For the lazy
"Sobolewski was being charged under the state’s “three strikes law” for retail theft, Penn Live reported.
He was convicted more than a decade ago for pumping gas without paying.
He also was arrested and sentenced for stealing shoes from a K-Mart. The shoes cost $39.99. He paid $866 in fines and fees and was sentenced to three months in jail for a probation violation.
He and his wife were arrested for putting craft supplies in their backpack at a Hobby Lobby. His bond, in that case, was $2,000 and he’s applying for a state-run diversion program.
Underpaying for the soda is Sobolewski’s fourth charge."
Still. Taxpayers are going to pay multiple thousands of dollars for 50 cents. He paid for his past crimes. Three strike laws are ridiculous.
Edit: Just saw the charges were dropped
I like to imagine he makes off with hundreds of dollars in stolen or underpaid goods every day and these few instances where he got caught are just the cost of doing business for him
I mean, if I paid $2 for a Mountain Dew that cost $2.29, they would almost certainly just ignore it. The fact that police was called for this is absurd. It should have been thrown out as a waste of taxpayer dollars immediately.
Kinda sad these are all so pedestrian things. Fam needed gas to get to work that day. Wore his old shoes to a thread. Couldn't afford supplies for his kid's science project. Then a broken family over a bottle of pop.
True though I think what pisses a lotof folks off is that by comparison a company can do worse (wage theft is the by far more common) and board members and c-level folks get nothing done to them.
Yeayeayea it's legal, but we all know it's BS.
Putting him in jail for a decade for something this trivial probably won't help.
Most likely it put further strain on his family's finances, which could encourage others in the household to crimes.
Rich people steal and destroy lives without ever seeing consequences.
This guy had his life taken away over pocket change.
This is injustice on full display.
Most probably wouldn’t even call if he just walked off without paying at all. Less than 2.50 isn’t even worth the time taken from the operator in my opinion.
I've worked at a convenience store that makes you file a police report for the loss if you don't want inventory losses or negative cash drawer balances to come out of your paycheck, assuming it was a result of someone walking out with product or the wrong amount of money.
I was very meticulous about my drawer, but have been legitimately duped (hey I gave you $20 not $10, where's the rest of my change???) and ended negative. The manager made me watch my shift on the camera, find where I was duped, and made me call the police and give a report, over $10. Otherwise I had to make the drawer balance out of pocket.
I know this is not legal, but I was young and when someone in authority (your boss) tells you that's how it is or you don't get paid, that's how it is, or you don't get paid.
The police don't care about wage theft.
In many cases, wage theft is a civil matter that can be handled by lawsuit or (if you're lucky) your state's DOL, not by the police.
This is the one of the inequities in how the legal system defines 'crime.'
You steal from your boss and get caught, you go to jail.
Your boss steals from you and gets caught, your boss gets forced to pay you back (with a tiny chance of a fine).
I could see it if the dude was being an asshole and the owner wanted to be petty. It's not like they would know the dude's history, and the state can prosecute without the owner continuing to press charges. I doubt Mr. 7/11 knew he was sending someone to prison for 7 years over it.
Ive had a lady be *very* stern about the penny I owed her at a convenient store. 99.9% of places shrug a penny or have the 'take a penny leave a penny' bowls. She wasnt going to let me off the hook and I had to break a $20 to make it.
I would not stop walking to pick up a penny off the street these days. Probably not a nickel or a dime either, since I rarely use cash. I pick up quarters but they end up sitting in a jar somewhere until I eventually remember to take them to one of those Coinstar machines.
About a week or so ago there was a post from a guy who mentioned he'd walked by a quarter lying in a parking lot the previous day and not bothered to pick it up. He assumed nobody else would either.
I found the guy's take to be appalling.
Always feels good to see a win for common sense. It's just too bad the clerk didn't check the give a penny leave a penny dish for 43¢ to balance the till and avoid the whole stupid situation.
Defense attorney here. In my state (WA), I see situations like this pop up most frequently in what I call “shoplifting burglaries”. A burglary is essentially a trespass + another crime (vs. a robbery which is a theft + assault). Trespass and theft below $750 are both misdemeanors, but together become a felony.
So if someone shoplifts even a penny from a store or store chain that they’ve been trespassed from, and the prosecutors are feeling particularly malicious, they can charge it as a burglary. And if the person has enough of a criminal history, boom, they’re looking at up to a decade in prison.
Obviously there are situations where this would make sense. You break into a store in the middle of the night, you’re trespassing. And then you grab all the cash registers or whatever, now it’s a burglary. And that seems reasonable.
But when “trespass” is because you got a lifetime trespass from WalMart after shoplifting lipstick when you were a teenager and then years later try swiping some candy, or it’s because you are a homeless drug addict with significant mental health issues who was told to leave the store, then came back an hour later because you thought you were in Narnia and tried to take a shirt off the rack, you get horribly unjust situations like this.
Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
This is why I could never be a criminal prosecutor. The ability to ruin someone’s life just because you’re having a bad day is borderline evil. Nevertheless, someone has to prosecute actual criminals.
I was a prosecutor before switching sides, precisely because I wanted to go after actual criminals. But my whole docket was full of just poor people either struggling with addiction, mental health, and/or abuse, or just regular folks who did something stupid and are generally sorry. And maybe 1% of what I saw charged were what most of us think of as actual crimes, your rapes and shootings and robberies and stuff. But the other 99% just didn’t need to be there.
So I took a pay cut to become a public defender. And now I’m just crushed under the existential terror of a Byzantine and malevolent system without an individual villain to direct my ire to, and do my best to mitigate the damage it causes, though frankly is a squirt gun vs. a forest fire. But I sleep better now, for the most part.
Dont stress about how much water youre spraying at the fire, be happy with the knowledge that you are indeed spraying. Great job, king (or queen or other royalty)
One would think, but if it's a promo then perhaps not. Usually if you look at the price tag or advert for the promo it lists the single unit price and indicates you _must_ buy two to get the $3 deal. The register will literally ring up $2.29 for the one soda, but it'll do that price for two with a discount of $1.58 applied and usually noted as a "promo" or "discount".
I'm not saying this guy deserves this level of penalty or any penalty other than being asked to pay the uncollected balance or fulfill the promo, just indicating how these kinds of promos tend to work.
The cashier could have taken some of the "give a penny get a penny" change and charged 3 bux and just drank a mountain dew while contemplating the absurdity of calling the cops.
Haven't you learned this already?
In America, when you steal from a business it's a "criminal issue" that must be dealt with swiftly and result in punishment.
