Shoplifting and Security Video Footage

My question involves criminal law for the state of: Montana

I was stopped last weekend for shoplifting at Walmart. The police were called and I was went before a judge yesterday. The problem appears to be not with my intentions but with the Scan and Go program, which the store provides to iPhone users and which I have used for most of a year. You scan and bag your items as you shop and then go to Self Checkout and interface your iPhone with the check out register. You pay and go, everything already bagged. When I checked out and paid, only about half the stuff rang up and I did not pay attention to that and so did leave the store with merchandise unpaid for. (This is not so uncommon - the program is in “beta testing” and I often have problems with it. I usually look it over pretty carefully but didn’t last weekend). I was told there was video of me “hiding many things in bags” before I checked out (the security officer did not seem to understand when I tried to explain about the Scan and Go program). I am hoping that this video exists and that it will clearly show that I scanned each item as I placed it in bags. How likely is it that Walmart has video of my whole shopping trip that is detailed enough to make that clear. I am also wondering if they have old footage of me shopping at their store for the past year. It is possible it could show a number of times when I have used the program, it has malfunctioned and I have caught the problem and gone to an associate for help before leaving the store. What is the likelihood that they would have (and be able to find) this kind of footage from the past year? And will they search their database for it themselves once I plead Not Guilty or would I need for request it from them? If they are going to court with someone for shoplifting, can they do a facial recognition or credit card usage search and find other footage of that person shopping for the last year? And if they don’t automatically do that, is it possible for them to do it if I request it? Can they find all the times I’ve shopped there in the past year and pull up video from that?

Plead not guilty.

You need a lawyer. Your lawyer will ask for Discovery - aka, the LP report, video, and you can also request your lawyer see if prior video can be found.

I have never heard of this program, but after using it and finding flaws, I would not use it.

We have those at some of the groceries and even Costco here. You get a bar code gun or you can use your iPhone. Great because I can scan my groceries directly into the my reusable bags. Saves a lot of time at checkout as well (because the grocery with ScanIt has the most abysmal self checkout system otherwise). There's a spot check that pops up from time to time. A store employee pulls three items from your cart and scans them and they better come up as being scanned by you. If they don't they rescan your entire order. Don't know what happens if there are discrepancies.

I'd or more importantly your lawyer be contacting whoever at WallyMart is responsible for the scanner program and get them to help intercede.

prior video is irrelevant. Whether you shoplifted before or paid for everything before has no bearing on whether you shoplifted this time.


I wouldn't bet they have video of all of your scans as you shopped. I have no idea what sort of verification they use that a person is not shoplifting though.

For them to even think you were shoplifting, the only thing that makes any sense is they saw you placing merchandise in your cart without scanning it and then obviously when you checked out you were not charged for those items. I suspect you will find out that their system is a lot more technical than you believed it to be.

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When I checked out and paid, only about half the stuff rang up

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of course you showed them where it was scanned into your phone, right, while arguing their system did not download your scanned items and it was not the fact you never scanned some items, right?
http://wm5.walmart.com/scanandgo/

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I was told there was video of me “hiding many things in bags” before I checked out (the security officer did not seem to understand when I tried to explain about the Scan and Go program).

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I suggest their statement is in reference to items you placed into bags without scanning them. That claim and the fact you did have items that had not been scanned support each other.

Presumably there is a both computer screen and receipt which shows these items having been scanned and paid for.

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Quoting Disagreeable

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Presumably there is a both computer screen and receipt which shows these items having been scanned and paid for.

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the point is they didn't pay for all the items they attempted to walk out the door with.

if you are stating it would provide a point for the customer to verify all the items they purchased actually were registered as purchased; not a realistic argument. I have had receipts as long as my arm and determining what some of the items listed actually were required a cryptographer to decipher their shorthand.

Wow. I can see a lot of abuse of this system.

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Quoting PandorasBox

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Wow. I can see a lot of abuse of this system.

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yep, a LOT.



I think the case will hinge on the testimony of the LP person that tailed the OP around the store and his claim the OP put items in bags without scanning them with their phone first. If the LP testifies s/he saw OP put something in particular in the bag with no attempt to scan the item and it was one of the items that did not show up on the check out system, I think the OP is toast.

when using the system, you scan the items as you put them in your bags. If you watch the video, there is really no way to claim you did not realize the item did not scan. It gives a confirmation when you scan it. No confirmation, it did not register. I cannot even consider a claim some of the scanned items did not transfer when checking out. It would be beyond reasonable to believe that happened.

the OP said this:

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When I checked out and paid, only about half the stuff rang up

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Half? while I don't keep an accurate running total of what is in my cart, if my total came up to half of what I knew to be in my cart, I would surely suspect there was a problem somewhere.

