Child taken into care - Mother forgets to pay for $5 worth of sandwiches... reasonable?

Its most likely that the police didnt intervene for several hours on a minor case like this!

The initial 'arrest' and questioning would have been done by the stores own security staff.

If you walk out of any supermarket without paying for something, mistake or not, the security staff can chase you down until they get you, and drag you into the store for detainment until the police arrive.
 
Tefal said:
So crimes shouldn't be reported?:confused:

when you have people like this

http://somervillenews.typepad.com/the_somerville_news/2007/09/women-use-four-.html

all over the place it becomes much more sensible to report everything and let the police/authorities deal with it (plus I guess it helps them on insurance premiums)


as after all many managers/security staff would just accept that it could have been a child being a child rather than a plan
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You're suggesting that what is probably an accidental theft of a $5 sandwich is serious crime. It's not, it's stupidity one way or the other. The fact that you think the police should be called in this situation just shows the lack of responsibility in society these days. "I don't want to deal with this, I might get in trouble so I'll hand it off to the police". That is not a healthy attitude and leads to situations like this which results in horrible PR for their store. I guarantee you that this story hitting the papers has already cost the store much more than $5! In this situation the manager has clearly failed even if we assume his responsibilities reside entirely with the store and profit.

Oh and just the fact that you think his responsibilities should just lie with profit for the store makes me a little sick inside. Where has social responsibility gone? Where has the human desire not to cause harm or distress to others gone? I couldn't have gone to bed that night knowing that I'd caused a 3 year old girl to be separated from her parents overnight just because of a $5 sandwich. Could you?
 
nydryl said:
Common sense would tell you to wait a few minutes to eat the sandwich after paying.
Common sense would tell you not to phone the police and just let them pay.
Common sense would tell you not to arrest them and take the child away.

Every party comes across as stupid.
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This, common sense seems to be completely absent in the entire situation.
 
A crime is a crime, I dont think however that Tefal said that this crime was serious, he simply said it was a crime, which it is!

(P.S. The kid being taken away is bonkers, but the arrest wasnt).
 
Darg said:
Wow, all you people saying "they got what they deserved" etc really have to cop the **** on. It sounds like they made a mistake, they were willing to rectify it. The store manager could easily have had it sorted without issue in 5 minutes by letting them pay and giving them a warning. That's what would have happened in any sane environment. What the hell is wrong with you all for thinking it's okay to lock people up for hours over something so petty and have their child taken away?

I'm frankly disgusted at the attitude of most of the replies, humanity at it's worst.
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Agreed, I stopped reading thread after a while because some people are apparent idiots with no sense of reality, you're a disgrace OcUK.

Detained for 4 hours by Safeway before police arrived? That sounds iffy but it probably is allowed in certain circumstances. Losing the kid to Welfare services, ok, its ******* procedure but its also completely insanse.

The poor family forgot about the damn snack they had. Honestly you shouldn't use/eat anything before you bought it but thats a non-issue.

The family were basically harrassed for a very minor problem.

A shoplifter will grab an item, conceal it and try to get away.

A forgetful mother whos keeping an eye on her kid and her shopping shoves her sandwich wrapper in a pocket or something and then it completely slips her mind.

Don't go ******* accusing her of attempting to concel etc when they just purchased a $50 bunch of groceries because your argument holds nothing.

Store policy probably dictates what happened was the right way to go about things, in a very technical and proper sense. But it certinaly wasn't the right thing to do, store policy probably needs more flexibility and disgression to prevent this.
 
bhavv said:
a crime is a crime, I dont think however that Tefal said that this crime was serious, he simply said it was a crime, which it is!
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A crime which might have been an accident. A crime with which the store manager could have used a little common sense with and saved everyone a lot of time, money and distress. A crime that didn't need the involvement of the police.

Technically if I punch one of my friends on the arm it's a crime. Does he immediately call the police? I hope not, I hope he'd just laugh and punch me back. If a store manager can't handle this case without involving the police then he is useless.
 
Ok, so if I accidentally kill someone, technically its ok because it was an accident? :rolleyes:

Darg said:
If a store manager can't handle this case without involving the police then he is useless.
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It seems to me like a simple case of a zero tolerance policy towards any kind of shoplifting, which isnt rare at all in America. If someone shoplifts from your store, you need to file a police claim against them, this is standard procedure against shoplifters.

If the 'accidental shoplifters' had not been caught, then they would have gotten away with stealing food for free right? Thats still a crime, accidental or not.

Whats to stop a thief who purposefully shoplifts from saying 'Oh, it was only an accident, I didnt realize and will pay for now' if you let any accidental shoplifter get away with it?
 