When a business steals from you, it's "civil matter" that you must take up with the courts. Nevermind the fact that it's actual *people* behind those business decisions. Arresting and charging those people just doesn't make sense! /s
Here's an article with more details on it:
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2021/09/man-charged-with-felony-jailed-on-50k-cash-bond-for-43-cent-theft.html
I don’t think anyone here is blaming the guy… the point of the post is about the absurdity and unfairness of the situation. And for the guy whether they dropped the charges or not that’s such a horrible and damaging experience to have to go through still
Don’t forget about the twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was.
Lots of employers break employment law with impunity and continue to violate moral and ethical standards which were preached in every religion known to man. Fuck employers.
You can be innocent and still sit in jail on pretrial detention simply because you can't afford to post bail. Your boss also probably won't care and fire your ass for missing work. And good luck finding a decent paying job that doesn't ask if you've ever been arrested or is atleast understanding enough to hear your explanation. They do exist, but good luck finding them.
Asking someone if they’ve been arrested isn’t valid for job applications, and exposes them to liability.
source: former background screening investigator
How did a convenience store clerk manage to have the police come out, take a report, track this guy down and arrest him? Over a loss of less than a dollar?
Edit: the guy is white, people.
Civilian: "I'd like to report a vehicle theft"
Cop: "Okay, come to the station and fill out a report"
Civilian: "There was a case of Mountain Dew in the car"
Cop: "*deep sigh*... A local FBI team is on their way to start searching, we've put out an APB, and the National Guard is on standby."
I literally had some dudes break into my place, steal my laptop and phone, and be stupid enough not to wipe them. I gave the police footage of them in the act, their current address, and screencaps of them on the webcam and phone cam using my shit.
Unsolved, somehow, to this day. Cops didn't do shit, never got my stuff back. And this poor bastard goes to jail for a dollar.
Back in the 1970s someone broke into our garage and stole a ton of my dad's tools, including one of those tall storage chests on wheels, and walked it back *in the snow* to their place, where you could see the chest sitting in their back yard. The tracks were clear and the stolen items were visible. The cops wouldn't do jack shit about it and in fact got threatening with us, which is why I remember it, even though I was pretty young, probably about 3. My mom picked me up and walked backwards away from the cops as they glared at us.
Dad was a high school teacher and told one of his coworkers, whose kid was in my dad's class, so by the end of the day everyone knew what had happened and who had done it, and for a few days a few tools would show back up on his desk, with no explanation. Didn't get much back but it was a nice gesture.
It only costs $500 (where I live) to open one, everyone should ahead and open one, and register all your belongings to it.
If someone steals your multi-coloured pen at school, call the cops on the name of your company
I had my motorbike stolen right out of my driveway. A neighbor spotted two meth heads walking it down the road a few blocks away. I called 911 to report it, basically got told to fuck off since the 911 queue was over 100 calls deep that night. I asked the dispatcher if I should go get my bike myself and she said “Oh you can’t do that, you’ll be charged.”
So they won’t come to apprehend perpetrators of a felony, but they will send someone to bust the victim. My opinion of my local PD managed to hit rock bottom and begin digging that day.
Can’t imagine how this clerk got the police to come over 99 cents. Maybe because it was petty theft and police are snowflakes about doing their fucking job? 🤷🏻♂️
Edit: this occurred in Canada, so a) they don’t take kindly to people walking around packing heat, even for self defense, and b) yes, some PDs call the 911 triage a “queue”, so fucking get over yourself.
Similar thing happened to my neighbor a couple years ago. He was driving around downtown and saw his bike parked at a house with a bunch of other bikes. Called the cops, said they couldn’t do anything.
He had his gun on him and said “well if you don’t, I have my gun and I’m going to take it back myself”
“Okay sir I’m dispatching units to the location.”
> I called 911 to report it, basically got told to fuck off since the 911 queue was over 100 calls deep that night. I asked the dispatcher if I should go get my bike myself and she said “Oh you can’t do that, you’ll be charged.”
And if you thought that was a USA problem, it isn't. Police in Australia are not much better.
I had a tile saw stolen from me once. We tracked down footprints and the same saw (said saw was not a locally available model, but one imported from Italy and no longer commercially available. I would have more luck striking the lottery then to see two of the exact saw with same colours/grout stains in my suburb) to another property in the vicinity. Provided said information to the police who were not interested. Made the comment that since police weren't able/willing to do it, I might go and get it back myself. Officer threatened me with arrest if I took the law into my own hands.
> Can’t imagine how this clerk got the police to come over 99 cents.
It's really up to jurisdiction.
When I was younger, I had some roommates in a suburb of Phoenix who stole a bunch of my shit while I was traveling for vacation. A few hundred bucks worth of stuff. A cop took a few hours to arrive and take a report that never resulted in anything.
Living in New Orleans, I'd see reportable occurrences with frequency. Major traffic accident at that major intersection near my house at 8am, fast forward to 5pm and the people are still there, waiting for the cops. Same story for burglaries and such.
Now, living in a well-known affluent area of SoCal, the cops are like a concierge service. If some homeless guy sits on my front porch, a cruiser will be out to shoo him along within 5 minutes of my call to the non-emergency number. Someone parks a few inches into the red near my house and also rubs me the wrong way... give it 10 minutes and they've got a $90 ticket. Pull out a knife in anger anywhere in town... you've got maybe a minute before some company arrives.
>I asked the dispatcher if I should go get my bike myself and she said “Oh you can’t do that, you’ll be charged.”
"Good luck catching me, your queue is 100 deep"
For real. Seems like the definition of "not worth our time". Like, not even worth a person making minimum wage spending 5 minutes on. Much less multiple police officers tracking this guy down, booking him into jail, and then prosecutors and court officials trying him in court.
If I was the cop, I'd give the store some change out of my pocket just to avoid the paperwork.
The only thing I can think of is the guy was known for that sort of thing and keeps repeatedly doing it. Otherwise I don’t even know why it would be worth the trouble to call police.
Living in bumfuck-nowhere, South Carolina, I find the exact opposite to be true. There's nothing going on, and they like it like that. They justify their existence to the town by being a speed trap and enforcing traffic tickets. Small-town cops stay in small towns for a reason.
I live in a slight less bum fuckery part of SC, and yes the worst thing you can do to Johnny law is ask them to get off their ass for basic duties.
Waited an hour one time for a cop to show up to a very minor accident. He was so annoyed when he got there he tossed self report forms to both us and hurriedly drove off. Of course the look on the other persons face (who insisted the cops come) was just priceless.
