Forum Index > Trail Talk > Car prowl turns into car jacking at Olallie State Park
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dixon
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dixon
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PostFri Jun 17, 2022 9:19 am 
Saw this note today from the Snoqualmie-NB PD. Apparently many of the vehicles were unlocked with visible items displayed.

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zephyr
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PostFri Jun 17, 2022 10:14 am 
Backpacker Joe wrote:
Well, they all stopped. The biggest guy said "You cant get all of us"! I said, "Ill get you. You care what happens after that?" They looked at each other and turned around an ran off.
Man, that's some quick thinking BPJ. Amazing story. ~z

Anne Elk
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Randito
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PostFri Jun 17, 2022 11:22 am 
Backpacker Joe wrote:
I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't been armed, but it wouldn't have been good
What would have been the outcome if one or more of them had an AR-15?

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uww
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PostFri Jun 17, 2022 12:38 pm 
Going to trailheads with the purpose to break into vehicles is not a crime of opportunity. The only opportunity is the one to steal wiothout fear of repercussions.

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dixon
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PostFri Jun 17, 2022 12:55 pm 
uww wrote:
Going to trailheads with the purpose to break into vehicles is not a crime of opportunity. The only opportunity is the one to steal wiothout fear of repercussions.
I have a friend who works at a big box DIY store in Issaquah. They were recently reprimanded after chasing a guy who was running out of the store with a cart of Dewalt Tools and successfully retrieved the tools. The store manager was apparently furious as criminals can actually sue the store if they should get injured while stealing from the store. Not sure if this is a WA state thing as I haven't heard of this anywhere else. Back when I lived in the UK you would not only be chased down but given a severe beating and receive a thanks from the cops when they showed up. Someone please tell me this is untrue, I feel like im living in the twilight zone.

Anne Elk
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Randito
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PostFri Jun 17, 2022 3:03 pm 
dixon wrote:
Someone please tell me this is untrue, I feel like im living in the twilight zone.
Of course they can sue. Anyone can sue for no reason. Whether they can prevail at trial is another question. However the time , effort and legal fees involved are considerable and when it is big company vs "poor person" a jury can rule against the big company despite the facts -- in many cases a settlement is reached out of court with terms undisclosed.

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kiliki
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PostFri Jun 17, 2022 3:13 pm 
I worked plenty of retail when I was younger and it was always policy to forbid employees to chase shoplifters for safety reasons. Companies do want to prevent employees from trying to be a hero and getting hurt (shot, hit by car in the parking lot, even just falling...and I have to think an employee who got hurt might be the one to sue the employer, if it weren't company policy that they shouldn't give chase). I never could fathom why any employee would--I mean, if it were your own small business and you were confident of your physical skills, maybe, but the idea that any of us would risk our own safety or even life to catch a shoplifter...why??

Anne Elk
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dixon
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dixon
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PostFri Jun 17, 2022 4:50 pm 
kiliki wrote:
but the idea that any of us would risk our own safety or even life to catch a shoplifter...why??
I get the fact if you're working for a big corporation with $M loss prevention budgets, less so for small mom-pop stores. I think for most folks including myself its an innate evolutionary reaction probably useful in hunter gatherer times when someone from another tribe stole your daily kill which threatened starvation. You see moral wrongdoing and you want to help the situation. A bit like walking down the street and seeing a man assaulting a woman, id naturally intervene without spending time performing a risk assessment.

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Cyclopath
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PostFri Jun 17, 2022 6:37 pm 
Randito wrote:
What would have been the outcome if one or more of them had an AR-15?
Depends if it's a diamond encrusted AR or not.

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altasnob
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PostFri Jun 17, 2022 7:48 pm 
dixon wrote:
the store manager was apparently furious as criminals can actually sue the store if they should get injured while stealing from the store.
Washington's self defense law, which defines when you are allowed to use force, applies in all situations, including when you are chasing after someone who stole from you. You can read it yourself but basically, you can only use reasonable force. If the shoplifter pulls out a gun, you can shoot the shoplifter in self defense and defense of property. But if the shoplifter doesn't have any weapons, you don't get to shoot the shoplifter. If you violate this law, and use more force than the law allows, yes, you will have to pay the shoplifter (and probably be charged with a crime). Here is Washington's shopkeeper privilege law that allows stores to briefly detain a person to see if they are, in fact, shoplifting. But again, you can only use reasonable force.

