Why all the anger & hostility? I really didn't mean any harm, & certainly didn't mean to criticize the guy (whose principles, by the way, I admire), let alone "beat" or berate him for doing something "wrong"; I even stated explicitly that I *wasn't* criticizing him. I was talking about choices & practicality, which are of course personal decisions. I wasn't speaking in absolutes; I was just asking some questions. I don't think I deserved a personal attack like yours any more than the customer deserved the overreactions from the store employees or the police. I don't know or care whether I'm smarter than the "average" person.
perhaps you're prescient and thus able to plan this sort of thing out in advance
Knowing how to respond in various circumstances is a result of experience & rationality, not prescience.
He did absolutely nothing wrong, and was arrested for it. That should scare any rational person. He wasn't even rude to the idiot cop, from the sound of things.
Again, I didn't mean to say he was wrong. I didn't say I thought he was rude the the cop, or that the cop wasn't an idiot. In my experience, though, when you don't cooperate with a cop there's a fair possibility that the cop will *interpret* it as rudeness, even if that's not your intention. Maybe I wasn't clear about that; if not, I apologize. I said I *understood*, not agreed with, the officer's point of view. I admit, I did say, "The guy was playing both sides of the fence"; it would have been better to say, "It seems it appeared to the cops that the guy was playing both sides of the fence." Your tirade against what I intended as innocent comments & discussion of an issue, among those of us who care enough to give it some thought, provides an excellent illustration of just how easily a misunderstanding can occur & quickly escalate into a battle. I posted what I intended to be an examination of issues; you responded with what appears to be (only in my opinion) an enraged personal attack; I'm responding to you with, I hope, respect and consideration. If that's a skewed world view, so be it.
Your opinion differs from mine and many others in that you think rights should only be defended when it is convenient, and ignored whenever it is "reasonable" to give them up. You also have the very common and very incorrect paradoxical idea that you'll be doing a better job protecting your family by "taking them out of the equation". In point of fact, the presence of multiple passengers in the car, perhaps even a minor among them, once again compounds the action of the store employees. Instead of merely detaining one person illegally, they illegally detained an entire car full of people. And they didn't just stand in front of the car. The store manager got between the open car door and the man inside, and refused to move when the man attempted to close the door, after politely asking what the problem was, I might add.
"Only"? "Ignored"? "Whenever"? Where did I say those things? I asked a hypothetical question about one particular situation. I didn't even say I thought my question illustrated a better solution; I just asked, "What if," in this particular situation, he had removed any possible justification the store employees might have had, even in their small minds, for detaining his family? Okay--you don't think that hypothetical case would have been a good idea. I get it. Why does that lead you to extrapolate that I think every situation should be handled identically, rather than individually?
Several things went very wrong that day. This guy standing up for his rights was not one of them.
I never said it was; or at least I didn't mean to. You seem to think I did. I've tried to explain myself better here, but I don't expect anything I've said to change your opinion of me. You really didn't get any of the points I was trying to make, which is okay, but unfortunate; I tried to communicate, & failed. Let's just say I expressed myself clumsily, I'm sorry, & leave it at that.
And that's the whole point of the receipt - to show that it was now his property.
A duly-authorized representative of the store, the cashier whom he'd just left a few feet back, had already seen his receipt and, by virtue of having personally handed him the receipt, even knew that it was his receipt & not one he'd picked up from the floor or found in the parking lot before entering. How many times does the store have to check his receipt? How about a third check, before he actually gets into his car? A fourth check, before they let the car exit the parking lot? Once is enough!
If you want to test a legal issue, in court or w/the police, it's frequently most practical to make the circumstances only about that issue, & for the moment let other issues by. There'll be other opportunities to challenge whether the cops can arrest you for not showing ID. Why not just let it be strictly about the store inspecting bags & receipts, since that was what triggered the whole incident? In this situation I might have asked myself, "What do I *most* want to accomplish here? To prove I'm right & everyone else is wrong (even if that's actually the case), or nail this asshole store manager & bag-checker to the wall?" I'm not saying we should all obediantly produce ID to cops on demand, regardles of circumstances, I'm just saying that if you want to make that the point, do it when that's a primary, rather than a side, issue. If I call the police claiming to be a crime victim (unlawful detainment), it's certainly *reasonable*, even if not absolutely legally required, for them to see my ID, & if I'm asking for their help, it's in my best interests at that time to comply with any reasonable requests they make. In all fairness to the cop, having been called in, he *had* to bring the situation to some kind of resolution--he couldn't just shrug his shoulders & walk away. The guy was playing both sides of the fence, first calling the cops, & then telling them, in effect, "Go to hell!" He did at best place the officer in a difficult position & even if the officer had no legal grounds to arrest him, I can understand the officer's point of view, thinking, "WTF??! This guy calls me in to *help*, & now he's telling me to go f--- myself??!"