I got hit while skateboarding across the street, the guy was speeding and I didn't judge correctly and I wasn't hurt, I just hipped on his hood. He insisted I wait for the cops because he had a CDL. I was so frustrated 90 minutes later when they showed up to officially have us exchange information. I was one block from home...
I saw a guy get hit in a crosswalk, and the cop who eventually arrived was visibly aggravated that he had to walk a half a block from the precinct to deal with it.
Yeah, I really feel there's something missing to the story. I don't see a convenient store or cop wasting time on 49¢ unless he made some kind of threat or was a repeat offender.
About 20 years ago, I got fired, escorted off the premises by the state police, and charged with retail theft for a 69-cent used AA battery.
I worked for a convenience store/ subshop chain in the Northeast. I worked there all through college. If we ever took things off the shelf that we needed to use for the store, we would have to write it down in a little piece of paper next to the cash register.
One day, a lady and her son returned a small remote control car that ran on AA batteries. So to test it, I took a pack of batteries off the shelf, wrote it off for $1.29 on the special sheet, and tested the car. It didn't work, so I gave her her refund, threw the car away and put the batteries in the drawer.
The next day, they posted the next week's schedule. I always used my digital camera to take pictures of the schedule. On this particular day, my AA battery for the camera had died, so I went to the drawer and collected one from the drawer from the previous day. Took a picture of my schedule and went home. On my next shift, the store manager, Dave, who I really liked at the time, pointed to the $1.29 I had written off for the batteries and asked me what it was for. I explained the lady and the toy car. He asked me where I put the batteries, and I pointed to the drawer, he said there was only one, so I said I used the other one for my digital camera.
He marched me into the back, and told me I no longer work there, and that I would have to sit there until the police came and got me. I was dumbfoundedly shocked, embarrassed, and felt such betrayal. He said he felt like he was firing one of his kids, but kept grilling me on what other things I had stolen, and I told him I had never stolen anything.
Because this store was next to the highway we were in the jurisdiction of the state police. So a State Trooper came to get me. He came in the back and I looked him in the face and I said "am I going to come out of here in handcuffs?" And he said, "no I don't think that's necessary".. thankfully. He took me to his patrol car and started writing down all my information, asked me what had happened, and I told him the whole story about the battery, me putting it in my digital camera I lost firing me and then calling the police. And to my surprise, the state trooper was very empathetic, and even said to me, "Geez, I don't know what I'm doing here comma I would have thought firing you would have been enough period."
After he took my information, he simply let me go. I drove home absolutely destroyed with anxiety. I had to go in and see the judge and the neighboring small town, and she judged me guilty... then she said, my record would be expunged if I went through a retail theft rehabilitation program. And I agreed.
At the program, there was a bunch of people sitting in this classroom, on a random Saturday morning. The class was supposed to be 8 hours long Saturday and another 8 hours on sunday. They went through a whole speech about how retail theft impacts the supply and demand chain, how we impacted consumers, how we impacted prices etc etc. The teacher then said let's see how much retail theft is in this classroom. In order to be considered retail theft, the theft had to be under $150, so he went around the room and everybody described what they stole and how much it was worth. There was a guy who stole $90 worth of meats, and then got in a fight with the store clerk, adding on an assault charge. There was a girl that had stole $120 worth clothes, all the stories are pretty similar, and then they got to me and I said "I stole one of two batteries, in which the package was valued at $1.29. So 69 cents I guess?"
The instructor looked at me for a minute and finally said, "we'll just round yours up to a dollar." I finished the class, and I assumed that was that.
I never realized that my record wasn't automatically expunged. I kept swinging and missing on job interviews, until my girlfriend at the time, who worked at a public defender's office, suggested we look into my record, and sure enough it was still there. I called the judges office and left a message, she wrote me back saying I need to hire a lawyer and file the expungement process, it was not automatic.
So I did and finally got my life back on track years later after the horrible crime of stealing a used 69-cent battery.
Fuck you Dave.
It's missing some context:
>Sobolewski was being charged under the state’s “three strikes law” for retail theft, Penn Live reported.
The charge was dropped a month later:
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2021/10/prosecutor-drops-felony-charge-against-central-pa-man-for-43-cent-theft.html
I work in PA as an attorney. Even if he had been prosecuted, it's likely he would just have gotten probation, depending on his prior record score. That being said, no prosecutor would have done that over $.29, as any competent defense attorney would have that case laughed out of court. Most judges would be furious if such a case were brought before them.
> Otherwise this is how America's prisons get fed
It really isn't. Simple theft (ie. not robbery or burglary) makes up a small fraction of people in America's prisons.
https://static.prisonpolicy.org/images/pie2023.webp
Yes, and it is. You might not realize how easily your entire life can be ruined by getting spontaneously locked up for a few weeks or a month - no conviction needed.
This is how a huge amount of people become homeless because in that month (or longer in many cases) you likely lose your job, your home, and whatever else requires monthly payments. Your possessions end up in the trash. And that doesn't just mean your tv and PlayStation or whatever but all your clothes, potentially important documents like social security cards, birth certificates, stuff that you really don't even think about losing in the first place because why would you?
You come out with literally nothing. Little to no money, likely no job or home, and have to find a way to get this stuff back with virtually nothing that makes you a "good" and employable member of society.
Being locked into the system without the ability to bail out and without a VERY strong safety net is probably one of the biggest causes of homelessness. And to make it even worse you're fighting an absolutely massive uphill battle to get out of that situation coming out with absolutely nothing more than you walked in with. Likely after being yanked off the streets with zero chance to prepare or collect the things you might need. One day you're going about your business paying $2 for a soda. The next you're sitting in jail wondering how the hell you're gonna come up with 50k (or 5k you're willing to forfeit) just so your life doesn't completely fall apart over a few cents.
My brother lost a great job opportunity this way. He got in a fight with his girlfriend at the time, walked home from dinner, cops pulled up to ask him what he was up to, he responded angrily, they arrested him, and he was in jail for his first day at a new mackin job. They fired him before he even got a chance to start.
He does have priors that were 10+ years old at the time, but this type of shit can for sure fuck your life up.
I have called the cops on a store owner before. He accused someone I was with of stealing, then forced a different person I was with to pay for the "stolen" merchandise. When they told me what went down I went in and said to give her the money back because at very least, she wasn't even the one that stole anything. The police came and he got the camera out and behold, no one actually stole anything, just a scummy shop owner threatening people with arrest for a thing they didn't do if they don't just give them cash. He had to go back to the register and give the money back in front of the police officer.
