Retail Store Detention for Almost Four Hours

[llworking]

As a police officer in the Aloha State, I can assure you that the police report will state the time of the initial stop by the LPO, the time of police arrival at the store, and the time of arrival at the cell block. If the OP wishes to argue a 4 hour detention in front of the court, the judge will defer to the times written in the police report as fact. The report may challenge or confirm this assertion, so it would be prudent to check what the report says.

Furthermore, as has been previously stated, police officers in Hawaii can be very busy and shoplifting cases are low on the priority list. I am certain that the LPO knew they would be contacting the police as soon as the citizens arrest was made. However, the store shoplifting report must be generated (typically several typed pages) and printed out, the prices of the stolen items must be verified, and photos of the items and the suspect must be taken before officers are called. If officers show up and these things are not ready to go, they will simply leave again and tell the LPO to call when everything is ready. This process takes at least an hour for a simple theft case and can be much longer depending on the circumstances.

My question is basically whether or not an LPO is the right to basically imprison a suspect for 4 hours. I have no opinion about it...I am simply asking the question...and under what conditions an LPO might do so.

To give an example...I can foresee a situation where an LPO could suspect shoplifting without having any evidence at all that shoplifting actually occurred. At what point does false imprisonment occur?...at what point does it stop being a valid detention and start being a criminal offense on the part of the LPO?

If I were the owner of the retail establishment in question, I would have some serious concerns about an LPO basically imprisoning an alleged shoplifter for 4 hours.

[Security Consultant]

Our state does not provide a timeline in the law. It says "reasonable." What is "reasonable?" Depends on the circumstances, and how the circumstances can be articulated. It might not be reasonable to hold a 14 year old for 2 hours for a $3.99 theft. It might be entirely reasonable to hold someone for 2 hours for felony theft when the police are taking a while to respond.

What is or is not reasonable, in the end, is for a judge/jury to decide. As I wrote before some states define what is reasonable in their merchant detention statutes. The ones who don't are leaving merchants wide open for civil suit. Retailers really need to have policies in place and enforce them.

[DeputyDog]

Yes, you are correct, but when looking at previous in-state court rulings, as well as what courts have said about the definition of "reasonable," it's also not as though we could have no possible clue as to what is reasonable and what is not.

"Reasonable" is generally defined to mean what an average person would find to be reasonable (i.e. common sense.)

I agree that it shouldn't be so vague - but I'm also glad that it is. If it actually said "one hour" then Joe Dirtbag, who just did a grab and run on $3,000 worth of leather coats would have to be released at the one hour mark when the police said that they were running call to call and it would be at least an hour before they could arrive.

The bottom line is, it can't be an amount of time that most people would objectively find unreasonable for the given circumstances.