It’s Coming to Our Area

[Hagar]

The other day on Ch 6 News a guy walks in a store in Beaumont and walks out with two high dollar tool kits of some sort.  I forget the store or exactly what he got, but the point is, this is the same bs that’s been going on in the Dem run cities in the west & east.  I hope the law puts a screaming halt to this.  Now!

[5GallonBucket]

1 hour ago, Hagar said:

The other day on Ch 6 News a guy walks in a store in Beaumont and walks out with two high dollar tool kits of some sort.  I forget the store or exactly what he got, but the point is, this is the same bs that’s been going on in the Dem run cities in the west & east.  I hope the law puts a screaming halt to this.  Now!

I saw that story….times have changed so much in the last 20 years

i once worked in retail as a second job(also to get clothing at a discount)my main job was was to stand at entrance and stop thieves from leaving store.  Most of the time when confronted they would give it back and not argue but sometimes things did get heated and I would have to subdue individual until an leo showed up. Even though it was usually a slap on the wrist for individual but they never got away with stealing. Some learned and some didn’t 
 

now company’s tell their employees to just let them walk out. 

Precedent set and now we have what we have….

 

 

[tvc184]

10 hours ago, 5GallonBucket said:

I saw that story….times have changed so much in the last 20 years

i once worked in retail as a second job(also to get clothing at a discount)my main job was was to stand at entrance and stop thieves from leaving store.  Most of the time when confronted they would give it back and not argue but sometimes things did get heated and I would have to subdue individual until an leo showed up. Even though it was usually a slap on the wrist for individual but they never got away with stealing. Some learned and some didn’t 
 

now company’s tell their employees to just let them walk out. 

Precedent set and now we have what we have….

 

 

Yep, it isn’t the law unless we are talking litigation. It is companies who would rather give up property than face a lawsuit for entering a criminal.

Certainly a state legislature could pass a law that would ban such lawsuits. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that.

It is not a lack of criminal law or catching the person or the DA prosecuting.

[baddog]

This won’t stop thieves, but I believe there are some power tools that, if not scanned before leaving the store, will not function. 

[tvc184]

I don’t suggest this but the public that witnesses a theft can stop it. I have seen videos lately of store employees not stopping a thief because their company will fire them but the videos show citizens jumping in and doing it.

That only is this legal in Texas, it will more than likely will increase the criminal penalty significantly.

Texas has a specific law that says anyone can arrest for a theft that is reasonably believed. If the thief who the citizen was trying to stop slapped him across the cheek, it then becomes robbery with a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Here is an example. If a guy picks up a $90 drill and walks out of the store, it is a class C misdemeanor or the equivalent of a traffic citation. It carries no jail time and a fine only of $500 or less. If a citizen stepped in to try to stop the thief and the thief caused any pain to the citizen like a slap, it is robbery. If the thief threatens the citizen who is trying to stop him, even if he does not hit the citizen, it is still robbery because of the threat.

Under that exact same scenario and if the citizen happens to be 65 years or older, the C misdemeanor theft becomes Aggravated Robbery and carries up to a 99 year prison sentence.

So a fine of a couple of hundred dollars could now  be life in prison under Texas law. 

 

[WOSdrummer99]

8 hours ago, baddog said:

This won’t stop thieves, but I believe there are some power tools that, if not scanned before leaving the store, will not function. 

Think I saw a Lowes commercial letting criminals know that the tools won't work if stolen.

[thetragichippy]

I spent many years managing big box stores. When I left we could confront shoplifters in store and ask them how they would like to pay for the item in their pants/purse. If they ignored us and walked out, we could not physically restrain them.,,,,

I was having a bad day one evening and a guy ran from the electronics department of Service Merchandise with a bag full of radios and small things. It may have been about $500.00 worth of stuff. I decided to give chase (to this day I have o idea what I would have done had he stopped LOL)....I chased him to the end of the parking lot and he ran across the street toward some woods. As soon as I turned around a guy in a big truck asked if he was a shoplifter. I told him yes and he said I'll be right back. About 20 minutes later he showed back up with the bag......He gave me his card, he was a Company A Texas Ranger.  He claimed he never got out of his truck...... 

[tvc184]

25 minutes ago, thetragichippy said:

I spent many years managing big box stores. When I left we could confront shoplifters in store and ask them how they would like to pay for the item in their pants/purse. If they ignored us and walked out, we could not physically restrain them.,,,,

I was having a bad day one evening and a guy ran from the electronics department of Service Merchandise with a bag full of radios and small things. It may have been about $500.00 worth of stuff. I decided to give chase (to this day I have o idea what I would have done had he stopped LOL)....I chased him to the end of the parking lot and he ran across the street toward some woods. As soon as I turned around a guy in a big truck asked if he was a shoplifter. I told him yes and he said I'll be right back. About 20 minutes later he showed back up with the bag......He gave me his card, he was a Company A Texas Ranger.  He claimed he never got out of his truck...... 

I was working an off duty job at a housing complex maybe 10 years ago. I was with a very young officer with probably one year of experience. The apartment complex had a curfew for all tenants and guests. Although we cannot legally enforce apartment rules, someone hanging out could possibly give rise to a reasonable suspicion that they were trespassing and not actually visiting someone. Legally that could give us the reason to lawfully detain them and start investigating. 

My young partner saw a group of maybe 4 teenagers or early 20s people earlier in the night about 1 AM hanging out in the complex and started yelling at them. Get out of here, blah blah blah. They mumbled some crap and slowly ambled away.

