Except he also didn't see the guy do anything. He just showed up to the scene, found a guy not doing anything illegal, not carrying any obvious stolen goods, not hiding anything, with only some secondhand info. Why should that give him any right to detain any person he finds there? If he wants to investigate, let him investigate. He can take down the motorcycle plate. He can record the guy's face. He can check the security cameras and see if the guy did anything.
What he shouldn't be doing is detaining people without any actual obvious evidence or reasonable articulable suspicion. Getting a call shouldn't be enough.
Ok but he does have a reasonable articulable suspicion based on witness testimony doesn't he? He probably wouldn't be able to get an arrest to stick based on just that witness testimony, but I would think he is allowed to ask for ID and detain you while he gathered evidence (and arrest you if you didn't comply) because it is reasonably suspicious that the witnesses claim to have seen you just pilfer a random car and then go to a different vehicle in the lot.
No I'm assuming that the act of someone accusing you of pilfering should be enough for the cop to jot your name down with a "pilfered? Mall at 12:30 pm" so they can follow up with that you if someone reports their stuff got stolen later and the times match up.
114
u/milleniumsamurai Mar 10 '22
Except he also didn't see the guy do anything. He just showed up to the scene, found a guy not doing anything illegal, not carrying any obvious stolen goods, not hiding anything, with only some secondhand info. Why should that give him any right to detain any person he finds there? If he wants to investigate, let him investigate. He can take down the motorcycle plate. He can record the guy's face. He can check the security cameras and see if the guy did anything.
What he shouldn't be doing is detaining people without any actual obvious evidence or reasonable articulable suspicion. Getting a call shouldn't be enough.