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uww
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PostFri Jun 17, 2022 9:07 pm 
I knew we had a reasonable force law, but are there relevant WA cases that set precedents? And what defines necessary- how lethal the weapon is? Does the size/age disparity between combatants matter?

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Tom
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PostSat Jun 18, 2022 7:27 am 
The reality is you're more likely be injured on the drive/hike to/from the trailhead than by evildoers at the trailhead. If you must, obsess about the other stuff more. Don't text while you drive, go prepared, etc. If I'm ever in a situation like this at most I'd activate the sos on my phone and/or inreach but for sure would not escalate. I'd venture to guess your odds of dying are significantly higher if you choose to escalate. Heck, even if I could change my outcome from 100% losing my property and 99.9% chance of living to not losing my property but 5% chance of dying I wouldn't take the risk. Life is not an arcade game. You don't insert another quarter to play again.

zhenya, Anne Elk, contour5, Secret Agent Man, Cyclopath, zimmertr, HikingBex, Sculpin
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altasnob
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PostSat Jun 18, 2022 7:35 am 
uww wrote:
I knew we had a reasonable force law, but are there relevant WA cases that set precedents?
Hundreds of court cases have been published that help further define the law. A good list of some of them can be found at the bottom the pattern jury instruction, which is used in every state criminal trial in Washington where lawful force is an issue.
uww wrote:
And what defines necessary- how lethal the weapon is? Does the size/age disparity between combatants matter?
These questions is ultimately questions for a jury to decide after a prosecutor thinks you violated the law and charges you with a crime and you are sitting in the defendant's chair at trial. You do not want to ever be anywhere close to this situation, so it's best to error on the side of caution. However, if you do ever find yourself in this situation, and a jury finds you not guilty, and then the jury finds that they found you not guilty because you used lawful force, the state must reimburse you for all your costs associated with your defense.

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dixon
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PostSat Jun 18, 2022 9:51 pm 
catsp wrote:
I'd be surprised if anything more than reasonable force is permitted in the UK either, and expect there are suits brought against police or others when more than reasonable force is used against shoplifters.
You're probably right. I left in 2004 and it was a different country back then. I always thought that one surrenders their rights when they chose to commit a crime.

