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Show Police seminar warns of business theft, bad checks Employees of several local businesses attended a Pleasant Grove Police Department seminar Thursday on avoiding thefts and bad checks. Lt. Tom Paul and Det. Sgt. Mike Blackhurst went through points of the Utah Criminal Code with the employees and answered questions. Lt. Paul said that some of the businesses in town had requested the seminar to help with an increasing problem with shoplifting and bad checks. Many of the questions about shoplifting regarded when a suspected suspec-ted shoplifter could be approached. It was noted that they do not have to be outside the store to be stopped. Lt. Paul said that anytime an employee had probable cause to believe that merchandise was being shoplifted, they could stop the customer. Forms of retail theft discussed included altering, transfering or removing any price tag with the intention of depriving the merchant of the retail value of the merchandise; mer-chandise; transfing any merchandise mer-chandise from one container . or another for the same reason; or when a person knowingly under-rings the price of a product at the checkout counter. Lt. Paul said that any merchant who has probable cause to believe that a person has committee retail theft may detain such person, on or off the premises for a reasonable length of time. During the detaining period the merchant may make a reasonable inquiry as to whether the person has unpurchased merchandise in his possession; to request identification; iden-tification; to verify such identification; iden-tification; to request the person place in full view any merchandise he may have taken; and to inform a police officer and turn the person over to the peace officer. In the case of a minor, the merchant mer-chant may inform a peace officer, the parents, or the guardian of the child of the retention and return the child to the custody of that person. Lt. Paul also explained that a peace officer, merchant or merchant's mer-chant's employee, who detains or causes the arrest of a person for theft of goods, is not criminally or civilly liable where he has reasonable and probable grounds to believe the person committed a thef-t. thef-t. Any force, except deadly force, is permitted to detain a person in such a circumstance, he quoted. He did suggest that an employee not put himself into a position of being injured, however. He reported that the local police cannot hold a juvenile longer than two hours so they usually turn the child over to the parents or guardians guar-dians and, if necessary, refer the child to Juvenile Court. Most shoplifters in Pleasant Grove and Lindon take items valued at less than $10 but anything taken valued for less than $100 is a Class B Misdemeanor, Lt. Paul said. Sgt. Blackhurst stated that with bad checks the presumption is that the person knew the check would not be good when he wrote it out. If the check is returned marked "account closed," he noted, you can be pretty sure the writer knew it would not clear the bank. He added that if the account is active and the return check said "refer to maker" or "insufficient funds" they probably would not prosecute because someone may have just made an error in their checkbook or something similar. He suggested that clerks taking a check should read the check carefully to be sure it is not postdated, post-dated, and that the address and phone number are on the check. Sgt. Blackhurst also urged the employees and merchants to be sure to get good identification on a check and be sure the picture on the driver's license looks like the person writing the check. He said if the clerk is suspicious, they can ask the person to write their name on the back of the check for a comparison with the signature on the front of the check. He also encouraged them to be sure they have a birthdate because in order to make an accurate identification iden-tification a birthdate is needed. The officer said that forgeries are up this year in the Pleasant Grove and Lindon area. He cited several instances of people stealing checks and forging the names on them. When a business accepts a two-party check it takes the responsibility, respon-sibility, Sgt. Blackhurst stated. He emphasized that postdated checks are not prosecutable. He said that when a person says that' his check will not be good until such and such a date and you accept it, the store has extended credit then to that person and the only recourse is civil action. Sgt. Blackhurst also noted that the police department is not a check collecting organization. Merchants should only call in the police on a bad check complaint when they want to prosecute the writer of the check. If the object is just to collect the money owed, then the police should not be called in. He added that the department will send out a letter on each bad check complaint and give the check writer about 20 days to make the check good. Most of them are paid within that period. Those that are not are criminally prosecuted. The police department does end up collecting on many checks as a result of this action. He reminded merchants to let the department know if someone makes the check good after it has been turned tur-ned over to the police so that they do not continue working on the case. The two officers said that more seminars will be held annually if the need is there. These seminars were held at the request of some of the merchants. The Pleasant Grove-Lindon Grove-Lindon Area Chamber of Commerce supported the police department in these seminars. |