Maybe a half an hour later, we saw them again. I pulled up near them, smiled and asked, do y’all really want me to get out of my truck (Ford Expedition patrol unit)? No sir, we’re leaving….

We never saw them again on any night and we worked out there every weekend for extra money.

As soon as they walked away that night, my partner started pumping his fists and going “Yeah!”.

He asked me, how did you do that? He yelled at them and told them to leave and they mouthed off and came back. I smiled and barely said anything and they were like, yes sir and thank you sir.

I said it was command presence. They saw you ranting and raving and kind of laughed among themselves. They thought you were just trying to show bravado while being a young officer. They looked at me and thought, I think we had better leave right now. They looked at me and probably came to the rationalization that they didn’t want me out of the patrol unit. On the other hand, they were more than ready to challenge your authority because it looks like you won’t back up what you were saying.

I’m not kidding about the way that young officer acted. He was like a kid in a candy store and excited. The officer asked how he could do that and I said it was easy, keep paying attention to the senior officers. Watch how they act around people as opposed to the young officers like him.

A teaching moment…..  

[thetragichippy]

22 hours ago, tvc184 said:

I was working an off duty job at a housing complex maybe 10 years ago. I was with a very young officer with probably one year of experience. The apartment complex had a curfew for all tenants and guests. Although we cannot legally enforce apartment rules, someone hanging out could possibly give rise to a reasonable suspicion that they were trespassing and not actually visiting someone. Legally that could give us the reason to lawfully detain them and start investigating. 

My young partner saw a group of maybe 4 teenagers or early 20s people earlier in the night about 1 AM hanging out in the complex and started yelling at them. Get out of here, blah blah blah. They mumbled some crap and slowly ambled away.

Maybe a half an hour later, we saw them again. I pulled up near them, smiled and asked, do y’all really want me to get out of my truck (Ford Expedition patrol unit)? No sir, we’re leaving….

We never saw them again on any night and we worked out there every weekend for extra money.

As soon as they walked away that night, my partner started pumping his fists and going “Yeah!”.

He asked me, how did you do that? He yelled at them and told them to leave and they mouthed off and came back. I smiled and barely said anything and they were like, yes sir and thank you sir.

I said it was command presence. They saw you ranting and raving and kind of laughed among themselves. They thought you were just trying to show bravado while being a young officer. They looked at me and thought, I think we had better leave right now. They looked at me and probably came to the rationalization that they didn’t want me out of the patrol unit. On the other hand, they were more than ready to challenge your authority because it looks like you won’t back up what you were saying.

I’m not kidding about the way that young officer acted. He was like a kid in a candy store and excited. The officer asked how he could do that and I said it was easy, keep paying attention to the senior officers. Watch how they act around people as opposed to the young officers like him.

A teaching moment…..  

I think you also didn't abuse your authority and they may have respected it as well, or at least in part for the decision to leave. I've learned in management a LONG time ago, I ask before demanding, "Hey, would you mind doing me a favor".......99.9% of the time they are happy to do the task no matter how large.  

[tvc184]

4 hours ago, thetragichippy said:

I think you also didn't abuse your authority and they may have respected it as well, or at least in part for the decision to leave. I've learned in management a LONG time ago, I ask before demanding, "Hey, would you mind doing me a favor".......99.9% of the time they are happy to do the task no matter how large.  

How many times….

….. and how many stories?

After the Rodney King incident and everybody wanting the video the police, we faced it also. This was in days before body cams and certainly there were no cell phone cameras. It either had to be a VHS or the VHS-C.

I pulled a guy over on a traffic stop and unfortunately it was right next where his buddies were on a porch about 30 feet away.  It was probably around 1995-ish.

The driver’s friends came off of the porch and got too close for me to safely conduct my traffic stop. So I had to split my time watching the driver and his friends who were then a threat to me. That simply wasn’t going to happen. I could have called all available units and would have probably had a substantial response in short order.

 But…

I told them that they needed to back away and let me conduct my business (their actions by law could have resulted in up to 6 months in jail). The response was, we have the right to video, make sure you don’t do something wrong blah blah blah…..

My answer was, I was going to conduct my traffic stop no matter what else happened. It was likely going to end up in a citation or maybe a warning. I was not going to do it with them standing over my shoulder and interfering. So they had two options.

I calmly told them that I saw they were on the porch about 30 feet away. They could stand on the porch and video everything they wished and in fact, it would be in a better position to be elevated. Then if I did anything wrong, they would have the video and they could also be witnesses. The other option was that I could call over the entire shift and we could handle it that way.

Not only did they choose to get back on the porch, they were actually agreeable to it. One of them made some kind of comment like, that makes sense. So they all got on the porch, got their video and I finished my traffic stop in drove away.

I think the fact that I was not confrontational with them by pointing my finger and yelling to “get back!”, etc. and explained the issue, they were very agreeable.

I have seen plenty of police videos where the officer(s) was legally correct but a different tactic “might” have (it doesn’t always work) yielded a different result.

In fairness, I didn’t start out with that wisdom. It took about 3 years before I started figuring out when to change tactics.

Now, they teach a required class in “de-escalation”.  About 35 years ago we called that “experience”. 

[thetragichippy]

18 hours ago, tvc184 said:

Now, they teach a required class in “de-escalation”.  About 35 years ago we called that “experience”.

LOL .....exactly.