Final anecdote - a few months ago I was walking down the main shopping street in Oxford when three guys came running out of a well-known mobile phone retailer. They had scads of Blackberries and one of them had a display stand in his arms. Two of them got away, knocking down kids and old ladies, while a passer-by jumped on the third. I was enraged by how they’d slammed into people and jumped on the third guy’s feet. A nearby security guard from a different store saw what was happening and also launched himself onto the shoplifter. We were holding him down as he struggled, waiting about 15 minutes for the cops to arrive. Anyway, while this was going on, one of the shop workers from the store that had been robbed came out and we shouted “can you help us?” (the crim had one hand on his own phone and was frantically deleting messages from it) and the guy replied “Sorry mate, I can’t touch him - I’d get done for assault.” Needless to say, I am not best disposed to that particular retailer any more.
Theft is theft. All shoplifters should be prosecuted, period.
Back in the dim, dark days when I worked private security, the agency that I worked for would take a contract for recovery only. We would only take jobs where we apprehended the thief and called the cops. Needless to say, the stores we worked in had a marked decrease in shoplifting.
For the Brits among us, the name is very similar to “Cuntphone Wankhouse”.
For that reason, we aren’t supposed to have tables of easily-swipeable merch near the exits. Also, for some things that are tempting targets (I’m thinking specifically of multi-packs of printer cartridges that retail for about $120 and are small enough to slip into a bag) we’re supposed to keep a very small quantity on the shelves and lock the rest away, even when that means we have to keep refilling the stock throughout the day because they’re high sales items.
I’ve prosecuted plenty of people at my store. Normally if I see them pocket (or purse) something, I call the police and have them waiting in the parking lot. If they just grab something and take off I’ll write down their plate number and call the cops. More often then not, the cops catch up with them sooner or later, and yes, we do press charges.
We also catch people stealing our pallets in the middle of the night as well.
When I worked at Sears & Dillard’s, we did. The latter employed moonlighting police officers (or sheriff’s deputies) as security guards so they could walk around armed and make arrests. The former didn’t go that far, but they’d hold people for the police.
Lawsuits, basically.
IANAL, but I suppose one could clobber a thief with a bat “because they were stealing”.
The possibility the accused could turn around and slap a lawsuit on the store for any number of reasons is there, the most obvious being “assault with a deadly weapon” (i.e., the bat…or whatever implement the clerk grabbed).
Mind you, the feeling of wanting to clobber a thief with a bat is very much there 
I hear ya, I would crack his bloody skull. it would probably be impossible to stop hitting once you started.
They did when I worked retail, but that was 25 years ago, so it wouldn’t surprise me if things are different now. They would be confronted, and the uncooperative ones were manhandled, handcuffed, and frog marched to the security office. They were then turned over to local police who filed the actual criminal charges. They caught several per week, probably less than 10/week max, and usually <5, I would think.
The store had a security department which was a manager and 3-4 worker bees (the manager did real work too, but not as much because he/she had to do all the paperwork too). There was at least one working at all times and 2-3 on weekends and other busy times.
The store had a number of one-way mirrors and observation decks in the stock rooms. Due to the stock rooms, there were several of what amounted to secret passages, so the security people could more or less secretly track the suspected shoplifters as they moved through the store.
Because I’m 6’5" and not skinny, I was asked to help a couple of times, and because I was young and stupid I did. In one case the security guy knew which door the guy was going to exit by (maybe he saw him come in?) and positioned me to block the guy’s escape. I ended up tackling him. It was fun at the time, but not something I would advise. In the other cases I was just there for the intimidation factor when a somewhat petite security lady was confronting a larger suspect.
The security manager, who was not even remotely petite, also had me hang out with her in the office when she was holding male suspects for the police, so they couldn’t claim there was any attempts at hanky panky. They’d grab a female associate as a witness if one of the secuity guys was detaining a female suspect. Other than that there wasn’t much concern about lawsuits, and I never heard of any problems in that direction.
Another time I had a speeding ticket I took to court. A shoplifting case came up before I was called, and the stunning redhead * pleaded guilty. I saw her in the store a couple days later, tipped security, and sure enough she hadn’t learned anything from getting caught before.
The biggest case they prosecuted, though, was a group of my colleagues. I may have contributed to that because I refused to approve a refund for a high ticket item that had a receipt which was an obvious carbon copy. (remember carbon paper?) One of the group worked on the loading dock, so they were stealing thousands of dollars worth of big ticket items including major appliances. They were also returning stolen goods for refunds, and processing refunds for goods that never left the store at all. They were not smart at all about it, and it was amazing how much they got away with before getting busted…though security did let them get away with a couple of things after they were wise to the scams just so they could document it on one of those newfangled (at the time) VCRs.
I don’t think the thief (thieves?) were ever caught, but one time someone hid in the store (the broke a window outward to escape) after closing. They took a power saw from the hardware department and cut through the wall where the sporting-goods department kept the guns locked up.
This was all at the Monkey Ward in North Valley Mall in Thornton, CO. I worked there through college, from 1981 'till 1985.
- Relevant because all pretty blonds all look alike to me.
I remember shopping in a Robinson’s-May in San Diego with what looked to be several other shoppers in the immediate area that were actually undercover security. An overweight Filipino lady walked by casually with a bag and three of the ‘shoppers’ (two men and a woman) suddenly grabbed her in unison and demanded to look in her bag, then hauled her off to a back room area. I was impressed at how fast they acted and how quickly the whole thing went down. This was during a big holiday sale and the store was crowded, but they seemed pretty hellbent on catching this woman before she left the store and I have no doubt they prosecuted her. I have also heard that Target stores are notorious for chasing down and prosecuting shoplifters by reputation, but I have never personally witnessed that.
