“May I see your receipt, Ma’am?”
“No, thank you.”
“I need to see your receipt, so I can know you paid for that.”
“Do you have any reason to believe I have stolen this? Didn’t I just walk away from your counter?”
“I didn’t see where you came from, but I need to be able to see that you paid for it.”
“So you have not seen me do anything wrong, yet you insist that I must submit to a search to prove I have done nothing wrong?”
“It’s not a search. I just need to see your receipt.”
“Of course it’s a search. This is my property, and you are insisting that you can stop me and examine it. That’s a search.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, but I have a right to see your receipt.”
“A right??? From where do you derive this right? Is this one of those rights that our Constitution protects?”
Sputters. “Well, I don’t know about that, all I know is I’m supposed to make sure people don’t walk out of here without paying for things.”
“There are ways to prevent shoplifting that don’t require you violate the Constitutional rights of your customers.”
“Ma’am, I don’t know whether or not you stole that, and I need to see your receipt.”
“May I see a receipt for those shoes you’re wearing?”
“No.”
“But how do I know you paid for them?”
“Ma’am, I must insist on seeing your receipt!”
“Do you think a police officer could stand outside your store and search the packages and receipts of your customers as they leave the store?”
“No.”
“You’d expect him to get prosecuted for unlawful arrests and illegal searches, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, but I am not a police officer.”
“Yet you claim the authority to search my property even beyond what a commissioned police officer has been granted? Who has granted you this authority?”
“Look lady, if you don’t show me your receipt, I will have to ban you from this store and you may never shop here again.”
“Somehow, I think I'll find a way to bear the loss.”
The above is an amalgamation of conversations I have had at several local stores at an alarmingly growing rate of frequency. (Soon the only place I will be able to shop is online!)
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States says, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Webster’s Dictionary defines probable cause as, “reasonable grounds for presuming guilt in someone charged with a crime.” (Webster’s New World Dictionary and Thesaurus, Accents Software International, Macmillan Publishers, Version 2.0, 1998) So, as far as obtaining a search warrant goes, an officer must show reasonable grounds that a crime has been committed, and the described search is likely to produce evidence of that crime. Seeing a person walk out of a store with merchandise does not meet this standard of probable cause, since honest, paying customers do this all the time.
In those cases in which there is no time to get a warrant, (lest the suspect get away or the evidence be lost), an officer may make an arrest and conduct a search, but he will later have to answer (under oath) to a judge or court commissioner as to why he had probable cause to act as he did and to show that his actions were lawful. Most jurisdictions allow a noncommissioned merchant to make a lawful arrest in a shoplifting case; however the same standards of probable cause still apply.
“A long standing exception permits warrantless searches incident to a lawful arrest. Circumstances may not permit an arresting officer to obtain a warrant. But only the person under arrest and the immediately surrounding area are subject to search (Chimel vs. California, 1969)…” (The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, Kermit L. Hall, ed., Oxford University Press, New York 1992, pg. 762, emphasis mine.)
I am not a lawyer and this post is not intended as legal advice. But I believe that Americans need to inform themselves about their rights and resist attempts to trample them. Unless a merchant has seen you behaving in a way that would make a reasonable person believe you have stolen something, he has no more right to search your person or property than you have to search his.
I also believe that we should take the next step of writing or telephoning the managers and/or the corporate headquarters of these businesses and let our objections be known. If they hear from enough of us, they may back off from these policies. And if they don’t, I think the issue needs to be tested in the courts.
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