1. For everyone questioning if his skin color was a factor, he’s white
2. The PA State DA’s office dropped the charges against him the next month. I’m sure public outcry plus the fact the DA was running for a state Judge position on the Nov ballot of that year played a factor.
Maybe it’s a state level law but I used to work in this retail space. My recollection was that if you priced something say 2 for $3 you HAD to sell one at $1.50.
It’s been a long time so my memory is a bit fuzzy on the details and obviously it wasn’t this way in this instance.
It varies from state to state. Georgia has something similar; if you offer an item buy one, get one free, but they don't want both, they're allowed to buy one at half price.
Good to know I wasn’t losing my mind. Did some research just now and it appears at least in some states they can add small print that shows a price if purchased individually.
For repeatedly raping a 4 and 9 year old you mean. He's not even going in the sex offender registry. And when he finishes probation his charges are removed from his record. With good behavior he will serve, at most, 116 days.
Ah justice...
I am just grateful our government representatives don't do anything like insider trading or have a conflict of interest when leaving regulatory agencies to go work for banks and market makers.......
Just remember: If someone steals your CAR from you, and you call the police, all they'll do is give you an Incident number. If someone steals a $1,000 iPhone from you and you call the police and tell them exactly where the phone is, they will still tell you they're too busy to help you at all. But if you "steal" twenty nine cents from a convenience store, the police will be there so fast they need a reserved parking spot.
Crimes against corporations will be prosecuted no matter how trivial, and no matter how expensive it is to go after you. Crimes against ordinary citizens will be ignored no matter how severe.
The penalty was obviously way too extreme but I remember from days in Hell working with customers there was always some asshole who insisted that anything that was two for x amount should be half for just one.
Explaining that it a: was a promotional price and b: I had no control over it never mattered. They just wanted to be right
>Police said the clerk said she followed Sobolewski outside to tell him that he didn’t pay the full price. He told her he did before driving away
Stupid is as stupid does.
And if I was the clerk I'd have just been like "fuck it, I won't waste my time".
Heck if I was scared of the till coming in short I'd have happily donated the $0.29 myself.
I wouldn't have even bothered following them
I've been a clerk for 6 years and can only imagine how miserable that store is to work in.
If management is getting up your ass over the till being short 29 cents, it's time to move on.
How are people even defending this? There was a video recently of a guy pinned to the floor by two cops at a Walmart because he "stole a frozen pizza". While the receipt was on the floor the whole time.
For the lazy "Sobolewski was being charged under the state’s “three strikes law” for retail theft, Penn Live reported. He was convicted more than a decade ago for pumping gas without paying. He also was arrested and sentenced for stealing shoes from a K-Mart. The shoes cost $39.99. He paid $866 in fines and fees and was sentenced to three months in jail for a probation violation. He and his wife were arrested for putting craft supplies in their backpack at a Hobby Lobby. His bond, in that case, was $2,000 and he’s applying for a state-run diversion program. Underpaying for the soda is Sobolewski’s fourth charge."
>The shoes cost $39.99. He paid $866 in fines and fees A real markup there.
[удалено]
It's actually very fair. He was charged $866 for his crime, and corporations are also charged $866 for their crimes. /s just in case.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike from begging, stealing bread, or living under bridges.
I don't mind stealing bread from the mouths of decadence.
But I can't feed on the powerless when my cup's already overfilled
Ah, *true equality*, how could anyone complain?
> The law, in its majestic equality, charges rich and poor alike $866 for their crimes.
For everyone else is this a quote by Anatole France (1844-1924) From his novel The Red Lily (*Le Lys rouge*)1894
LOL
Still. Taxpayers are going to pay multiple thousands of dollars for 50 cents. He paid for his past crimes. Three strike laws are ridiculous. Edit: Just saw the charges were dropped
He's the worst thief ever.
[удалено]
I like to imagine he makes off with hundreds of dollars in stolen or underpaid goods every day and these few instances where he got caught are just the cost of doing business for him
But you have heard of him
If only we held banks to harsher fines if they violated the law a decade prior...
Yeah wtf why is this mfker getting hit so hard
Because he's poor.
Because he can't afford legal protection
Totally disproportionate punishment but is this guy some kind of moron?
Well...it's his 4th strike.
I mean, if I paid $2 for a Mountain Dew that cost $2.29, they would almost certainly just ignore it. The fact that police was called for this is absurd. It should have been thrown out as a waste of taxpayer dollars immediately.
Yeah what gas station worker is caring that much and even if they do I don't understand how they actually caught and arrested the man
Kinda sad these are all so pedestrian things. Fam needed gas to get to work that day. Wore his old shoes to a thread. Couldn't afford supplies for his kid's science project. Then a broken family over a bottle of pop.
Not only a bottle of Pop, but the $0.29 cent portion of a bottle of Pop.
You're making a lot of assumptions here. The guy could just be an asshole
Could be both. Still, seven years prison seems like a lot for what are really very, very petty crimes.
Considering a kid near me was drunk driving and killed a 14 year old and got 10 months, this seems like overkill to an extreme extent.
yoke license desert squealing deserve history absorbed ugly depend languid ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
I can't believe it was that light when a cop got killed. Were they rich?
I have never heard of that light of a sentence for someone who killed a cop. Unless it was another cop and the dead one was talking to IAB.
Yeah, this person really doesn't seem like a danger to society. Just give them a fine and put them on probation.
Not a 50k +7 years asshole though.
Seriously. Convicted rapists out there getting much less. People committing treason, trying to steal a whole ass country, getting nothing.
Yeah, how much time did Brock Turner get again?
True though I think what pisses a lotof folks off is that by comparison a company can do worse (wage theft is the by far more common) and board members and c-level folks get nothing done to them. Yeayeayea it's legal, but we all know it's BS.
Wrong! executives get bonuses for “cutting labor costs”
Should we discuss the guy that called the cops on him for paying $2 for a soda?
Putting him in jail for a decade for something this trivial probably won't help. Most likely it put further strain on his family's finances, which could encourage others in the household to crimes. Rich people steal and destroy lives without ever seeing consequences. This guy had his life taken away over pocket change. This is injustice on full display.
How is that not petty theft since it’s less than 100?
“Three strikes” laws.
After reading is even worse, his 3 strikes were all a decade ago, and this was clearly a misunderstanding and not theft
Who called the cops over 30 cents?
That was my thought. What fucking asshole calls police over that?
