These people violated my wife's rights by physically assaulting her when no actual crime had been committed.
Apparently that is arguable. If she was eating something inside the store, the implication was that she was not going to pay for it.
Again, I don't know all the details so I have no idea what could have been going through their mind. Just understand that there are always two versions of events.
So what should the police have done? They should have told the Walmart employees that:
1). She never left the store so she can't be arrested for petty theft;
Which would have been untrue, thus they could not have said that. You do NOT have to leave a store for the crime to be complete.
as well her mom is here saying she was in the line with the item and you have video footage of her mom in the line with the item so your arrest for petty theft is false.
How would anyone know if mom was going to pay for it? For all the cops or anyone else knew, mom was going to pay for it AFTER she heard about the incident. It wouldn't be the first time I heard that one either ... though it usually is in reference to the person paying who had already left without paying for it ... "But I meant to and forgot."
2). You did not identify yourselves, you physically grabbed her and then through her to the ground covering her with noticable bruises and thus you cannot arrest her for assault.
If the security people admitted not identifying themselves, that may have been a valid statement. Though it could have been battery charges all around on that one.
3). You subjected her for a false arrest for these things and told her she was going to jail for things that were not actually crimes and now you are trying to say that her throwing something at you is assault with a deadly weapon when she shouldn't even have been detained in the office with the stapler? Get real.
Again, it is YOUR interpretation that this was a false arrest. And since a court was never able to make that determintation we may never know whether it was under the law or not.
Then they should have asked her and her mother if they wanted to file charges for whatever was appropriate and accordingly arrested the two individuals who subjected her to assault and battery and false arrest.
Since there was apparently sufficient cause to believe that a crime had been committed, why would they have asked that. I would include their statements in the report to the DA, but that would be the extent of their statements at that point.
"And since it is the DA that files charges with the court and NOT the police, it is not their charges in the first place."
Well the police arrested the victim. That is the point.
In your interpretation. In another interpretation, they arrested the suspect.
The fact that the victim who happens to be black was turned into the victimizer in the notoriously racist Ventura County is not surprising to any attorney that we talked to before selecting the one which we did.
And Ventura County may well have a perceived racist bent - I don't know. But all because a system is slanted certainly doesn't mean that all the individuals within it are similarly slanted. People are racist - not a system.
It's not a misdemeanor to refuse to arrest someone who didn't commit a crime, especially when acting in their own self defense against assault and false citizens arrest.
Again, if the elements are there - even iminimal, we have to accept the arrest. And the elements appear to have been present.
But, I wasn't at this scene (I was working further south 8 years ago), so I couldn't say what I might have done.
The package with the barcode was IN line with the cashier.
Okay. That certainly pays into her favor. Did the security people know that before or after she was detained/assaulted? If after, then all the acts aside form the theft could still be potentially argued.
Yes it would have in Ventura County. And it was the police who arrested her FOR such things. Again, defending yourself against assault is not a crime. Eating part of an item that your mother is paying for is not a crime.
But assault against them is a crime - provided they had lawful cause to detain her ... and if the security people had not known until afterward that the box was with mom in line, then the detention for the theft was lawful as well.
And there may have been another interpretation of events as well ... maybe mom was not quite in line yet ... maybe the store personel allege the box with the barcode washidden or passed to mom after the fact ... who knows?
However, none of this will ever be evaluated as the case never went to court when those issues of who was right could have been established.
Then you're not actually helping those admitted innocent people that are occasionally arrested and forced to pay thousands to defend themselves, are you?
Unfortunately, I am in no position to determine guilt or innocence at the scene of a crime, am I? We are not in the world of Judge Dredd. If I had to let everyone go that I thought MIGHT be innocent, I might as well stay in the office all day and not respond to calls ... I could wait for the confessions.
Admitted killers? Officer Roach never denied killing Timothy Thomas. He never denied that he was unarmed.
Admitted? Sure.
But again, I have no idea what the Roach thing is about. I don't know what his argument was for shooting him or not. I am sure he didn't claim he shot him because he was a black man with parking tickets running from him.
So this is an area I can't really discuss as I have no knowledge of it.
Sure, and that means there were good cops in LAPD. Nevertheless it means there were a lot of bad cops... VERY bad cops.
Actually, very few. The directions that Peres pointed his finger turned out to be attempts to save his own hide that never uncovered anything like he alleged. I believe some 13 or 14 officers resigned or were fired for that whole mess - not all of them for wrongdoing, but because of their failure to report or that they condoned some of the actions by the key half dozen figures in the affair.
Why do you think that almost EVERY poor person HATES police? Seriously, have you talked with people in LA? No one likes police.
Huh ... I know plenty of people in LA that do like them. And if poor people don't like the police, it may be because most the people that get picked up for criminal acts tend to be the poor. Likely because, as a class,the poor tend to commit more crimes.
And LAPD has a whole lot more than one bad apple. And believe me, I'm not anti-police by any stretch of the imagination. I'm just a realist, and it's not just a matter of the poor LAPD never getting a break.
Never said there weren't any bad apples. But in a department of about 8,000 officers, even 1% would be 80 officers. And they have been getting a whole lot better ... now if they could hold on to the good ones. The good ones go to the wealthy areas and to other agencies as fast as they can, because working in the tough areas under the current consent decree is a fast way to kill your career unless you go into submarine mode and only respond to calls.
So this means that it must be so serious that there is a mandatory minimum correct? Wouldn't that be what "proscribed penalty" means? Thus Petty Theft, which has no mandatory minimum would not be an offense which there is a proscribed penalty by law. Thus, the arrest was illegal.
No, the crime is for theft as defined per PC 484 - the level of theft is petty theft per PC 488. Likely the offense was designated as a shoplift per PC 490.5, but designated as a petty theft shoplifting).
And the punishment for PC 488 is set down in PC 490:
490. Petty theft is punishable by fine not exceeding one thousand
dollars ($1,000), or by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding
six months, or both.
And 490.5:
a) Upon a first conviction for petty theft involving
merchandise taken from a merchant's premises or a book or other
library materials taken from a library facility, a person shall be
punished by a mandatory fine of not less than fifty dollars ($50) and
not more than one thousand dollars ($1,000) for each such violation;
and may also be punished by imprisonment in the county jail, not
exceeding six months, or both such fine and imprisonment.
There is nothing about a mandatory minimum necessary.
- Carl