Regarding the store employees standing in front of his family's car: What if (& I'm not criticizing him for not doing this, I'm just wondering) instead of staying w/the car, since he wasn't driving, he'd simply exited the car with his property & started to walk out of the parking lot, thus taking his family out of the equation? If the employees continued to detain his family in the car, they'd have been in *seriously* deep shit. If they'd grabbed him & tried to physically restrain him from leaving the parking lot, they'd be guilty of assault.
First: I applaud his principles & courage to act on them. That said, even though the cops might not have had the right to *require* display of a driver's license, I think it would have simplified his case against CC if he'd just cooperated w/it *on this occasion*, giving him an absolutely clear-cut, indisputable claim against the store; he even could have called the police as witness to state that there was no evidence of stolen property & he had cooperated fully. I'm not saying the police necessarily *had* the right to require a driver's license, just that it would have made his case against the store a lot simpler if he'd focused on 1 issue @ a time; save the driver's license issue for another time.
A question occurred to me that I haven't seen addressed here (I'm not claiming it hasn't been addressed, just that I haven't seen it): What if, after making the purchase & exiting the cashier area, but before reaching the "security" checkpoint, he'd removed his legally-obtained property & receipt from the store bag (or, for that matter, declined a store bag in the interest of "saving the environment" or whatever) &, size allowing, put it into a pocket, or placed it into another bag or case that was also his property & had been empty & folded in his pocket when he'd entered the store? Would the store then have the right to inspect his bag or search his pocket, & forcibly detain him if he refused? If not, then why does the fact that it's a bag that happens to have the store's logo imprinted on it give them that right?
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A duly-authorized representative of the store, the cashier whom he'd just left a few feet back, had already seen his receipt and, by virtue of having personally handed him the receipt, even knew that it was his receipt & not one he'd picked up from the floor or found in the parking lot before entering. How many times does the store have to check his receipt? How about a third check, before he actually gets into his car? A fourth check, before they let the car exit the parking lot? Once is enough!
If you want to test a legal issue, in court or w/the police, it's frequently most practical to make the circumstances only about that issue, & for the moment let other issues by. There'll be other opportunities to challenge whether the cops can arrest you for not showing ID. Why not just let it be strictly about the store inspecting bags & receipts, since that was what triggered the whole incident? In this situation I might have asked myself, "What do I *most* want to accomplish here? To prove I'm right & everyone else is wrong (even if that's actually the case), or nail this asshole store manager & bag-checker to the wall?" I'm not saying we should all obediantly produce ID to cops on demand, regardles of circumstances, I'm just saying that if you want to make that the point, do it when that's a primary, rather than a side, issue. If I call the police claiming to be a crime victim (unlawful detainment), it's certainly *reasonable*, even if not absolutely legally required, for them to see my ID, & if I'm asking for their help, it's in my best interests at that time to comply with any reasonable requests they make. In all fairness to the cop, having been called in, he *had* to bring the situation to some kind of resolution--he couldn't just shrug his shoulders & walk away. The guy was playing both sides of the fence, first calling the cops, & then telling them, in effect, "Go to hell!" He did at best place the officer in a difficult position & even if the officer had no legal grounds to arrest him, I can understand the officer's point of view, thinking, "WTF??! This guy calls me in to *help*, & now he's telling me to go f--- myself??!"
Regarding the store employees standing in front of his family's car: What if (& I'm not criticizing him for not doing this, I'm just wondering) instead of staying w/the car, since he wasn't driving, he'd simply exited the car with his property & started to walk out of the parking lot, thus taking his family out of the equation? If the employees continued to detain his family in the car, they'd have been in *seriously* deep shit. If they'd grabbed him & tried to physically restrain him from leaving the parking lot, they'd be guilty of assault.
First: I applaud his principles & courage to act on them. That said, even though the cops might not have had the right to *require* display of a driver's license, I think it would have simplified his case against CC if he'd just cooperated w/it *on this occasion*, giving him an absolutely clear-cut, indisputable claim against the store; he even could have called the police as witness to state that there was no evidence of stolen property & he had cooperated fully. I'm not saying the police necessarily *had* the right to require a driver's license, just that it would have made his case against the store a lot simpler if he'd focused on 1 issue @ a time; save the driver's license issue for another time.
A question occurred to me that I haven't seen addressed here (I'm not claiming it hasn't been addressed, just that I haven't seen it): What if, after making the purchase & exiting the cashier area, but before reaching the "security" checkpoint, he'd removed his legally-obtained property & receipt from the store bag (or, for that matter, declined a store bag in the interest of "saving the environment" or whatever) &, size allowing, put it into a pocket, or placed it into another bag or case that was also his property & had been empty & folded in his pocket when he'd entered the store? Would the store then have the right to inspect his bag or search his pocket, & forcibly detain him if he refused? If not, then why does the fact that it's a bag that happens to have the store's logo imprinted on it give them that right?