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bhavv said:
Ok, so if I accidentally kill someone, technically its ok because it was an accident?
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Of course that's exactly what I meant... here let me steal your sarcastic smilie :rolleyes:

bhavv said:
It seems to me like a simple case of a zero tolerance policy towards any kind of shoplifting, which isnt rare at all in America. If someone shoplifts from your store, you need to file a police claim against them, this is standard procedure against shoplifters.
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Zero tolerance is never a good way of doing anything. There will always be fringe cases where you should trust the discretion of the manager and allow him to make an informed decision which in this case should have been a warning and getting them to pay.

bhavv said:
If the 'accidental shoplifters' had not been caught, then they would have gotten away with stealing food for free right? Thats still a crime, accidental or not.
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A crime that certainly does not deserve the trauma they were put through. I don't see how you can't understand that.

bhavv said:
Whats to stop a thief who purposefully shoplifts from saying 'Oh, it was only an accident, I didnt realize and will pay for now' if you let any accidental shoplifter get away with it?
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Ah see the fact that I am not a black and white kind of guy means that amazingly I do not class all shoplifting attempts as identical. Funnily enough sometimes I use intelligence and logic to determine the best course of action instead of a robotic response of imprisonment. Someday you might get your head around the concept of distinguishing a scumbag criminal from a couple with a child that made a mistake.
 
Anyone who goes around eating stuff before paying gets no sympathy from me... and it was only 18 hours not like they were trying to take the child away from them permanently - which from the sounds of it wouldn't be such a bad thing for the poor kid.
 
Darg said:
Zero tolerance is never a good way of doing anything. There will always be fringe cases where you should trust the discretion of the manager and allow him to make an informed decision which in this case should have been a warning and getting them to pay.

A crime that certainly does not deserve the trauma they were put through. I don't see how you can't understand that.
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I disagree completely. Zero tolerance on shoplifting is completely acceptable - everyone that shops should be fully aware that they do not own any products they havnt yet paid for, and that they shouldnt start eating / drinking things from the store without at least paying first.

They were put through 'trauma' for their own stupidity. I have no sympathy at all for people that walk around supermarkets eating food without first paying for it.

Darg said:
Someday you might get your head around the concept of distinguishing a scumbag criminal from a couple with a child that made a mistake.
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I never realized there was any difference, who is to say that a couple with a child cant be thieves / shoplifters? Why would I show anymore sympathy towards a couple with a child that shoplifted than I would to any other individual?

If this is a case of 'OMG think of the children', then take the kid away from his / her stupid parents. All people who eat in a supermarket before paying for the item are 100% scum, even more so that they dont even have enough courtesy to actually bother asking a member of staff if it is ok first, to which they should be told 'No its not, go and pay for it first and keep your receipt on you while in the store'.
 
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bhavv said:
Ok, so if I accidentally kill someone, technically its ok because it was an accident? :rolleyes:
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Of course it isn't OK, but if you were involved where this happened, you would be treated differently, and sentenced differently, from someone who had premeditated their murder and rightly so.

Personally I think a much more proportional response to this couples crime would be to take payment and ban them for the year without Police involvement
 
You cant ban customers from a store for shoplifting without a police report. They need to be identified as shoplifters before you can ban them for shoplifting. The supermarkets then have a big mugshot book of people who are legally banned and refused entry, or have security swoop onto them like hawks if they are spotted in the store again.

Theres nothing you can do to stop a customer from entering your store again if you dont have evidence (via a police report) of why you banned them
 
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Showboat said:
Got what they deserved :)
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Are you freaking serious?

Some of you people are a bunch of *****, do you realise the psychological trauma that child might have suffered, to watch her parents BEING ARRESTED, to being taken away to god knows where by social services and spending a whole night without her parents? Not knowing what's going on or what's going to happen, why am I being taken away by mummy and daddy?

Forget the parents, but the child is innocent and didn't deserve this over a freaking $5 sandwich, I know the law is the law but this isn't the 1200s any more, you don't cut someone hand off for stealing a loaf of bread. It's not like they went there with the pure intent of shop lifting after buying $50 worth of groceries.

Seriously, bunch of retail monkeys mentality who clearly think of no consequences but to follow their stupid policies, I hope it was worth it Safeway, possibly scar a child for life over a misunderstanding. I'm disgusted personally.
 
No one is saying that the child deserved to be taken away. They are saying that the procedure carried out against the parents for walking out of the store with an unpaid item was correct, which it was.

Any trauma caused to the child from seeing his / her parents arrested is purely the fault of the parents for doing stupid illegal things. There is no excuse for accidental theft.
 
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bhavv said:
You cant ban customers from a store for shoplifting without a police report. They need to be identified as shoplifters before you can ban them for shoplifting. The supermarkets then have a big mugshot book of people who are legally banned and refused entry, or have security swoop onto them like hawks if they are spotted in the store again.

Theres nothing you can do to stop a customer from entering your store again if you dont have evidence (via a police report) of why you banned them
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Every business premises has the right to refuse entry or service to anyone they like
 
phonemonkey said:
Every business premises has the right to refuse entry or service to anyone they like
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You cant refuse entry on the basis of shoplifting unless you have proof that the person shoplifted. The customer could sue the supermarket for this if there wasnt any police reports filed when they shoplifted.
 
phonemonkey said:
But you don't need to give a reason when refusing entry, you just do it.
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Even if you can, supermarkets dont simply refuse entry to people for no reason. They also dont check every person that walk into the store, there are far too many shoppers for them to be able to do that. It makes it easier for them to identify known shoplifters with the help of the police, and keep their mugshots in a book which they have to try and remember.

Another thing to mention - if a supermarket refuses entry to a person, but they ignore it and walk in anyway, what can the supermarket do about that if they dont have proof of why that person is banned? Any forceful intervention to remove the customer from the store would be classed as assault if they do not have any evidence / police reports as to why they are refusing entry to that person.
 
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