Not sure if some of you realize how regulated liquor sales are.
I was a compliance investigator for the Sheriffs Office and the state Dept of Revenue also performed checks. We had occasional meetings with owners/managers of places that sold/served alcohol, and they also would get newsletter now and then.
Clerks & bartenders/wait staff are supposed to be trained that they do not have to sell to or serve anyone they don’t want to. If someone tries to pass a fake ID and the seller is going to confiscated it they are supposed to call the police ASAP.
If they’re not sure, or don’t want to call the police they’ve been told to return the ID and refuse the sale. If it does turn out to be fake the underager will be caught somewhere else down the line.
This philosophy cures the situation you guys are squabbling about.
But I am sure there are sellers who are dicks and do things their own way.
Some guy called the police once complaining that a clerk in a drug store wouldn’t return his ID when he tried to buy cigarettes. When the police arrived they determined the ID was fake and cited him for it.
So, did that kid have balls trying to call the clerks bluff, or was he just freaking stupid?
No, it doesn’t trump anything. For a brief period of time, until the police can resolve the problem, there is a failure to agree on the state of reality. And then it’s resolved.
I’ll return again to the mistakenly driven car example: If two people both have keys that open up a car, and disagree on who owns it, the solution is not to fight it out or to have one of arrested for grand theft auto. It’s to call the police and have them sort it out. Yes, this means that the legitimate owner has to wait due to the mistake of the other. But it doesn’t mean his rights have been trumped.
Should a clerk seize an id he thinks is fake? No, he should not. I agree.
But given that some are going to, and some of them will do it incorrectly, what’s the appropriate response? Is it to treat a well-meaning but somewhat foolish clerk as a thief? Is it to give license to the id-holder to commit violence against him?
No. Those are terrible solutions. That’s not how we should resolve disagreements in civilized society.
I mean, if I were running a business, that’s what I’d tell my clerks too. But if someone gets it in their head that they’re a moral crusader against the wrong of minors buying alcohol by seizing ids, well, they might do it anyway.
On balance, this doesn’t seem like that big a deal. Yes, a few innocent cigarette/alcohol buyers will be inconvenienced occasionally, but it obviously happens very rarely. And the right way to handle it is for the police officer to make it clear that if the clerk can’t get this right, he needs to leave it alone. In the extremely unlikely case that some clerk isn’t sufficiently chastened by this experience and keeps taking legit ids, he should maybe be prosecuted for theft. But probably just fired and sued.
Here in Minnesota, the state residents (through their Legislature) do NOT agree.
And many retailers do strictly enforce this.
Not because they are on a ‘moral crusade’, but in their own interest: both the liquor licensing board and the insurance companies count confiscation of fake IDs in your favor if your business ever faces any charges.
Sure, and I think that’s a reasonable thing to do as well. That’s now how I would personally write the law, but whatever. I don’t think it’s that big a deal.
What’s not reasonable is to treat a clerk attempting to do the right thing as a thief or to try to resolve the issue through violence, which is what the poster I was responding to seemed to be advocating.
Right. It absolutely hinges on the clerk’s intent. Imagine you are on a jury.
The case arises where a clerk pocketed an ID and told the customer to piss right off out of the store. The clerk’s defense is that he believed the ID was fake. Let’s assume that your belief is correct in that he had no intention of calling the police, that he was leaving it on the customer to call the police to retrieve his identification.
If I am on the jury, I view that as a form of “mercy” by the clerk. He could call the police and have the underaged customer prosecuted for attempting to buy alcohol and providing false ID, or he could give the young person a way to save face.
In any event, a reasonable clerk would believe that one of two things will happen: 1) the wronged customer calls the police, an investigation is done, and the ID is returned. No intent to permanently deprive, or 2) the ID is fake, the customer goes home instead of to jail and never makes a request for the return of the ID. The ID is then an instrument of crime, and by acquiescence a sort of implied in fact contract exists: I keep the ID, you don’t get prosecuted for the crime. Maybe that is not exactly right, but I can guarantee that a court will apply some form of law or equity for a clerk acting in good faith when he confiscates a fake ID.
But suppose you want to test the law (under #2 assuming your ID is fake). What are your legal damages for the deprivation of your fake ID? You can’t say that you could have used it to purchase alcohol elsewhere. That would be an illegal transaction and the law does not recognize those damages as a result of public policy.
