In the video (complete transcription after the break), Baxter, in his smarmy cop interrogation tone of voice, gets the man to admit that he entered the store intending to shoplift. This used to be a favorite creepy cop trick for inflating minor charges beyond all reasonable proportion. Once on a time California Penal Code §459 could be used to charge such an act as burglary instead of mere theft. Security minions such as Baxter, not content with merely protecting the interests of their employers, would routinely use this nasty little loophole to overcharge people. Why? That’s just what they do, these icky little lawboys. It’s how they keep score in their psychotic little game.
Of course, as with all such nonsense, it ends up being the people of California who pay the price. Not just the petty criminals who get overcharged into oblivion, whose lives get ruined by undeservedly severe criminal records and the horrific collateral consequences that ensue, but also the taxpayers who have to support prisons full of nonviolent people, support courts and jails and probation offices and all the apparatus necessary to track and control the people dumped into the justice system by creepy private security henchmen who are so pleased with their delusory cleverness that they film themselves in the act so they can laugh about it later with all their cop buddies…
Well, as will sometimes happen, the people of California got wise to this nonsense and fed up with it as well and, in 2014, passed Proposition 47 which, among other things, added the following language to the penal code:
§459.5. (a) Notwithstanding Section 459, shoplifting is defined as entering a commercial establishment with intent to commit larceny while that establishment is open during regular business hours, where the value of the property that is taken or intended to be taken does not exceed nine hundred fifty dollars ($950)…
(b) Any act of shoplifting as defined in subdivision (a) shall be charged as shoplifting. No person who is charged with shoplifting may also be charged with burglary or theft of the same property.
Yes, indeed. Baxter’s behavior, and the behavior of others like him, was so egregious that the people of California outlawed it. In the video, Baxter, a relentless moralist, keeps asking his victim whether he knows what he did was wrong. And the man says he does know. But does Baxter know that what he was doing was wrong, and is now illegal? He doesn’t seem to feel any shame, but he should.
Here’s the transcription:
Baxter: The fragrance store, I’m con…what happened in the fragrance store?
Man: What store? Oh…
Baxter: Were you shopping in there?
Man: I was shopping and like I love Justin Timberlake…
Baxter: What…
Man: Like, Justin Timberlake, I love him and I love his songs…
Baxter: You love Justin Timberlake?
Man: Yeah, and I just picked that up, you know, with Madonna for a minute, and his songs…
Baxter: OK, now you had the one bottle of…
Man: Try Me.
Baxter: That’s called Try Me?
Man: Try Me, yeah…
Baxter: And that’s a product of…who? Justin Timberlake?
Man: Justin Timberlake, yeah. His picture’s in it.
Baxter: Now, when ya went in that store, did you go in there planning to steal that? Or did ya just…what?
Man: I love to steal. My mom, she used to take me like to steal, I’m two, like my mom and my auntie, you know?…
Baxter: You know that you’re not supposeda steal…
Man: Yeah, I’m not…[unintelligible]…my papers, and I live in the street, nobody helps me…
Baxter: Yeah, well lemme ask you this. When you went into the business there? Were ya just shopping? Or were you going in there to actually take a fragrance?
Man: I just went in there, like, take things.
Baxter: You were going in there to take things?
Man: Yeah…
Baxter: Without paying?
Man: Yeah.
Baxter: You know that’s wrong, right?
Man: I do know that, but…um…
Baxter: You know that…that…sometimes could be considered burglary? If you enter that building…knowing…
Man: I don’t rape people. I don’t kill people.
Baxter: You don’t kill people? All you do is take what you need?
Man: Yeah, I take what I need. I just kiss people. I have sex with people. You know what I’m saying? And I don’t do bad things.
Baxter: Well, you know, there are people who would think stealing things and exposing yourself in public are bad things. You understand that, right?
Man: Yeah…
Baxter: Is it just the one bottle of perfume that you took?
Man: Yeah…
Bad cop lego picture by Paul Bailey is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 and is available through the photographer’s flickr stream.