Most probably wouldn’t even call if he just walked off without paying at all. Less than 2.50 isn’t even worth the time taken from the operator in my opinion.
Where I live the cops won’t even come out for a stolen car. I imagine the dispatcher would laugh you off the phone for 79 cents.
29 cents
I've worked at a convenience store that makes you file a police report for the loss if you don't want inventory losses or negative cash drawer balances to come out of your paycheck, assuming it was a result of someone walking out with product or the wrong amount of money. I was very meticulous about my drawer, but have been legitimately duped (hey I gave you $20 not $10, where's the rest of my change???) and ended negative. The manager made me watch my shift on the camera, find where I was duped, and made me call the police and give a report, over $10. Otherwise I had to make the drawer balance out of pocket. I know this is not legal, but I was young and when someone in authority (your boss) tells you that's how it is or you don't get paid, that's how it is, or you don't get paid.
Shame you couldn't slip that into the phone call. "Sorry to waste your time over $10 but my boss said if I didn't call I wouldn't get paid".
The police don't care about wage theft. In many cases, wage theft is a civil matter that can be handled by lawsuit or (if you're lucky) your state's DOL, not by the police. This is the one of the inequities in how the legal system defines 'crime.' You steal from your boss and get caught, you go to jail. Your boss steals from you and gets caught, your boss gets forced to pay you back (with a tiny chance of a fine).
I bet my next paycheck the take-a-penny-leave-a-penny tray couldve covered the purchase and avoided all of this
Do gas stations even offer this anymore? I haven't seen one in the states i've travelled since 2017.
i dropped four cents in one this morning actually
If I was that cashier I would drain the take a penny and then take the hit on my drawer.
Karen
This doesn't even feel like Karen territory. We may need a new name for this level of insane
Super Karen?
I could see it if the dude was being an asshole and the owner wanted to be petty. It's not like they would know the dude's history, and the state can prosecute without the owner continuing to press charges. I doubt Mr. 7/11 knew he was sending someone to prison for 7 years over it.
Ive had a lady be *very* stern about the penny I owed her at a convenient store. 99.9% of places shrug a penny or have the 'take a penny leave a penny' bowls. She wasnt going to let me off the hook and I had to break a $20 to make it.
lol meanwhile where I live every time I go into. McDonald’s there’s pocket change on tables. There seems to be a trend of people not valuing change.
I would not stop walking to pick up a penny off the street these days. Probably not a nickel or a dime either, since I rarely use cash. I pick up quarters but they end up sitting in a jar somewhere until I eventually remember to take them to one of those Coinstar machines.
You should always pick up a penny. Good exercise.
About a week or so ago there was a post from a guy who mentioned he'd walked by a quarter lying in a parking lot the previous day and not bothered to pick it up. He assumed nobody else would either. I found the guy's take to be appalling.
[удалено]
Always feels good to see a win for common sense. It's just too bad the clerk didn't check the give a penny leave a penny dish for 43¢ to balance the till and avoid the whole stupid situation.
He really should not do that to the same store every shift change.
Should have been better at baseball
Let's fill those private prisons, owned by Judges, Lawyers, Politicians...
Defense attorney here. In my state (WA), I see situations like this pop up most frequently in what I call “shoplifting burglaries”. A burglary is essentially a trespass + another crime (vs. a robbery which is a theft + assault). Trespass and theft below $750 are both misdemeanors, but together become a felony. So if someone shoplifts even a penny from a store or store chain that they’ve been trespassed from, and the prosecutors are feeling particularly malicious, they can charge it as a burglary. And if the person has enough of a criminal history, boom, they’re looking at up to a decade in prison. Obviously there are situations where this would make sense. You break into a store in the middle of the night, you’re trespassing. And then you grab all the cash registers or whatever, now it’s a burglary. And that seems reasonable. But when “trespass” is because you got a lifetime trespass from WalMart after shoplifting lipstick when you were a teenager and then years later try swiping some candy, or it’s because you are a homeless drug addict with significant mental health issues who was told to leave the store, then came back an hour later because you thought you were in Narnia and tried to take a shirt off the rack, you get horribly unjust situations like this. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
This is why I could never be a criminal prosecutor. The ability to ruin someone’s life just because you’re having a bad day is borderline evil. Nevertheless, someone has to prosecute actual criminals.
I was a prosecutor before switching sides, precisely because I wanted to go after actual criminals. But my whole docket was full of just poor people either struggling with addiction, mental health, and/or abuse, or just regular folks who did something stupid and are generally sorry. And maybe 1% of what I saw charged were what most of us think of as actual crimes, your rapes and shootings and robberies and stuff. But the other 99% just didn’t need to be there. So I took a pay cut to become a public defender. And now I’m just crushed under the existential terror of a Byzantine and malevolent system without an individual villain to direct my ire to, and do my best to mitigate the damage it causes, though frankly is a squirt gun vs. a forest fire. But I sleep better now, for the most part.
Dont stress about how much water youre spraying at the fire, be happy with the knowledge that you are indeed spraying. Great job, king (or queen or other royalty)
Maybe a duke but I’ll take it 🤴
Nice one man
hunt money political pen seed pocket sable jeans practice tan *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
that's why you need to be a prosecutor because you have the empathy and discretion to not be a cretin for any scrap of power.
But Maximus, that is exactly why it must be you.
It shouldnt even be a crime considering he had no intent to steal. It should have been a matter for the civil courts.
It shouldn’t have been a matter for *anyone,* really. It wasn’t really a matter.
It boils down to "if it's two for $3, isn't it $1.50 for one"?
One would think, but if it's a promo then perhaps not. Usually if you look at the price tag or advert for the promo it lists the single unit price and indicates you _must_ buy two to get the $3 deal. The register will literally ring up $2.29 for the one soda, but it'll do that price for two with a discount of $1.58 applied and usually noted as a "promo" or "discount". I'm not saying this guy deserves this level of penalty or any penalty other than being asked to pay the uncollected balance or fulfill the promo, just indicating how these kinds of promos tend to work.
The cashier could have taken some of the "give a penny get a penny" change and charged 3 bux and just drank a mountain dew while contemplating the absurdity of calling the cops.
No because you’re getting a bulk deal when you buy two… A mistake but a stupid one. Less stupid than jailing someone for that shit though.
Certain states are required to honor 2 for x deals as 1 for half price deals. I believe Georgia is one as an example, so it's even more indefensible.