I have never used one at a Walmart, however, I have always taken care to make sure my intended purchases scan properly. Apparently, Walmart LP was also.

There IS a very big problem somewhere. The situation is actually much more complicated than I origonally posted, as I am trying to stick to only what is relevant to my question. I have an illness which is effecting my mental and physical capacities and begining to do damage to my mental processing abilities. When it flares up, sometimes very suddenly, I often experience extreem confusion, pain and exaustion and I am inclined to pass out or colapse with a seasure. The severity of these "episodes" and the suddenness of their onset is new and I have not been dealing well or honestly with the realities of how extreemly they have begun effecting me.

I was in a full fledged attack while I was in that store. I barely remember the shopping trip at all - everything is a blur. By the time I got to the checkout counter all I cared about was getting to my car to get some food in me before my blood sugar crashed and calling home for help before I passed out in the store. The fact of the matter is, I think it is quite likely that I was irratic and inconsitant with the scanning and with checkout (by the end I was just throwing things in cart and rushing to the checkout lane to try to get out of there as fast as I could - it is possilbe to both use some items in the Scan and Go program and some to scan by hand in the checkout lane.) I scanned items by hand and entered my Scan and Go code both but the truth is, I am not at all sure I did all of it right. I know that none of the things that should have been on my scan and go list showed up, though I do remember that the computer said they went through - you have to wait for it to ok you to go ahead and begin adding items scanned by hand and I remember panicing that that 2 second wait was going to tip me over the edge and I wouldn't make it out of the store.

I am not saying at all that I am not at fault here. I argued extensivly with my family that I should be pleading Guilty to the judge the next day because the truth is, if I had not been in such denial about the truth of the changes in my health, I would have realized that I am no longer competant to function without assistance outside of my home. And there is no way, in any normal situation, that I would have paid for items without being sure they were correctly charged or walked out without checking my recipt. But that day was the first really undeniable proof that my body (and mental capacity) is no longer a "normal condition."

My family did convince me to plead Not Guilty and let the court set a court date. It seems that this will allow me a couple of months to sort this out and if I decide I need to plead Guilty I am told my plea can be changed. In the mean time, if I decide no fight this I want to know what video footage I might be able to count on to show that I at least ATTEMPTED to do things correctly to the best of my ability.

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I was in a full fledged attack while I was in that store. I barely remember the shopping trip at all - everything is a blur. By the time I got to the checkout counter all I cared about was getting to my car to get some food in me before my blood sugar crashed and calling home for help before I passed out in the store. The fact of the matter is, I think it is quite likely that I was irratic and inconsitant with the scanning and with checkout (by the end I was just throwing things in cart and rushing to the checkout lane to try to get out of there as fast as I could - it is possilbe to both use some items in the Scan and Go program and some to scan by hand in the checkout lane.) I scanned items by hand and entered my Scan and Go code both but the truth is, I am not at all sure I did all of it right. I know that none of the things that should have been on my scan and go list showed up, though I do remember that the computer said they went through - you have to wait for it to ok you to go ahead and begin adding items scanned by hand and I remember panicing that that 2 second wait was going to tip me over the edge and I wouldn't make it out of the store.

I am not saying at all that I am not at fault here. I argued extensivly with my family that I should be pleading Guilty to the judge the next day because the truth is, if I had not been in such denial about the truth of the changes in my health, I would have realized that I am no longer competant to function without assistance outside of my home. And there is no way, in any normal situation, that I would have paid for items without being sure they were correctly charged or walked out without checking my recipt. But that day was the first really undeniable proof that my body (and mental capacity) is no longer a "normal condition."

My family did convince me to plead Not Guilty and let the court set a court date. It seems that this will allow me a couple of months to sort this out and if I decide I need to plead Guilty I am told my plea can be changed. In the mean time, if I decide no fight this I want to know what video footage I might be able to count on to show that I at least ATTEMPTED to do things correctly to the best of my ability.

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Except that there isn't. This program is suppose to save your recipts for later reference. That is the main reason I use it. I love the access to that kind of detailed information about my spending. But I haven't gotten on line to look any of that information up in three or four months until last night. Then I found that not one of my recipts are registered as having existed since Decebmer - they don't show up in my account anywhere, though I shop at Walmart weekly and use the Scan and Go program every time. And (except for last weekend) I am pretty careful to check everything on the recipt is correct before I leave the store. So I know that it has been charging me correctly for everything from dozens of shopping trips over the last few months, even though my account shows no record of my having used the Scan and Go program during those three months. (Well, to be accruate, it does not always charge me correctly. Three times I have caught mistakes and been able to recitfy them before leaving the store. And this one would have been easy to chatch had I looked as I usually do.)

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First of all, no, I didn’t check the receipt or even pay attention to how much I was paying for as I normally would have. Let me add some of a reply I just wrote to someone bellow for explanation...


