Yesterday, when I'd gone grocery shopping, I passed a few Girl Scouts selling cookies. That started a kernel of an idea rolling around my head. I woke up early this morning with a first scene in my head, which is inserted below.
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The red-faced grown-up who'd been yelling at me and my aunt eventually stopped to take a breath. The only sound that came next was the box of Janegirl Scout cookies slipping from my numb fingers, and bouncing on the sidewalk in front of the supermarket.
"How dare you," Aunt Marnie said in a fierce whisper. Her arm was warm and gentle when she wrapped it around my shoulders, but her voice was cold and hard when she said in a louder voice, "How dare you say something so vile to my nephew."
Just as the woman standing in front of us opened her mouth, one of the doors to the supermarket whooshed open, and a man who sorta looked like a cop marched up to us. "I was told there was a disturbance out here,"
The woman turned on him while pointing at me and saying, "This little f--"
The man help up a hand and said, "One moment." He pulled a large phone from his shirt pocket while saying, "Before you continue, I'm required to inform you this conversation is being recorded."
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And then I stopped, because I really had no idea what store security can actually do. Is there anyone out there who has experience with being a store security guard, or have any advice on what is usually allowed or not allowed?
Comments
Were they made of...
... real Janegirl scouts?
-- Daphne Xu (a page of contents)
On store property
They have all the authority of a police officer. Though they generally concern themselves with shop lifting. That said, I doubt that the security office would arrest anyone for assault (even a verbal threat is assault) but he might well record the exchange. He can and, assuming he's sympathetic, order the woman off the premises and ban her with the threat of trespass should she come back.
Great hook for the start of a story that has flash backs to the nephew's journey becoming a janegirl as the situation is resolved.
Should the woman not submit to his authority, he would likely call the police and provide a physical barrier between the woman and the janegirl scout.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
actually
a store security person has no police powers. They can detain suspected shoplifters with minimal force, at least in my state by law, but so can any employee of the store. They can ask disorderly persons to leave or be charged with trespassing. Where it gets a little murkier is when the shoplifter gets violent. The other point that might be relevant to this story is that the trespassing thing also applies to the stores parking lot if it is owned or rented by them. All of this assumes that the store is not using off duty police officers for security.
Technically, a police officer has no more right………
To arrest someone than any other person does. They are simply paid to enforce the laws and authorized by whatever civil authority to do so. The term “citizen’s arrest” has become a joke, but it is in fact real. Some states may restrict exactly what a person may arrest another for, and you don’t actually even have to be a “citizen”. More accurately it should be a “person’s arrest”.
The issue of course becomes how you detain the person you are arresting; it can be complicated as this could get into false imprisonment or illegal imprisonment. Not to mention what happens if the person resists arrest! How much force can you legally use, and what happens if the person you are detaining against their will is innocent? Hence the illegal imprisonment.
But the bottom line here is that anyone can record what happens in public; as long as at least one of the parties is aware the conversation is being recorded, it is legal. Hence all the cell phone videos that we see posted on line or showing up on the news. Also, if someone steps into a physical fight and breaks it up, I think that a court of law would be OK with a reasonable use of force - unless someone gets seriously hurt anyway.
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus