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cb1000rider wrote:Yea, it wasn't clear to me as you brought assault into it. I thought you were suggesting that you'd defend yourself with deadly force if assaulted by a security guard who is trying to physically prevent you from leaving. And yes, I realize that grabbing an arm can be considered a form of assault. It's an odd situation. You're justified to respond to what you might perceive to be an assault. They're justified to detain you by reasonable means, which might include grabbing you or grabbing a purse that has a weapon in it.

Potentially a jury gets to work it out in hindsight and I'd rather be not be on the defense side of that deal..

cb1000rider wrote:

dcphoto wrote: I don't think anybody is suggesting pulling a gun simply because you were stopped. However, if an overzealous employee got physical with me I would defend myself with whatever amount of force is necessary, and justified in the eyes of the law, to meet the threat. I say this with the certainty that I will not be shoplifting in the foreseeable future.

Do you mean if they physically grabbed you by the arm to stop you from leaving? That happens. If you think that's legal justification for deadly force, your understanding is different than mine.

Personally if a store employee actually assaulted me because they thought I was shoplifting, I'm not going to shoot them. I'm going to sue them. Much better outcome on both sides. Assuming I'm not dying, why the heck would I want to be on the defense side of that incident?

EEllis wrote:

cb1000rider wrote:

dcphoto wrote: My question then: does a store's employee have to meet the same standard of reasonable suspicion that a peace officer has to?

The "reasonable suspicion" bit is my own writing. The actual verbiage is "suspect" that a theft occurred. I'm assuming that the suspicion has to be reasonable or based on something "articulable" - that is, it can be described and isn't simply a gut instinct, but that verbiage isn't actually there. And remember what they do to detain must be "reasonable". My guess is that a lot of this is ill-defined because it'll be very circumstantial and potentially litigious. I understand why some employers don't allow loss prevention to get into physical altercations.

The alternate means of loss prevention seems to be that used by companies like Costco and Frys - everyone gets checked on the way out.

In reality they tend to need more than the RS a police office would need. The big check on their activity is not criminal tho. If you get stopped and detained and it turns out you were not committing some type of theft then you are pretty much guaranteed a civil award if the business has any money. Usually you are not technically being stopped by uniformed security. A person in uniform is pretty obvious and not likely to be the one scanning for thieves. Some store employee would be the one to "Arrest" you and the SO would be "assisting" in what they believe to be a legal arrest. Pulling a gun because you were stopped walking out the door would be a massive escalation and you would almost guaranty a trip to jail regardless if you stole something.

cb1000rider wrote:

E.Marquez wrote: The way that reads... they must know you have stolen property? Yes?

I don't read it that way across the various statues. They have to have a reasonable suspicion that you have their property. IE - they can detain you based on that suspicion using reasonable means.

If you use your handgun in a reasonable attempt to detain you by someone who is obviously a security officer, you've clearly got more money than I do and much more sure of a Texas jury than I am. Defending yourself from "an assault" is different. I don't think that "reasonable" rises to the level of assault, so hopefully it's a non-issue.