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Comment by JeremyNT | Hacker News Reader

I've worked retail and in no universe would I ever try to physically detain anybody. This has been the explicit policy of the companies I worked for.

Losing a little merchandise is no big deal, especially if you can identify the person to police in a report later.

Attempting to detain a person is dangerous all around. The risk of escalation and injury to the parties involved is high, and a simple shoplifting can turn into something much worse (as happened here). You never know what drugs a shoplifter might be on, or what weapons they might have.

I'm sympathetic to the person being robbed, and this is no defense of the actions of the robber in any way, but it's always the smarter play to let the cops deal with it.

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One, it wasn't just shoplifting, they were also assaulted by the student. Two, there's a big difference between saying "it's risky, I wouldn't do, company policy is not to," etc. and "detaining criminals is archaic and if you do it and the criminal happens to be black, that makes you a racist."

I probably wouldn't do anything either. But I also wouldn't begrudge anyone who who has spent years building that business who decides they're not going to let people just walk in and steal stuff.

It is a family business, the detainer was a member of the family.

Hard to compare with a min wage employee at Target or whatever.

Why? Is the business so hard up that they need to risk physical violence for $25 worth of merchandise should the police not track them down?

I understand why the shopkeeper would make this decision in the heat of the moment, but it's always a mistake to try and physically confront somebody committing a petty crime directly. They were even outnumbered!

Ultimately the confrontation actually was a huge boon to the shopkeeper, due to Oberlin's bungling of the situation, but that's not in any way repeatable. It's simply not worth the risk of being forced to commit violence and/or have violence inflicted upon your person for a few bucks.

Except that's not what happened. The shop owner was attacked in store by the singular robber, and the robbers friends were waiting outside.

The fictional account you've constructed you're probably right about, but it has little to do with reality.

> Gibson noticed that the student was concealing two other bottles of wine inside his jacket.[10][6] According to a police report, Gibson told the student he was contacting the police, and when Gibson pulled out his phone to take a photo of the student, the student slapped it away, striking Gibson's face.[11] The student ran out of the store. Gibson followed and then grabbed and held onto the shoplifter outside the store after the shoplifter had also assaulted the store owner, David Gibson.[6] Two other students, Cecelia Whettstone and Endia Lawrence, friends of the shoplifter, joined the scuffle.[6] When the police arrived, they witnessed Gibson lying on the ground with the three students punching and kicking him.

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