pair of trousers she’d bought and paid for. She claimed she’d tried both on, taken both to the counter and meant to leave the wrong size aside, but had forgotten when piling up her mound of clothes on the counter; they had CCTV of her taking both pairs in and out of the changing rooms. The stolen trousers didn’t even fit her. She was found guilty, 11-1, with my friend being the only dissenter.
It would be impossible for them to regular shoplifters there given that they’d only been in the country two weeks.
Or, as someone else said, have each parent look after the child while they deal with the other parent.
Me too, back in the nineties. It was just SO much less hassle for the store and also saved an awful lot of money (court costs and employee costs). If it was a repeat occurrence we were told not to allow it, but there never was a repeat occurrence.
It is a big waste of resources for the store to hold this family in their break room, then have people deal with the arrest and potential court case, and it’s a big waste of resources for the police and CPS to go through the whole rigmarole they did go through. And once a child has been referred to CPS, that can have an enormous impact on a family - it doesn’t just go away.
Hell, even if they were going through the checkout every day eating a free sandwich that’d be cheaper - but if they were doing that, then staff would quickly spot it and it’d be worthwhile prosecuting them.
Holding them for four hours is the only bit that really needs an apology, however; otherwise, the staff were just following the rules to the letter, which is a bit daft, but understandable.
That might be why it made the news, but I genuinely don’t think people on here would think any differently once they heard about it. Well, most people wouldn’t.
Safeway isn’t even necessarily informed.
That was fun.
This one’s easy. That SnakesCatLady started with “Intentional or not” makes it evident that she’s using the word “stole” in a way that’s to be defined (however improper her usage was) as “took.”
Same with Little Nemo. Let’s look at his statement in full:
As you brought up later, this could be seen as a case of begging the question, but only if you want to pretend you don’t understand what he was trying to say. He is using the word in the same way as SnakesCatLady. It was obvious he meant to say, “then I’d say the fact that she didn’t pay for the sandwich establishes with a fair probability that she intended to steal the sandwich.” His statement wouldn’t make sense any other way. Poor phrasing on his part? Yes. But it’s also obvious what he meant when you pay attention to his other statements in this thread.
From his OP:
I accept that the couple probably honestly forgot to pay for the sandwich but the fact is that they did take it without paying for it
and after he made the statement in question:
Nobody is denying the possibility except you. We’re saying it’s possible she honestly forgot to pay for the sandwiches and it’s possible she lied about it.
And you know damn well pinqy was using the word to mean “took” because you conveniently left out his/her following sentence:
“That the sandwich was stolen is probable cause. Whether or not there was intent to steal is an issue for the courts, not the arresting officer.”
Wanna try again?
What you said that started this is:
What you’ve claimed at least twice was that a police officer has to do the proving in order to arrest, and that is patent nonsense. Of course you tried to dodge those statements several times until I gave up playing along with you out of frustration of my failure to get you to own up to posting bullshit.
It’s somehow against the laws of physics for them to have shoplifted in other locations?
Not that I’m saying that is the case. Just saying, it’s possible. Not everyone is honest.
So you’re saying there’s a vast difference between shoplifting and shoplifting.