A further more practical and not legal argument exists in the clerk’s benefit. Unlike stealing a watch, or a wallet, or a car, the clerk gets no benefit from keeping the fake ID. That is powerful practical evidence that he is a concerned citizen and not a lawbreaker.
I don’t know how it would have played out had I been the one to call. Well before the age of cell phones, and I wasn’t sure the etiquette of asking to use the phone of the store that had just denied me. I was considering asking to use the phone, or heading across the street to the supermarket and see if I could use theirs, when she made the “offer” to call for me.
Complete speculation, but to both of those statements, I would guess that it is not a “fake” ID, but that it is an ID that doesn’t belong to him.
If you had borrowed (or “borrowed”) your older friend of brother’s ID for the purposes of using it to purchase things above your age requirements, how much effort would you put into trying to retrieve it?
This all assumes that the ID was fake or invalid. What about the case when it is valid?
Does the jury still see the clerk’s actions as a “mercy”? Do you have legal damages in that you could have legally used it to purchase elsewhere, or to drive with, or to cash a check with, or even to vote. An ID is an important part of what we are kinda required (not legally, but in a practical sense) to keep with us at all times. What damages are done when that necessary piece of kit has been removed?
And what do you do when you call the police (and it is 2:30 AM), and they tell you that they will be there once they’ve finished up their OVI checkpoint around 4:00 AM? I was fortunate in that the clerk accused me of a crime in progress, so the cops go there quickly, but in the case where I am calling them over a dispute about my ID, what priority do they place on that?
You could use that argument about vandalism, too. While I doubt it is often or ever the case, it is possible that a clerk is just an asshole, and is harassing customers that he does not like.
Likely, yes, but I imagine they’d be minor in most circumstances.
Even in the unlikely case that it’s a couple hours, it’s pretty unlikely that adds up to significant monetary damages. I guess if you stopped to get some cigarettes right before a nonrefundable international flight and the clerk is holding your passport you might have significant damages.
That’s true. And while it would be nice to be able to punish assholes, there are many many ways of being an asshole that don’t result in significant criminal or civil liability. The best way to deal with an asshole like that is to report it to his boss and then not patronize the store again.
If you have to get to your job, and you get fired because you were not able to leave based on a clerk’s whim?
There are a number of reasons that I can think of that make my time valuable.
But not one that can effectively detain you indefinitely with no possibility of appeal. There is no other scenario I can think of that I can take something from you that effectively removes your ability to travel and conduct commerce, and yet, get into absolutely no trouble myself.
Well, you report it to the boss, and assuming that person is fired, then patronize again. In my event, had that one clerk still been there, I probably would not have returned, but I guess she got fired, or quit, or something.
Note, I’m not saying that you should or could charge the clerk (though when I was 20 and angry, I was hoping I could). I am saying that it is a bit of bullshit if they face no consequence.
The car analagy is a hard one for me, mostly becuase title will reflect who the true owner is, and if it’s got you both on it then no one has superior interest, for solely in the civil court realm. In my balance test a minor getting away a time or two is worth not seizing an ID on simple suspicion. Offset in their favor by the right to simply refuse any questionable sale.
I haven’t seen many different state IDs but just looking at my own legit DL I’m not sure what i could do to it to pass the reasonable suspicion/fraud bar. They’d honestly have to be being a complete asshole to question it. It’s in pristine condition, picture and description are spot on, and all the numbers are committed to memory. Maybe I’m just too naive to see it.
The issue I have is that(assume legit ID) for all the best intentions, they’re wrong. They’ve had the state mandated training, everything matches up. Yet they’re so sure their gonna go ahead and keep it till whenever. Take your business elsewhere where they also card? Screw you. Got a place to be that ain’t here waiting on the cops to finish up the higher priority calls? Screw you. Get stopped on the way home for a bad tag light? Double screw you, eat two tickets.
I refuse to assume their best intentions when the same assumption has already been denied to me. If its suspect and they’ve got the time to argue they’ve got the time to make the phone call themselves instead of initiating a a confrontation and holding me up, waiting to see if I argue hard enough to clear things up.
I was gonna ask about a case including a legit ID but was beat to it.
In regard to the last paragraph; I would say one intangible benefit the clerk receives is the pleasure derived from exercising power and delivering comeuppance as well as perhaps the pleasure derived from the ability to be an asshole without consequence. These are very strong motivations for some.
