Pregnant mom arrested, child taken over $5 shoplifting charge

[n2doc]

Associated Press
November 1, 2011
Reporting from Honolulu— Nicole Leszczynski couldn't imagine that two chicken salad sandwiches would land her and her husband in jail and her 2-year-old daughter in state custody. But then, five days ago, the 30-weeks-pregnant woman forgot to pay for her snack while grocery shopping.

"It was the most ridiculous chain of events that happened," she said Monday, sobbing. "It's still hard to believe what happened."

Leszczynski, 28, and her husband, Marcin, 33, were handcuffed, searched and released on $50 bail each. Their ordeal lasted a few hours, but their daughter, Zofia, spent 18 hours separated from her parents in a case that has sparked outrage. The Safeway supermarket chain is reviewing the incident.

The family had moved to Honolulu from California two weeks ago. Still settling in, they ventured out Wednesday to stock up on groceries, took the bus, got lost, and ended up at a Safeway.

more

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-sandwich-arrest-20111101,0,6197311.story

[Xipe Totec]

1. Javert lives nt

[Rhiannon12866]

4. +1!

Excellent analogy... :thumbsup:

[Fumesucker]

2. Shoulda been ganbanksters..

Then they would get bonuses for stealing..

[Rhiannon12866]

3. What a nightmare!

x(

[piratefish08]

5. if she stole a billion $ more, she could have walked.......

:(

[glowing]

6. Disgusting.. They bought $50.00 worth of food. They offered to pay for the sandwhich

that they forgot about. Absolutely ridiculous handling by the manager of the store. I wonder what Safeway chain is a part of or if its just California? I do know that a boycott is needed over their horrible business practice. Disgusting.

[jberryhill]

7. It's like that in Honolulu, California...

[Irishonly]

8. Safeway is Vons in CA n/t

[Gormy Cuss]

9. Safeway is Safeway in Northern CA, Vons in SoCal.

Safeway headquarters are in Pleasanton and the stores here are all still branded as "Safeway."

[Irishonly]

11. I grew up with Safeway

I had never seen a Vons until I moved to Southern CA. I grew up in Iowa and my parents shopped at Safeway.

[Gormy Cuss]

15. It's Safeway in DC too. The point I was making is that it's not Vons in all of CA

Only in SoCal and I think NV are they branded as Vons.

[ScreamingMeemie]

10. The store had "no idea" that the child would be taken from them

after the parents were arrested?? What the hell did they think was going to happen?

[dionysus]

14. normally, if you have a snack or soda in a grocery store, they'll let you pay for it if you forget..

[LynneSin]

18. I do that all the time, especially if I'm thirsty

Normally I won't snack in a grocery store but I have been thirsty and would grab a beverage. Never had any issue with the grocery store - I just show them the bottle at the register and then pay for it.


In fact about 2 weeks ago I was leaving the story and totally forgot I had cat litter bag under my cart. The woman stopped me and I apologized, said I totally forgot and went back to pay for it. No one tried to have me arrested.

Personally if I was that couple, I would sue the store for undue duress. Things were taken too far to the extreme.

[meow2u3]

12. Since when is it a crime when there's no intent?

Last time I checked, forgetting to pay for something you intended to pay for is not theft. If anyone is guilty, it's the store manager for not allowing them to pay for the item they intended, but forgot, to pay for. This is a case of a bully boy manager using his management authority to push pregnant women and toddlers around.

The parents are guilty of one thing: human error. No intent, no crime.

[newspeak]

13. heard about this

woman was craving, she's pregnant-ate sandwich while they shopped and then forgot to pay. They offered to pay--apparently the manager doesn't know the difference of someone who's hiding a side of beef between their legs or someone who just forgot. I've walked out of the store with something under the cart-out of the store to my car-then rushed back in to pay for it. Forgot it was underneath my cart. I can just imagine some arsehole manager calling the cops before I could pay.

And they took her two year old daughter. Bad enough that they moved to the area, which is stressful for a child, but then having the child taken away? What a stupid, extreme judgement call.

[redqueen]

19. "a bully boy manager using his management authority"

Exactly. These types should never be allowed to have any kind of authority. These kind of acts demonstrate that they are incapable of handling it.

[ellisonz]

16. Book em, Danno.

;-)

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Xithras]

20. Some stores allow it, some don't.

My wife was once shopping with my daughter (who was five at the time), when my daughter asked if she could have a Capri Sun packet out of a box she was buying. The box was in her cart, along with a lot of other items, so my wife pulled the one packet out and gave it to her.

A manager saw it and became unglued. He pulled the box from the cart, escorted her up to the register, and made her pay for it right then and there. She wasn't allowed to buy anything else in her cart, just the one item she opened. He then "banned her from the store for 30 days."

She never went back, and that store went out of business a number of years later. If anyone else in Northern California remembers the old New Deal supermarket chain, crap like THIS is why they went out of business. It wasn't just an isolated thing either...I knew someone else who had a similar experience when she was caught snacking on a couple of grapes that were in her cart as she walked through the store. She was threatened with arrest over it!

Personally, I've never had a problem doing this sort of thing. I've eaten entire packages of food while shopping. So long as you hand the package over so it can be scanned and you pay for it when leaving, I've never had anyone say a word to me about it.

