Store guard nabbed 4 yr old who ate fruit, had her sign that she wasn't allowed in Safeway

[Liberal_in_LA]

Guard fired after nabbing child who ate from box

A grocery store security guard was fired after he told the father of a 4-year-old girl that she would face criminal charges for eating from a dried fruit package, a TV station reported.

The child's mother, Alissa Jones, said the father wasn't looking when the girl grabbed the package, ate a few pieces of fruit then returned it to a shelf at a Safeway store in Everett, Wash., KOMO reported Wednesday.

Safeway previously faced widespread criticism when a Honolulu couple were arrested over stolen sandwiches and had their 2-year-old daughter taken from them briefly by state officials.

In Washington, the guard took the 4-year-old and her dad to a room and said the girl would face charges and be banned from the chain, Jones said, adding the guard had the girl sign a paper acknowledging she wasn't allowed to enter any Safeway stores.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/11/24/national/a092847S84.DTL&tsp=1

[Faithful One]

1. She's 4 years old. She doesn't understand what "shoplifting" is.

Good on Safeway for firing the robotic security guard.

[Downwinder]

6. She is pretty sharp. She can sign her name. Can she read

what she signed?

Probably the only thing she got out of it was,"I'm not EVER going in that store again!"

[ZombieHorde]

2. Authoritarians are a plague on humanity. nt

[lunatica]

3. Honing up for his next job as a riot policeman

Too bad he didn't have some pepper spray so he could be hired outright by the police.

[Webster Green]

4. I'm surprised she wasn't strip-searched and pepper-sprayed.

There's some sort of mass-psychosis going on these days.

[neverforget]

5. I laughed out loud at the guard having a 4 yr old sign a piece of paper.

What a buffoon.

[Liberal_in_LA]

8. yep. Minimum age for signing legal document = 5

:-)

[riverbendviewgal]

7. common sense

has gone out the window these days....

[uppityperson]

9. Glad they fired him.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. That's just horrible.

I think I posted this once before - many years ago when I was a young mom, I was falsely accused of shoplifting. I had my son (he was 2 years old) in the seat of the shopping cart and after I went to the grocery store, I wheeled next door into the big box store that adjoined it. Looking back, I probably should have put my groceries in the car first but it was late, I was tired and needed to get home to give the baby a bath and put him in bed.

So I wheeled into the store with a cart full of groceries and a baby. I only bought a couple things, went up and paid for them and once I walked out of the store, a security guard came up and accused me of shoplifting. He took me back to his office, where a local police officer was waiting, and they took all of my groceries out and went through my purse, searching for that item I had supposedly shoplifted. Of course, they found nothing since I had not taken anything. They finally decided I had stolen a bottle of white out I had in my purse. I pointed out that it was used and showed them some drip marks on the side of the bottle. By this time, my son was getting fussy and I was beyond frustrated. So I asked if I could go home.

I realize at this point people reading this are probably wondering WHY I went with the security guard and let them search my things. I think it was because I was young, I had never been in trouble, had few prior dealings with cops or security people and I knew I was innocent. I figured they'd eventually apologize and I could leave. No big deal beyond a minor inconvenience.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

They ended up banning me from that store. And they said my picture would be sent to all the other stores in their chain and I would be followed every time I shopped in one of their stores. I laughed and said "Like I would WANT to give this store any of my business ever again?"

I called my parents and told them what happened. In fact, I told most of my friends and co-workers so none of them would shop at that store either. My dad called his attorney who sent a letter to the store and they ended up taking me off of their banned list but I never did go back into that store or any of the others in that chain. Neither did my mom.

And years later when the chain finally went bankrupt, I cheered. :)

[Liberal_in_LA]

11. karma for the store. n/t

[HipChick]

12. Horrible...but parents need to keep an eye on their kids too..

I've seen parents totally absorbed in shopping....I'm not sure I care so much about them getting into merchandise - the guard was a jerk....but on several occasions, I brought a kid wandering around the store by themselves to the customer service desk, to see if they could page the mother/father....with all these perverts and crazy folk about, and kids that go missing...I wouldn't take my eye of my kid for a sec

[JBoy]

13. Utter lack of judgment on the security guard's part. Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode

where George has sex at the office with the cleaning woman on his desk.

"Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? I tell you, I gotta plead ignorence on this thing, because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing is frowned upon... you know, cause I've worked in a lot of offices, and I tell you, people do that all the time. "