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Seattle_Wayne
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PostSun Jun 19, 2022 8:40 am 
altasnob wrote:
dixon wrote:
the store manager was apparently furious as criminals can actually sue the store if they should get injured while stealing from the store.
Here is Washington's shopkeeper privilege law that allows stores to briefly detain a person to see if they are, in fact, shoplifting. But again, you can only use reasonable force.
This is actually really helpful and I'd like to add that the majority of retail stores have "trained" loss prevention or asset prevention associates- and many, many years ago stores were much more vigilant when it came to catching shoplifters. Over time, for whatever reason, stores have moved to a more hands off approach. Probably to reduce employee injury. When an employee gets injured on the job, it's costly. It's not so much the shoplifter turning around and filing lawsuit as it is the company paying L&I and time off to the employee to recover from injury. The companies I worked for required Five Steps or Five Elements before making an apprehension on a shoplifter. Whether we were in the camera room or on the sales floor, we had to physically watch the person enter either the store or the specific department. This will help in determining that the person did not enter the store with merchandise already in hand- i.e to conduct a return or to price match, etc. The second step is selection of the merchandise. The third step is concealment of said selected merchandise. The fourth step is uninterrupted surveillance. Whether on the sales floor or in the camera room, you can not look away, get distracted, answer the phone, etc- 100% visual of the person and where the merchandise is concealed must be maintained. If they walk between racks, enter a fitting room, bathroom, etc. you can not make the apprehension. As long as you can verify, by following their every footstep, check every rack they passed by, nook, cranny, etc and you're 100% they did not dump the merchandise, you can stop them. Most Loss Prevention Teams have a supervisor in the camera room most of the time to make those judgement calls on whether the stop can be made depending on the path of the would-be shoplifter. Lastly, the person must pass the last point of sale. Some stores require the person to actually exit the building while some require the person to touch the door or make an attempt to exit. We used to be able to stop shoplifters after they made obvious concealment before entering bathrooms, elevators, stairwells ect. But LE stopped prosecuting those stops because even though they concealed the merchandise in a bag, down their pants, etc, the argument can be made that they have not left the store and they charged their minds and wanted to pay for it. Fitting room stops were more tricky, because after the person left the fitting room after going in there with merchandise, you had to do a complete sweep of the entire fitting room. They could've thrown the merchandise into an adjacent stall, and if you don't verify that, you can't make the stop. Also, most stores have a two item rule meaning there has to be more than two items missing after you check the rooms. And you can not make stops on ANY small items. Pairs of socks, small jewelry items, perfume bottles- all a no-go no matter what. The good news is this. A lot of Loss Prevention teams have great surveillance video, cameras and photographing opportunities and people who steal usually get their face plastered in the LP office and shared amongst other stores and passed onto LE. It's easy to steal and get away with it because companies have a lot of red tape to get through to actually stop someone when they are stealing. But rest assure, it's noticed and documented. When I worked Seattle, we caught 200+ a year and that's just small numbers compared to how many we had to watch run out of the store with stuff because we didn't see them until it was too late or we were missing a "step" even though we saw most everything else. It's all about liability. There's this thing called a Non-Productive Detainment. It's when a Loss Prevention Associate stops someone they think is stealing and they did not recover the merchandise. That is very bad in the LP world and I've seen many, many associates get fired for stopping someone like that just once. There's no grey area. The other rules are also in effect and will end up in termination if you break them- going more than 100 feet in a pursuit- some stores have no pursuit rules. Going hands on and using excessive force, causing injury, going off the curb into traffic, chasing suspect into traffic, etc. Most stores used to carrying handcuffs. Most don't anymore and resulted into deescalation training. So next time you see someone stealing and you think no one is doing anything about it, more than likely they want to. They just can't or are building a case. We used to watch the same person come in and nickel and dime us for one shirt here, one shirt there. Then we'd burn all the video, add up the cost of merchandise stolen, catch them eventually and send all our stuff to LE. It's $1,200 for a felony now. Most LP want big stops. Not one $20 movie when there are people stealing $800 bikes or stacks and stacks of Polo shirts at $80 a shirt. Denim was a hot item and we used to stand in denim department and wait for an hour and then they'd come in three or four deep and start loading up denim into plastic bags. We would catch maybe one or two of them and recover four or five bags of denim- those are the big stops LP likes. Not someone stealing a can of ice cream or a couple pairs of socks. At the end of the day, it's just stuff and it's not worth getting hurt over or shot at. I got pepper sprayed by a guy trying to steal a $250 dollar necklace. It's not fun and back then wages were $9/hr. Now LP are making upwards of $22 some times $25 depending on the store. You'd never believe the kind of clientele we caught. From drug addicts, to soccer moms, bored house wives, Microsoft techies making six figure salaries to lots and lots of teenagers. Minors were the worst because we had to call their parents and the parents would have to come down and get them- some times the parents verbally accosted us, and some didn't want to come get their kid. So then we'd have to wait on police and some times the cops didn't want to come deal with it. Meanwhile, while we were stuck dealing with our suspect, we'd be getting phone calls of other people stealing. Some days it was endless while other days, nothing was going on. And that was just shoplifters. Nevermind the countless employees who were stealing merchandise, cash, time theft, etc. If we suspected an employee was stealing, we had to sit in the camera room from the time they clocked in to the time they clocked out. It was pretty boring and some times we'd have to do it for weeks on end so that meant we didn't catch any shoplifters. Anyway. I hope this helps some of you understand a little more why it looks like no one is doing anything about shoplifting or why there is so much of it. Employees used to talk bad about LP all the time- calling us lazy, never around, don't care, etc. because they'd see more theft than we would and since we weren't actively out stopping it, they think we just didn't care. One tactic we used to help show we are doing our jobs was after catching a shoplifter, we'd cuff them up and walk them through the busiest part of the store in front of everyone to show we are catching people- we called it the "walk of shame". Then we'd give $20 dollars store credit to whoever called on a shoplifter that led to an apprehension or merchandise recovery. Sorry for the long winded post- it was kind of fun thinking back on the job- but glad I don't do that stuff anymore. _Cheers Edit: Oh, one thing i'd like to add- it's very hard for stores to retain their LP associates. Aside from the pay, the benefits are terrible- 3 weeks of vacation a year with many, many black out days. No vacation is permitted during 4th Quarter- holidays, sales, weekends, etc. We got two days off a week but those were usually split days. Lots and lots of closing shifts if the LP teams ran the store alarms- some stores allowed one or two managers to have alarm access. The majority of LP associates usually move on after a year or so or are recruited my police departments. It's tough to keep a team together and the training to become apprehension certified takes about 2-3 months.

Vesper Peak

car68, zimmertr, Ski, Leafguy, dixon
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