This situation is actually much more complicated than I origonally posted, as I am trying to stick to only what is relevant to my question. I have an illness which is effecting my mental and physical capacities and begining to do damage to my mental processing abilities. When it flares up, sometimes very suddenly, I often experience extreem confusion, pain and exaustion and I am inclined to pass out or colapse with a seasure. The severity of these "episodes" and the suddenness of their onset is new and I have not been dealing well or honestly with the realities of how extreemly they have begun effecting me.

I was in a full fledged attack while I was in that store. I barely remember the shopping trip at all - everything is a blur. By the time I got to the checkout counter all I cared about was getting to my car to get some food in me before my blood sugar crashed and calling home for help before I passed out in the store. The fact of the matter is, I think it is quite likely that I was irratic and inconsitant with the scanning and with checkout (by the end I was just throwing things in cart and rushing to the checkout lane to try to get out of there as fast as I could - it is possilbe to both use some items in the Scan and Go program and some to scan by hand in the checkout lane.) I scanned items by hand and entered my Scan and Go code both but the truth is, I am not at all sure I did all of it right. I know that none of the things that should have been on my scan and go list showed up, though I do remember that the computer said they went through - you have to wait for it to ok you to go ahead and begin adding items scanned by hand and I remember panicing that that 2 second wait was going to tip me over the edge and I wouldn't make it out of the store.


I am not saying at all that I am not at fault here. I argued extensivly with my family that I should be pleading Guilty to the judge the next day because the truth is, if I had not been in such denial about the truth of the changes in my health, I would have realized that I am no longer competant to function without assistance outside of my home. And there is no way, in any normal situation, that I would have paid for items without being sure they were correctly charged or walked out without checking my recipt. But that day was the first really undeniable proof that my body (and mental capacity) is no longer a "normal condition."

My family did convince me to plead Not Guilty and let the court set a court date. It seems that this will allow me a couple of months to sort this out and if I decide I need to plead Guilty I am told my plea can be changed. In the mean time, if I decide no fight this I want to know what video footage I might be able to count on to show that I at least ATTEMPTED to do things correctly to the best of my ability.

I was in a full fledged attack while I was in that store. I barely remember the shopping trip at all - everything is a blur. By the time I got to the checkout counter all I cared about was getting to my car to get some food in me before my blood sugar crashed and calling home for help before I passed out in the store. The fact of the matter is, I think it is quite likely that I was irratic and inconsitant with the scanning and with checkout (by the end I was just throwing things in cart and rushing to the checkout lane to try to get out of there as fast as I could - it is possilbe to both use some items in the Scan and Go program and some to scan by hand in the checkout lane.) I scanned items by hand and entered my Scan and Go code both but the truth is, I am not at all sure I did all of it right. I know that none of the things that should have been on my scan and go list showed up, though I do remember that the computer said they went through - you have to wait for it to ok you to go ahead and begin adding items scanned by hand and I remember panicing that that 2 second wait was going to tip me over the edge and I wouldn't make it out of the store.


I am not saying at all that I am not at fault here. I argued extensivly with my family that I should be pleading Guilty to the judge the next day because the truth is, if I had not been in such denial about the truth of the changes in my health, I would have realized that I am no longer competant to function without assistance outside of my home. And there is no way, in any normal situation, that I would have paid for items without being sure they were correctly charged or walked out without checking my recipt. But that day was the first really undeniable proof that my body (and mental capacity) is no longer a "normal condition."


My family did convince me to plead Not Guilty and let the court set a court date. It seems that this will allow me a couple of months to sort this out and if I decide I need to plead Guilty I am told my plea can be changed. In the mean time, if I decide no fight this I want to know what video footage I might be able to count on to show that I at least ATTEMPTED to do things correctly to the best of my ability. If I even decide to contest this charge at all, it is not my intention to deny stealing things. I CLEARLY did. It is my hope that an explination from my doctor regarding the recent chanes in my health and mental capabilites coupled with video showing that I was making an effort to do the scanning correctly may help in whatever plea I decide to enter.

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Yes, well the website says it is in "beta testing" mode, though they advertise it and it is avalible to the public. I have always known it has problems but I love the record keeping and information gathering it allows (it keeps a detailed record of every item you ever buy and how much it costs.) So normally I just use it with the understaning that, at check-out, I have to look everything over very carefull. I have found mistakes or dropped transactions a number of times but always caught them right there at the check out counter, becuase I have always looked everything over very carefully. This was the first time I have attempted to shop alone since I began dealing with a drastic downturn with a long time health problem and it is very clear (in retrospect, unfortuanatly) that I am no longer competant to function without assistance in public. In any case, I used the program becuae I always assumed I could spot any problems before I paid and correct them. That no longer being the case, I will - obviously - not be using it anymore.