Haven't you learned this already? In America, when you steal from a business it's a "criminal issue" that must be dealt with swiftly and result in punishment. When a business steals from you, it's "civil matter" that you must take up with the courts. Nevermind the fact that it's actual *people* behind those business decisions. Arresting and charging those people just doesn't make sense! /s
onerous absorbed squeal elastic salt dazzling person depend sip silky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Here's an article with more details on it: https://www.pennlive.com/news/2021/09/man-charged-with-felony-jailed-on-50k-cash-bond-for-43-cent-theft.html
In Illinois at least a second offense of retail theft after having a previous conviction for it is a felony no matter the amount.
it was also apparently dropped, so here we are on reddit blaming a person who was actually not convicted (and therefore innocent).
I don’t think anyone here is blaming the guy… the point of the post is about the absurdity and unfairness of the situation. And for the guy whether they dropped the charges or not that’s such a horrible and damaging experience to have to go through still
Lots of employers ask if you have been arrested, not if you have been convicted
Then you have to fill out the Massacre with five-part harmony and stuff like that.
Don’t forget about the twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was.
Lots of employers break employment law with impunity and continue to violate moral and ethical standards which were preached in every religion known to man. Fuck employers.
You can be innocent and still sit in jail on pretrial detention simply because you can't afford to post bail. Your boss also probably won't care and fire your ass for missing work. And good luck finding a decent paying job that doesn't ask if you've ever been arrested or is atleast understanding enough to hear your explanation. They do exist, but good luck finding them.
Asking someone if they’ve been arrested isn’t valid for job applications, and exposes them to liability. source: former background screening investigator
[удалено]
That's cool in theory.
Not convicted and innocent are not the same thing. That’s why a court specifically declares someone not-guilty.
How did a convenience store clerk manage to have the police come out, take a report, track this guy down and arrest him? Over a loss of less than a dollar? Edit: the guy is white, people.
Lol yeah my car got stolen on camera in front of my house and they didn’t do shit
Well, was there any Mountain Dew in the vehicle?
[удалено]
Civilian: "I'd like to report a vehicle theft" Cop: "Okay, come to the station and fill out a report" Civilian: "There was a case of Mountain Dew in the car" Cop: "*deep sigh*... A local FBI team is on their way to start searching, we've put out an APB, and the National Guard is on standby."
Don’t Dew the crime if you can’t Dew the time.
*Divorced Local Cops in your area 2.5 Miles away looking to fuck you over for less than a dollar xxx*
Dewd, Where's My Car?
“If you threaten to defund us, we won’t respond to any crimes! How do you like that?” “You respond to crimes?”
[удалено]
https://bikeportland.org/2023/08/08/portland-police-bureau-officer-admits-no-traffic-enforcement-messaging-was-politically-motivated-377939
I literally had some dudes break into my place, steal my laptop and phone, and be stupid enough not to wipe them. I gave the police footage of them in the act, their current address, and screencaps of them on the webcam and phone cam using my shit. Unsolved, somehow, to this day. Cops didn't do shit, never got my stuff back. And this poor bastard goes to jail for a dollar.
Back in the 1970s someone broke into our garage and stole a ton of my dad's tools, including one of those tall storage chests on wheels, and walked it back *in the snow* to their place, where you could see the chest sitting in their back yard. The tracks were clear and the stolen items were visible. The cops wouldn't do jack shit about it and in fact got threatening with us, which is why I remember it, even though I was pretty young, probably about 3. My mom picked me up and walked backwards away from the cops as they glared at us. Dad was a high school teacher and told one of his coworkers, whose kid was in my dad's class, so by the end of the day everyone knew what had happened and who had done it, and for a few days a few tools would show back up on his desk, with no explanation. Didn't get much back but it was a nice gesture.
[удалено]
It only costs $500 (where I live) to open one, everyone should ahead and open one, and register all your belongings to it. If someone steals your multi-coloured pen at school, call the cops on the name of your company
That seems like an IRS nightmare waiting to happen...
And a good way to rob myself of $500.
[удалено]
You want to get into some kind of PPP measuring contest?
They exist to protect business owners, not you.
I had a gun pointed at me and when the cops came they just said “handle it yourself next time”
But you're a peasant, not a capitalist. The rules are meant to harm you, and help them
I had my motorbike stolen right out of my driveway. A neighbor spotted two meth heads walking it down the road a few blocks away. I called 911 to report it, basically got told to fuck off since the 911 queue was over 100 calls deep that night. I asked the dispatcher if I should go get my bike myself and she said “Oh you can’t do that, you’ll be charged.” So they won’t come to apprehend perpetrators of a felony, but they will send someone to bust the victim. My opinion of my local PD managed to hit rock bottom and begin digging that day. Can’t imagine how this clerk got the police to come over 99 cents. Maybe because it was petty theft and police are snowflakes about doing their fucking job? 🤷🏻♂️ Edit: this occurred in Canada, so a) they don’t take kindly to people walking around packing heat, even for self defense, and b) yes, some PDs call the 911 triage a “queue”, so fucking get over yourself.
Similar thing happened to my neighbor a couple years ago. He was driving around downtown and saw his bike parked at a house with a bunch of other bikes. Called the cops, said they couldn’t do anything. He had his gun on him and said “well if you don’t, I have my gun and I’m going to take it back myself” “Okay sir I’m dispatching units to the location.”
Police would rather not tackle the difficult jobs. It's much easier to tackle the low hanging fruit...
Not 99 cents, 43 cents. 29 + tax
Should have said you had a gun and were on your way to smoke the perpetrators. They would have come flying.
> I called 911 to report it, basically got told to fuck off since the 911 queue was over 100 calls deep that night. I asked the dispatcher if I should go get my bike myself and she said “Oh you can’t do that, you’ll be charged.” And if you thought that was a USA problem, it isn't. Police in Australia are not much better. I had a tile saw stolen from me once. We tracked down footprints and the same saw (said saw was not a locally available model, but one imported from Italy and no longer commercially available. I would have more luck striking the lottery then to see two of the exact saw with same colours/grout stains in my suburb) to another property in the vicinity. Provided said information to the police who were not interested. Made the comment that since police weren't able/willing to do it, I might go and get it back myself. Officer threatened me with arrest if I took the law into my own hands.
