Unbelievable!!!!! Man charged with petty theft after leaving pop under cart

[Neverarepublican]

http://www.newsnet5.com/news/15822092/detail.html

I cannot believe that this escalated to an arrest.

[woodsprite]

1. Isn't it the checker's responsibility to also check under the cart? n/t

[Neverarepublican]

2. It was self check out

I don't think it should of lead to an arrest. He bought $150 worth of groceries. The security
guy should of let him go back in and pay for the pop

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

6. It was an self checkout,

and he offered to pay for it but the officer didn't want to have that.

"He turned around and offered to go back in and pay for it and the cop told him it's like robbing a bank, you just can't get caught robbing a bank and say, 'I'm sorry, I'll give you your money back.' "

Looks like this police officer taking his security job too serisly !!!

[Echo In Light]

16. Deputy Dawgs live for such opportunities to act on their authoritarian pathology

That way it's justified.

[ThatsMyBarack]

3. Isn't Ohio....

pretty much a police state now?

[oldgrowth]

4. It's easy to forget been there done it !!!!!!

[bean fidhleir]

5. It gave the bored cop a chance to exercise his power

Surely that's sufficient justification for the arrest. He probably never gets to impose his will on people otherwise. Or at least not often enough to satisfy him.

[Neverarepublican]

7. The cop telling him "its like robbing a bank"

is so crazy. Forgetting to pay for a case of pop isn't nothing like robbing a bank.

[Robb]

8. Not yet. /nt

[TheDebbieDee]

9. That guy should just feel lucky that the rent-a-cop

didn't taze him!

[no_hypocrisy]

10. If it went as far as a court hearing, it should be dismissed as a de minimis infraction,

meaning no true violation of the law occurred. Technically the pop wasn't paid for, but the mens rea, the criminal intent to steal was missing.

I don't necessarily blame the cop b/c in situations that aren't clear-cut, the cop only issues the summons and lets the judge decide what probably happened.

[Bill McBlueState]

15. but you have to consider the cost of being arrested

You say the cop should just make the arrest and let the judge sort it out. But consider the cost of being arrested:

Sturgis, who said he has never had so much as a parking ticket, found himself being led out of the store in handcuffs. He spent 11:30 p.m. until 3 a.m. in jail that night.

...

Sturgis said he made a simple mistake -- one made by many shoppers at one time or another. Now his family worries how the arrest will impact them long term.

"You know, it could affect his job," Wendy said. "You know, what do we do next, get a lawyer? Well, that's easier said than done, you know, it costs money."

So the charge will probably be dismissed, but at the very least, the guy spent three hours in jail that he could have used for other purposes had the cop not been out of control.

[slampoet]

25. The cost of a cops time? over $300 per hour.

[screembloodymurder]

11. So next time I'm overcharged, I'll call the police.

The law applies to everyone ... doesn't it?

[bean fidhleir]

20. Good one!

Would that laws did apply to everyone equally. I'm sure that had this "dangerous felon" been a cop, we wouldn't be reading about it now.

[elleng]

12. I can't believe

it made 'news,' beyond locality.

[BarbaRosa]

13. Little people with big badges.

You see a lot of that now.

[Ishoutandscream2]

14. Pop? You mean, he didn't pay for his dad

You must mean "cokes". LOL!

[Blue Diadem]

17. Beyond bizarre isn't it?

IMO, it looks like a cop with no common sense along with a grocery store that doesn't value their customers. It's not like the guy purchased a few items. Common sense says that purchasing $150 worth of groceries, two carts full and scanning it himself..well IMO, it would be easy to overlook something.

I wonder what Giant Eagle has to say about it. I noticed both the story and the video never said the name of the store but they did show the receipt and a picture of the store.

[hyphenate]

18. In this kind of case

It seems like the cop over-reacted and should have backed down. It says "police officer" not "security" in the article, and there is a difference. This cop likely got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, and wanted to take it out on someone else.

Perhaps he has some authoritative tendencies, but some cops are generally decent people, but they're as human as the rest of us.

I shop at Costco about every two or three months, usually spend a lot more money than I can rightly afford when I'm there, but they still check your receipt as you are leaving the store. In the society that's been created over the course of the past thirty years or so, trust is the one commodity that is in very little supply.

If the guy wants to press the issue, he can always file a suit--perhaps in small claims court (or Judge Judy!!) for the cost of the hours he lost sitting in a jail cell. Defamation of character also comes to mind, but there are a lot of archaic laws on the books that could land him in deeper trouble. It's a misdemeanor, which will likely be dropped, but it's the principle of the thing! On the other hand, the cop could have tasered him, and that would have been a sign that the cop has major issues.

If the store is on security cameras, perhaps they spotted the guy doing something questionable during his shopping, and put a flag on him to check when he was leaving? I'm just postulating scenarios, but it mainly appears the cop was just an ornery bastard on the face of it.

[AngryOldDem]

19. That's why I always make it extremely clear I have shit under my cart

[bean fidhleir]

21. That's a store positively begging for a boycott

The store manager (who was the cop's employer at that point) should have quashed the arrest - and fired the cop if he refused to drop it.

[Quantess]

22. He might have forgotten to pay, or he might have shoplifted.

People do shoplift this way.

However, all anyone needed to do was say "sir, you forgot to pay for that" and presumably the customer would then go ahead and pay for the "forgotten" item, and everything would be fine. No hard feelings, no humiliation.

Edit to add: And no theft!

[lame54]

24. with a $157 receipt - that was not shoplifting

[lame54]

23. Now, that's customer service...

that's $157 less that that store will be seeing EVERY week

[trof]

26. Cripes! I've done that a dozen times.

Words fail.