If you have to get to your job or be fired, then you should probably just go to your job and also call the police. Yes, there’s a small chance you’ll get a ticket, but in most places that ticket can be dismissed because you do actually have a drivers license and a good reason for why it wasn’t in your possession.
I guess you could stay, get fired, then try to sue the store for your loss of income. That seems like a lot more work and a lot more risk.
Yes, all our time is valuable. And you would be justifiably upset by having it wasted by a clerk on a power trip making the wrong call. But: that doesn’t necessarily mean that that clerk is a criminal, or that you have reasonable civil damages.
Agreed. But, to reiterate: there are a lot of ways of being an asshole that don’t result in criminal or civil liability.
I’m not sure I understand your response here. My car analogy is that there is a car that is owned by one person, but that two keys happen to fit, and where both people think that it’s their car. One of them is obviously wrong. Yes, the title will show who the real owner is. Just like a careful examination of your id will show that it’s real.
My point with this analogy is that there are times that you can be inconvenienced by someone making a good faith mistake, but that that doesn’t mean that anyone’s rights are being trumped. The fact that the other guy thinks the car is his doesn’t in any way mean that it’s not your car. But it does mean that you’re going to lose some time while the disagreement is worked out. That’s pretty analogous to the case of the real id mistakenly held as fake.
Further, my claim is that the best way to handle these things as a society and as an individual is to accept that you’ve been inconvenienced and let the police resolve things. You should not use violence to solve the problem, and people making good-faith mistakes should not be considered criminals.
If you really did incur significant costs due to the mistake, that’s what civil torts are for. But as much as it sucks to waste an hour of your life dealing with an idiot, in most cases that hour of wasted time doesn’t actually cause significant damages.
We are human. We make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes cause bad things to happen to others. But unless the bad thing is really major, we shouldn’t punish people heavily for their mistakes.
I would call the police and get it resolved on the spot. No way am I driving or just being out without a license (not that I drive anymore) or ID on me.
IANAL. In NC, the statutes (NCGS 18B-129) specifically grant immunity for civil liability to a permittee (employers and employees holding a liquor license) who holds a customer’s ID for a reasonable amount of time in an effort to determine the purchaser is of legal age. I believe that the only other requirement is for the purchaser to be informed of the reasons for the action. The posted guidance given to permittees is that the statute “allows employees to confiscate fake or altered ID’s for the purpose of turning them over to law enforcement.”
OTOH, the employees at an ABC store (the NC state liquor stores) must seize the purchaser’s ID if an attempt is made to purchase alcohol when underage. For example, if I go in and present an out-of-state ID that shows I’m only 20 years old, they can seize it even if it is a valid and legitimate document. Happens all the time. I can only guess that the purchasers expect the out-of-state ID to confuse the employee.
If it were an Oklahoma REAL ID driver’s license, I would expect the clerk to think it was fake. They used to be laminated and substantial, now, they’re all flimsy and cheezy looking.
As recently as the late 1990s, Louisiana’s drivers’ licenses weren’t even laminated. They were a piece of cardboard with a photograph glued to it. One of my college classmates showed me hers. She said that it made it really easy to make fake IDs in Louisiana, but that it was a huge headache in any other state, because everyone always thought her real ID was fake.
Once I got stopped in NJ and I thought uh oh, what will this copy make of my QC licence. But he didn’t turn a hair. It said “Permis de conduire” and gave my height in cm, but he must have had some information on how to understand it. He didn’t even give me a ticket, although I just hadn’t seen the no left turn sign and told him so. It was, in fact, a dark and rainy night and there was no oncoming traffic. He just warned me to be more careful.
I remember our high French teacher back in the 1970’s complaining that stores etc. would accept a cardboard computer-printed driver’s license as legit, but not a French passport (and probably even not a Canadian one) because they rarely saw them.
Just to revisit the scenario of the squatter - they know how to play the game. The cops show up, he says “I have an agreement, just a bit behind on my rent”. The police leave it because they are not going to conduct a hearing to find out who is telling the truth and why the person is there. I presume if he’d just gone in there that day, had broken in, then it would have been more evident, but after a few days (weeks?) where the owners tried to sort this out long distance - who is telling the truth? It’s up to a judge not the cops to decide, especially if it requires an eviction. Hence a civil matter. The police are not going to stand there while people round up bank statements, witnesses like the person who gve him the key, etc.