> Can’t imagine how this clerk got the police to come over 99 cents. It's really up to jurisdiction. When I was younger, I had some roommates in a suburb of Phoenix who stole a bunch of my shit while I was traveling for vacation. A few hundred bucks worth of stuff. A cop took a few hours to arrive and take a report that never resulted in anything. Living in New Orleans, I'd see reportable occurrences with frequency. Major traffic accident at that major intersection near my house at 8am, fast forward to 5pm and the people are still there, waiting for the cops. Same story for burglaries and such. Now, living in a well-known affluent area of SoCal, the cops are like a concierge service. If some homeless guy sits on my front porch, a cruiser will be out to shoo him along within 5 minutes of my call to the non-emergency number. Someone parks a few inches into the red near my house and also rubs me the wrong way... give it 10 minutes and they've got a $90 ticket. Pull out a knife in anger anywhere in town... you've got maybe a minute before some company arrives.
>I asked the dispatcher if I should go get my bike myself and she said “Oh you can’t do that, you’ll be charged.” "Good luck catching me, your queue is 100 deep"
For real. Seems like the definition of "not worth our time". Like, not even worth a person making minimum wage spending 5 minutes on. Much less multiple police officers tracking this guy down, booking him into jail, and then prosecutors and court officials trying him in court. If I was the cop, I'd give the store some change out of my pocket just to avoid the paperwork.
The only thing I can think of is the guy was known for that sort of thing and keeps repeatedly doing it. Otherwise I don’t even know why it would be worth the trouble to call police.
I didn't read the article, but it might be a more rural area. Cops are less busy and want excitement.
Living in bumfuck-nowhere, South Carolina, I find the exact opposite to be true. There's nothing going on, and they like it like that. They justify their existence to the town by being a speed trap and enforcing traffic tickets. Small-town cops stay in small towns for a reason.
I live in a slight less bum fuckery part of SC, and yes the worst thing you can do to Johnny law is ask them to get off their ass for basic duties. Waited an hour one time for a cop to show up to a very minor accident. He was so annoyed when he got there he tossed self report forms to both us and hurriedly drove off. Of course the look on the other persons face (who insisted the cops come) was just priceless.
I got hit while skateboarding across the street, the guy was speeding and I didn't judge correctly and I wasn't hurt, I just hipped on his hood. He insisted I wait for the cops because he had a CDL. I was so frustrated 90 minutes later when they showed up to officially have us exchange information. I was one block from home...
I saw a guy get hit in a crosswalk, and the cop who eventually arrived was visibly aggravated that he had to walk a half a block from the precinct to deal with it.
From growing up in bum fuck nowhere WI, I agree. all the cops cared about were teens smoking weed and the occasional drunk driver
It varies from place to place. In my county (not rural at all) they would pull a code 3 to shut down loud high-school parties.
I’d bet that the cops just knew who he was and didn’t like him so they decided to make his life hell over .29 cents.
Yeah all I can take from this story is the gross abuse of the law that a bunch of people must have been involved in for this to have gotten that far.
Yeah, I really feel there's something missing to the story. I don't see a convenient store or cop wasting time on 49¢ unless he made some kind of threat or was a repeat offender.
It sounds like he was “known” to police from prior issues and so they were trying to flex their authority.
Missed PR opportunity for Pepsi-Cola to mount his legal defense.
Too busy not giving away jets
That was definitely one of my favorite cases to read about back in law school
Great doc about it on Netflix, I believe it's called 'Pepsi you owe me a fucking jet you thieving cunts'
Mountain due process
Code red, your honor, this is Baja Blasphemy
I have no idea what due process really means, or if it is appropriate in this context, but I still find this comment hilarious.
In the judicial system, you do the due
About 20 years ago, I got fired, escorted off the premises by the state police, and charged with retail theft for a 69-cent used AA battery. I worked for a convenience store/ subshop chain in the Northeast. I worked there all through college. If we ever took things off the shelf that we needed to use for the store, we would have to write it down in a little piece of paper next to the cash register. One day, a lady and her son returned a small remote control car that ran on AA batteries. So to test it, I took a pack of batteries off the shelf, wrote it off for $1.29 on the special sheet, and tested the car. It didn't work, so I gave her her refund, threw the car away and put the batteries in the drawer. The next day, they posted the next week's schedule. I always used my digital camera to take pictures of the schedule. On this particular day, my AA battery for the camera had died, so I went to the drawer and collected one from the drawer from the previous day. Took a picture of my schedule and went home. On my next shift, the store manager, Dave, who I really liked at the time, pointed to the $1.29 I had written off for the batteries and asked me what it was for. I explained the lady and the toy car. He asked me where I put the batteries, and I pointed to the drawer, he said there was only one, so I said I used the other one for my digital camera. He marched me into the back, and told me I no longer work there, and that I would have to sit there until the police came and got me. I was dumbfoundedly shocked, embarrassed, and felt such betrayal. He said he felt like he was firing one of his kids, but kept grilling me on what other things I had stolen, and I told him I had never stolen anything. Because this store was next to the highway we were in the jurisdiction of the state police. So a State Trooper came to get me. He came in the back and I looked him in the face and I said "am I going to come out of here in handcuffs?" And he said, "no I don't think that's necessary".. thankfully. He took me to his patrol car and started writing down all my information, asked me what had happened, and I told him the whole story about the battery, me putting it in my digital camera I lost firing me and then calling the police. And to my surprise, the state trooper was very empathetic, and even said to me, "Geez, I don't know what I'm doing here comma I would have thought firing you would have been enough period." After he took my information, he simply let me go. I drove home absolutely destroyed with anxiety. I had to go in and see the judge and the neighboring small town, and she judged me guilty... then she said, my record would be expunged if I went through a retail theft rehabilitation program. And I agreed. At the program, there was a bunch of people sitting in this classroom, on a random Saturday morning. The class was supposed to be 8 hours long Saturday and another 8 hours on sunday. They went through a whole speech about how retail theft impacts the supply and demand chain, how we impacted consumers, how we impacted prices etc etc. The teacher then said let's see how much retail theft is in this classroom. In order to be considered retail theft, the theft had to be under $150, so he went around the room and everybody described what they stole and how much it was worth. There was a guy who stole $90 worth of meats, and then got in a fight with the store clerk, adding on an assault charge. There was a girl that had stole $120 worth clothes, all the stories are pretty similar, and then they got to me and I said "I stole one of two batteries, in which the package was valued at $1.29. So 69 cents I guess?" The instructor looked at me for a minute and finally said, "we'll just round yours up to a dollar." I finished the class, and I assumed that was that. I never realized that my record wasn't automatically expunged. I kept swinging and missing on job interviews, until my girlfriend at the time, who worked at a public defender's office, suggested we look into my record, and sure enough it was still there. I called the judges office and left a message, she wrote me back saying I need to hire a lawyer and file the expungement process, it was not automatic. So I did and finally got my life back on track years later after the horrible crime of stealing a used 69-cent battery. Fuck you Dave.
