Quote Quoting Rhode Island Statutes, Sec. 11-41-21(b)
Any merchant who observes any person concealing or attempting to conceal merchandise on his person or amongst his or her belongings or upon the person or amongst the belongings of another, transporting merchandise beyond the area within the retail mercantile establishment where payment for it is to be made without making payment for it, removing or altering price tags on merchandise, or switching the containers of merchandise may stop the person. Immediately upon stopping the person, the merchant shall identify himself or herself and state his or her reason for stopping the person. If after his or her initial confrontation with the person under suspicion, the merchant has reasonable grounds to believe that at the time stopped the person was committing or attempting to commit the crime of shoplifting on the premises, the merchant may detain the person for a reasonable time sufficient to summon a police officer to the premises. In no case shall the detention be for a period exceeding one hour. Detention must be accomplished in a reasonable manner without unreasonable restraint or excessive force, and may take place only on the premises of the retail mercantile establishment where the alleged shoplifting occurred. Any person so stopped by a merchant pursuant to this section shall promptly identify himself or herself by name and address. Once placed under detention, no other information shall be required of the person and no written and/or signed statement, except as provided in subsection (c) of this section, shall be elicited from the person until a police officer has taken him or her into custody. The merchant may, however, examine for the purposes of ascertaining ownership any merchandise which is in plain view which the merchant has reasonable grounds to believe was unlawfully taken or otherwise tampered with in violation of § 11-41-20.
It sounds like the merchant acted appropriately, even if it was your friend who was attempting to remove its unpurchased merchandise from the store while you waited inside. From the perspective of the store, odds are your actions are being interpreted as trying to distract store employees while your friend attempted to sneak out with the merchandise. You are free to try to convince the prosecutor, judge and jury that you had no knowledge of your friend's actions and were in no way involved in the theft.
Quote Quoting lostowl
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officer #1 who pulled loss prevention off me don't have a report in my discovery package and no where in it mentions about loss prevention chasing me down and the Loss Prevention guy who wrote a police report didn't mention it either(wondering if police told him not to) he said they approached me i became very aggressive then officer #1 arrived and detained me
As you're not charged with assaulting anybody, and your shoplifting charge has not been escalated to a more serious crime based on your resistance, the amount of detail included within the reports in relation to your detention is irrelevant to the charge against you. It's not necessary to include irrelevant information in a report. Leaving irrelevant information out of a report is not a "cover-up".