alt Hacker News> Honestly, I would just assume every grocery store has security cameras doing facial recognition to cross-reference and catch repeat shoplifters.
This is their purpose, they're used to build cases over time, instead of single instances of petty theft, until shoplifters can be charged with felonies when the cumulative amount that they stole reaches felony levels.
I know of at least one chain that uses them to flag certain people to loss prevention or security when they enter the store, either because of shoplifting or because they were trespassed in the past.
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>This is their purpose, they're used to build cases over time, instead of single instances of petty theft, until shoplifters can be charged with felonies when the cumulative amount that they stole reaches felony levels.
I've heard the idea of combining multiple misdemeanor thefts to make a felony. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
Wouldn't that require an ongoing criminal conspiracy/enterprise to "combine" such disparate acts into a single, chargeable crime?
Some state laws do "upgrade" crimes, both misdemeanor --> felony and felony --> more serious felony based on prior convictions, but not (AFAIK) with multiple separate acts whose aggregate value is greater than the cutoff between petty theft and grand theft.
What's more, it's the local prosecutor who decides what charges to bring against someone accused of shoplifting, not the "Loss Prevention" team at a store or its corporate parent.
The idea just seems unlike how local/state laws and justice systems work in the US.
I could be (and likely am) wrong about this, but I've been unable to find state laws[0] which specify that multiple, separate acts of shoplifting can be combined into a single grand theft felony.
Would you share which states have such laws? It would be much appreciated!
[0] https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federa... [1]
[1] See the bottom of the page for links to most US state laws.
If only this was the only use and the data wasn't sold/used against people not committing crimes.