The first two general retail stores I worked at prosecuted all thieves they caught. The cops got called to pick up the juveniles too. Sometime loss prevention would have to go to court and they went. Some thieves were chased for a couple blocks.
The Target where I worked briefly in college did take shoplifting very seriously, and they prosecuted whenever they could. The entire staff was trained on how to recognize and report thieves, not only when you’re first hired but they would have “security fair” days throughout the year. We had a huge security team (with weapons, handcuffs, and they were allowed to tackle customers) and a really nice set up of cameras, walkie talkies with spoken codes, and undercover cops in the store. My store was really anal about it, and they said once we were in the top 5 Targets in the world with regards to loss prevention. Getting a spot on the security team was actually quite a coveted honor, everyone wanted to be on it.
At the TJ Maxx, on the other hand, you couldn’t do/say anything and they never really bothered to call the police unless a customer started assaulting someone. People would take huge piles of clothes into their arms, tags a-waving, and just dash out the front doors. Once they hit the door, they were free. I’m pretty sure something like 75% of the employees there also stole with gleeful abandon. A rather stark difference.
In the UK you cant be accused of shoplifting unless you have actually left the shop with the unpaid for goods. While you are still in the shop/store you have not actually stolen the item, even if you have secreted it about your person.
You’re thinking of a booster bag. It’s just aluminum foil hidden in the lining of a bag so the electronic sensor is shielded like a Faraday cage. Some retailers use electronic tags used on clothing that also have dye packs in them, so if they’re not unlocked the proper way they’ll spray ink all over the place.
In a word, yes. I worked at a grocery store that was in a good part of a bad town. We used to have shoplifters all the time. Highlights:
- The woman pinned to the floor by the asst manager (who really was the glue of that place) waving around a hypodermic needle yelling that she had AIDS and was going to stab him to give it him too.
- They guy I saw on the way out thorugh the IN door, carrying a hand basket full of steaks. Too bad for him I happened to be signing my paycheck on the way in, so I simply wrote down the plates # and had the courtesy desk girls call the police while they cashed my paycheck.
- The con artist that would write out a check for a certain amount over the bill (a common paractice normally) on a company check, but only get in the busiest line and start throwing out numbers at you as you try to count, a la Harry the Hat in Cheers. It would’ve worked, too, if the mgmt hadn’t JUST given us a seminar on the scam and gave explicit directions, “Call us and close your lane. We will count your drawer and give the money, no problem.”
Honorable Mention goes to the shoplifter that used to have his girlfriend go through the line right before him and distract the cashier with her mesh top. He got one of the other guys pretty good until he bumped another cashier on the way out and she screamed. They found almost $400 in steaks and such crammed in his MC Hammer pants.
When I worked at Eckerds, we never caught shoplifters…just waved our hands ineffectually as they dashed out the door.
However, the guy that robbed the pharmacy at gunpoint was later arrested.
This reminds me of an instance in my youth in which I attempted to be an asshole but was frustrated by someone else’s dishonesty.
In my twenties I worked at two different Sears stores (not simultaneously). At the first of them I met a guy whom I’ll call Daryl. I hated dated for several reasons, all but one of which were petty. Anyway, I left that store to go into banking, and then took a job at a second Sears on nighst & weekends in the interests of building savings. At the time there was a thief hitting various Sears stores in the city – not shopping, but going to an unattended register, doing a no-sale, and taking what cash he could grab. (At the time, Sears printed employees’ id numbers on the receipts, so that was easily done.) One day I saw Daryl in my store, ostensibly shopping. Because I was an immature jackass, I decided to cause him some trouble with security, so I called the Loss Prevention office and reported that there was a suspicious person in the department where he was shopping. So they put the cameras on him.
Lo and behold, they actually DID catch him trying to rob a register; he WAS the no-sale thief. So he got caught and arrested, and because I could identify him by name from security tapes at the other stores, he got sent away. I got a nice reward and was made associate for the month; my store manager thought I was a genius.
(Not my immediate manager; she figured out that I had just been a jackass, but she thought it was funny.)
I was behind someone in a queue at our local supermarket who was stopped for shoplifting, so over here (NZ) I would say the law is that you can be stopped as soon as you have finished your dealings at the cash register. Thats why the cashier always asks “Will there be anything else?”
I work at the same supermarket now. The security guy has a room wallpapered with the pictures of shoplifters. I don’t know if they always prosecute, but they are photographed, trespassed from our store, the attached mall & The Warehouse (the equivalent of your Walmart) for two years. & its enforced.We are a small town with no other budget supermarket for quite some distance. I wouldn’t think its worth it myself.
not a factor at my current job, but happened all the time at my old job at a grocery store.
the shoplifter would be detained in the manager’s office while they called the cops, banned from the property, and arrested. every single time, they didn’t screw around.
an amusing story: a woman cashed her child support check at the customer service counter and proceeded to go shopping. she filled her cart and walked out the door without paying. after cashing her check, which had her name, address, and driver’s license number on it. the police were called and they went to her house and arrested her there. epic fail.
Once I was in a court room in a jury pool just waiting and watching while they finished out some other cases. One of them was a man who had shoplifted a carton of cigarettes at WalMart and then had gotten violent when they attempted to detain him. It was his 3rd or 4th conviction so he had his repeat offender badge.
He was sentenced to 40 years.