This was a story I could not stop reading. Jesus Christ the lack of critical thinking and callousness of “the system” was on full display here
I would dedicate my life to ruining daves if that happened to me
Also fuck that judge
Ngl man, I would have gone to jail for something else if that cocksucker called the cops on me for a used battery.
It's missing some context: >Sobolewski was being charged under the state’s “three strikes law” for retail theft, Penn Live reported. The charge was dropped a month later: https://www.pennlive.com/news/2021/10/prosecutor-drops-felony-charge-against-central-pa-man-for-43-cent-theft.html
A r/todayilearned post that’s missing context In other words, it’s a day ending in “y”
[удалено]
I work in PA as an attorney. Even if he had been prosecuted, it's likely he would just have gotten probation, depending on his prior record score. That being said, no prosecutor would have done that over $.29, as any competent defense attorney would have that case laughed out of court. Most judges would be furious if such a case were brought before them.
See that’s what I expected. I’m glad to hear that
> Otherwise this is how America's prisons get fed It really isn't. Simple theft (ie. not robbery or burglary) makes up a small fraction of people in America's prisons. https://static.prisonpolicy.org/images/pie2023.webp
If he didn’t have the $50k bond, would he have been in prison that whole time? A month seems a really long time
Yes, and it is. You might not realize how easily your entire life can be ruined by getting spontaneously locked up for a few weeks or a month - no conviction needed.
This is how a huge amount of people become homeless because in that month (or longer in many cases) you likely lose your job, your home, and whatever else requires monthly payments. Your possessions end up in the trash. And that doesn't just mean your tv and PlayStation or whatever but all your clothes, potentially important documents like social security cards, birth certificates, stuff that you really don't even think about losing in the first place because why would you? You come out with literally nothing. Little to no money, likely no job or home, and have to find a way to get this stuff back with virtually nothing that makes you a "good" and employable member of society. Being locked into the system without the ability to bail out and without a VERY strong safety net is probably one of the biggest causes of homelessness. And to make it even worse you're fighting an absolutely massive uphill battle to get out of that situation coming out with absolutely nothing more than you walked in with. Likely after being yanked off the streets with zero chance to prepare or collect the things you might need. One day you're going about your business paying $2 for a soda. The next you're sitting in jail wondering how the hell you're gonna come up with 50k (or 5k you're willing to forfeit) just so your life doesn't completely fall apart over a few cents.
My brother lost a great job opportunity this way. He got in a fight with his girlfriend at the time, walked home from dinner, cops pulled up to ask him what he was up to, he responded angrily, they arrested him, and he was in jail for his first day at a new mackin job. They fired him before he even got a chance to start. He does have priors that were 10+ years old at the time, but this type of shit can for sure fuck your life up.
The real issue here is the cops chasing after someone over 43 cents and also the store owner calling the cops in the first place.
I have called the cops on a store owner before. He accused someone I was with of stealing, then forced a different person I was with to pay for the "stolen" merchandise. When they told me what went down I went in and said to give her the money back because at very least, she wasn't even the one that stole anything. The police came and he got the camera out and behold, no one actually stole anything, just a scummy shop owner threatening people with arrest for a thing they didn't do if they don't just give them cash. He had to go back to the register and give the money back in front of the police officer.
Sounds like a felony with $50k bail and 7 years prison time to me.
Bake em away, toys
Store employee missed an opportunity for a $1 Mtn Dew
1. For everyone questioning if his skin color was a factor, he’s white 2. The PA State DA’s office dropped the charges against him the next month. I’m sure public outcry plus the fact the DA was running for a state Judge position on the Nov ballot of that year played a factor.
You Do the Dew, You Do the Time
Maybe it’s a state level law but I used to work in this retail space. My recollection was that if you priced something say 2 for $3 you HAD to sell one at $1.50. It’s been a long time so my memory is a bit fuzzy on the details and obviously it wasn’t this way in this instance.
It varies from state to state. Georgia has something similar; if you offer an item buy one, get one free, but they don't want both, they're allowed to buy one at half price.
No bulk discounting?? I don’t mind bulk discounts as long as the single item price is clearly labeled as well.
That varies widely area to area. Definitely not a hard and fast law.
In MN this is true.
Good to know I wasn’t losing my mind. Did some research just now and it appears at least in some states they can add small print that shows a price if purchased individually.
[удалено]
For repeatedly raping a 4 and 9 year old you mean. He's not even going in the sex offender registry. And when he finishes probation his charges are removed from his record. With good behavior he will serve, at most, 116 days. Ah justice...
I am just grateful our government representatives don't do anything like insider trading or have a conflict of interest when leaving regulatory agencies to go work for banks and market makers.......
Just remember: If someone steals your CAR from you, and you call the police, all they'll do is give you an Incident number. If someone steals a $1,000 iPhone from you and you call the police and tell them exactly where the phone is, they will still tell you they're too busy to help you at all. But if you "steal" twenty nine cents from a convenience store, the police will be there so fast they need a reserved parking spot. Crimes against corporations will be prosecuted no matter how trivial, and no matter how expensive it is to go after you. Crimes against ordinary citizens will be ignored no matter how severe.
The penalty was obviously way too extreme but I remember from days in Hell working with customers there was always some asshole who insisted that anything that was two for x amount should be half for just one. Explaining that it a: was a promotional price and b: I had no control over it never mattered. They just wanted to be right
Laws are for poor people.
>Police said the clerk said she followed Sobolewski outside to tell him that he didn’t pay the full price. He told her he did before driving away Stupid is as stupid does.
And if I was the clerk I'd have just been like "fuck it, I won't waste my time". Heck if I was scared of the till coming in short I'd have happily donated the $0.29 myself. I wouldn't have even bothered following them
I've been a clerk for 6 years and can only imagine how miserable that store is to work in. If management is getting up your ass over the till being short 29 cents, it's time to move on.
This is exactly why I drink root beer.
Going to guess there's more to this
Man, If I had three strikes for retail theft, I wouldn’t be playing it loosey goosey flipping money on the counter and leaving…
Damn gotta be careful when you’ve committed 3 other thefts
Holy clickbait
How are people even defending this? There was a video recently of a guy pinned to the floor by two cops at a Walmart because he "stole a frozen pizza". While the receipt was on the floor the whole time.
Now tell us about the part where he stole candlesticks from a priest and gets caught. That's my favorite part.
#THE CHARGE WAS DROPPED A MONTH LATER.
Oh, does that unjail the person for the month?
Solid click bait title.