Slashdot Mirror
Man Wins Partial Victory In Circuit City Arrest
JeremyDuffy writes "Michael Righi, the man who was arrested at Circuit City for failing to show his reciept/driver's license, has fought a moral battle against the city for almost a month now. The case has already been settled and he emerged victorious... sort of. It turns out that he's already spent almost $7500 and would have kept fighting them too, but because his family would have been dragged into it, he was forced to take a deal. They've expunged his record and dropped all charges, but he had to give up his right to sue the city to do it."
Since he didn't actually force the city to admit any wrongdoing... all they did was drop the case. Seems to me like he wasted a lot of time and money for nothing.
Many years ago, when the web was still quiet and tiny, we had a little group of friends who promised to follow through with customer service and govenrment issues for one another. Since we all had various newsletters, writing gigs, and other media-style connections, we had the ability to contact people giving bad service via the phone and inquire to the service issues from a media perspective.
Of course it was more a joke than a reality, but as time grew, we found that hundreds of people calling businesses and police departments inquiring about "Any new information?" was a great way to get things fixed. I can recall one incident with Circuit City (of all places!) where the managers on duty received nearly 200 phone calls a day from "media inquiries" relating to a direct lie from a sales person to one of our group. It only took 2 weeks of "Any new information" for the company to back down and repair the situation, at which point there was no more news to cover.
Now I know harassment is a "crime," but why isn't there a site like phonedot.org? Instead of the slashdot effect, you can have the phonedot effect. Give it digg like capabilities so bloggers and other media contributors can vote up or down various customer service issues, and then let these thousands or hundreds of thousands of bloggers make their calls to see if there is "Any new information?" until the issue is settled.
When my previous city refused to get rid of the city sticker for vehicles, I typed up a newsletter and printed 30,000 of them to distribute. The newsletter had every phone number of every city official (home, work, cell). It only took 2 months of massive phone inquiries for the city council to end the city sticker harassment, and I think it was a net gain for those who called to inquire. Fight idiotic harassment with idiotic harassment.
Many cities have gone on to hire an Ombudsman.
My city (Omaha) hired an police auditor. Then when she released a report saying that the police were overly rude to black people at traffic stops, she got fired. It's been almost a year now and we still don't have any public review of the police. It's damn frightening.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
That's on shaky ground ethically speaking DR 7-105. THREATENING CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.
(A) A lawyer shall not present, participate in presenting, or threaten to present criminal charges solely to obtain an advantage in a civil matter. Whether he threatened to present the charges *solely* to gain an advantage in the civil case would be the point of argument. The prosecutor would say that it wasn't solely to gain an advantage, because it was the police officer who made the arrest, and the prosecutor just prosecutes whatever cases come to him. However, if the case is not supported by probable cause, he's not allowed to go forward. DR 7-103. PERFORMING THE DUTY OF PUBLIC PROSECUTOR OR OTHER GOVERNMENT LAWYER.
(A) A public prosecutor or other government lawyer shall not institute or cause to be instituted criminal charges when he knows or it is obvious that the charges are not supported by probable cause. I would argue that the only reason the prosecutor threatened to go forward was to get the waiver of liability in the civil case. There was no merit to this case. An officer needs some level of suspicion to search a person or to require a showing of ID. There was no level of suspicion whatsoever here. There was no merit to this criminal case... at least according to what this fellow is telling us. One thing I've learned in my practice is that sometimes people charged with crimes lie... yeah, I know, hard to imagine.
you shouldn't have to show your receipt
Exactly. If they see a person stealing, stuffing something into their bag, pants, socks etc... they have a reason to search you and follow up with a citizens arrest. The reason stores have begun searching the bags on the way out is to be sure their employee (the cashier) is not a friend (or taking a kickback) to help you steal the item. This is the stores problem and the solution is not to pretend they have the right to search and detain you. They have the onus of proving you have stolen something. You are not required to prove that you did not. By that logic, they could ask for proof of purchase of any item on your person (assuming the store actually carries said item).
I personally will not shop anywhere where the policy is to search customers on the way out. It's not my responsibility to help them manage their own employees. I'm not a cow and have no intention of giving an inch where constitutional rights are concened.