In Durango (here in Colorado), police are telling a liquor store owner to give shoplifters the boot, the shoe, and any other footwear he’s acquired from shoplifters.
You see, Gabe Fidanque was tired of losing $1,000 worth of merchandise every month, so he started telling shoplifters he caught in the act of stealing from him that they had two choices: Give him one of their shoes or he’d call the police.
Well, a handful of them gave up a shoe. But Durango police have told Fidanque to stop the practice, or he could find himself facing felony robbery charges.
Felony robbery charges???? Yep, felony charges for taking footwear from the people who were blatantly stealing from HIM! Shoplifting, in contrast, is a misdemeanor. Now what kind of twisted logic is that? A person stealing from a hard-working, honest person is charged with a misdemeanor, while said hard-working, honest person is charged with a felony for making them leave their shoe! Unbelievable.
Authorities ordered Fidanque to return the shoes to their owners - if he can find them. He says his method of keeping shoplifters out was working, because people were too humiliated to return and ask for their shoe back. Frankly, I don’t see the problem.
Wednesday, 28. May 2008
Sure does not make any sense to me. I always wonder how things like this happen when the law gets turned on the good guy.
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Thursday, 29. May 2008
Wow. Makes you wonder how the law works at all. That’s just RIDICULOUS. I don’t understand that logic.
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Thursday, 29. May 2008
I saw this on the news.. and just shook my head…
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Friday, 30. May 2008
WTH?? I don’t see the issue, either. They’re lucky that he’s only taking their shoes, and not shooting them in the heads.
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Tuesday, 3. June 2008
I wonder what would happen if the same person was caught shoplifting twice in one day? Would they have to give up the other shoe? Then we’d have rampant barefoot shoplifting!
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Thursday, 5. June 2008
What if he made a kind of customer of the month bulletin board instead? Just stick up a big cork board and stick their photos to it. He could keep a digital camera around, snap the photo, have them printed cheap and display every shoplifter’s photo for everyone to see. That way all the store owners could watch for these people and the people could keep their shoes.
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Thursday, 5. June 2008
Wowww…that’s just…special. Way to go, local law enforcement…
Also, tag, you’re it.
(see my blog)
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Thursday, 5. June 2008
Okay, that’s messed up. But at the same time I can’t help wondering why he decided to make them give him a shoe? What made him pick THAT?
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Friday, 6. June 2008
How interesting! I guess that goes along with “if you shoot someone trying to break into your house, make sure you pull them into the house before calling the police”.
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