On edit:
I never knew that you could reply to a deleted sub-thread before! Apparently, if you're typing a reply as the moderator is deleting the thread, DU still permits the post to go through. Kinda neat. Leaves my post without any context though.

[fishwax]

23. IATDS

"I never knew that you could reply to a deleted sub-thread before! Apparently, if you're typing a reply as the moderator is deleting the thread, DU still permits the post to go through. Kinda neat. Leaves my post without any context though."

In After the Deleted Subthread. Impressive :toast: :)

[Xithras]

27. It's kinda like the 13th floor...

This sub-thread has been deleted. We're not really here... :yoiks:

[Warren DeMontague]

21. they broke THE RULES

THE RULES must be respected

where would we be, without THE RULES?

We'd be eating sandwiches and not paying for them, that's where. It would be a fucking mess. It's like when kids get expelled from school for bringing tic-tacs (but not, say, for harassing gay classmates). They have broken THE RULES and THE RULES must be enforced lest anyone think we don't take dangerous drug and breath mint abuse seriously.

[Mosby]

22. i bought a couple side tables yesterday at a major chain store

They rang them up wrong but we didn't notice until we got home.

When I called the store they were very sorry and said it was because of the new POS system.

The overcharge was 60 dollars.

Maybe every time a cashier rings up an item wrong people should call the cops and report them for fraud, after all, they obviously did it on purpose to rip us off. Sarc/

[fishwax]

24. sounds thoroughly idiotic

What was the manager thinking?

[Horse with no Name]

25. This is ridiculous.

If I were them, I would sack up every unconsumed item that I purchased and take it back for a refund and NEVER set foot in that store again.

[jtuck004]

26. Maybe it's just another theft...

We get things at the deli, and I eat as I am dragged along on shopping trips (what else do you do when your partner is looking for cheap shoes or clothes? I'm not alone, btw - I noticed Goodwill put in a coffee bar just for people like me. :) ). I put the wrapper with the price on it on the cart, and it is scanned at the register, just like anything else I pick up.

One would have to not only "forget", but dispose of the price tag or wrapper, otherwise known as evidence. That goes a long way toward showing intent.

Most cashiers look in the basket to make sure they didn't miss anything, 'cause that results in pissed-off shoppers. It could have looked like trash, but these are apparently intelligent people who probably understood exactly what they were doing.

Individual stores stop this crime, as well as people trying to steal from the self-checkout, and regular old stick-the-turkey-and-steaks-down-the-pants multiple times each week. Invariably, the security guard that stops them as well as the store manager are bullies, the criminal is never at fault, often crying and hysterical, the store and police are always wrong.

I don't judge people as wrong for stealing food from big stores, however. Even when it is just a thoughtless or thrill-based act, it is still food. And I don't judge the store as wrong for doing what they can to stop it - a few people are successful which not only raises costs for everyone but teaches disrespect. The perpetrator should develop some judgment. Shop at stores with slower security, for example, if you don't like going to jail. And if you are going to practice low grade shoplifting, don't take your kid along.

I'm glad they separated the kid. I would hate to think that she would have to be in the jail the adults go to, for even a short time. And she was probably safe with Child Welfare Services. Frankly, I'm not sure I want a bunch of extra effort expended to get children back to parents that have just been release from jail, until a fairly thorough check is made to be sure the kid will be safe. Lot's of hurt and dead kids out there because someone wasn't thorough or didn't check on someone.

<soapbox mode on>
On the other hand, WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH 40+ MILLION PEOPLE NEEDING GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE JUST TO EAT, in the form of food stamps? And on another hand, what kind of COWARDS does A COUNTRY have to be to prosecute a couple of parents with a kid while they let elite bankers and their gang of mortgage thieves continue to practice years of fraud identified by the FBI, not only refusing to put the resources into investigating them, but paying them hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses? There are 2 million cases of fraud documented and sitting in a lawsuit by the FHFA against 17 of the big banks, yet NOT ONE CRIMINAL CHARGE.
<soapbox mode off>

priorities...

[emcguffie]

28. So you can tell without being there --

-- that they INTENDED to steal those two sandwiches, while they bought $50 worth of groceries?

I think you're not as smart as you seem to think you are. Judgmental, yes. Maybe authoritarian? Check. Self-righteous? Seems like it.

And I'm sure you, yourself, have never, ever made any kind of a mistake. (What is one of those empty wrappers fell out of your basket?)

:wtf:

[jtuck004]

29. Projecting?

I said maybe. If that's not good enough, too bad.

By saying maybe in my earlier post I am leaving open the possiblity that BOTH wrappers were carefully placed on top, BOTH fell out, and BOTH people CONVENIENTLY FORGOT that they ate the sandwiches. And that unlike the other dozen or more shoplifters that big stores deal with every week, (more during the holidays), who have all the same excuses and behavior, these people were completely different.

Sure, that could have happened.

Btw, Lindsay Lohan didn't need to steal the necklace she is on video shoplifting, she had money. The amount in groceries this couple bought is irrelevant. MOST shoplifters buy other things, especially in grocery theft. (I was amazed at how much money some of them had when they were stopped).

And I have made plenty of mistakes in my life. Among them giving knee-jerk judgemental, self-righteous, authoritarian writing more time than it deserves, especially when someone doesn't give me the same benefit of the doubt that I give others.

Not that this describes what happened here, of course.