Woodlands Criminal Defense Attorney - Theft from Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is one of the largest retail companies in the world. They have locations everywhere and they are frequently the victim in criminal cases of theft. Unlike many chain retail stores Wal-Mart has an aggressive policy on prosecution. Wal-Mart employs people who work inside the store on foot and monitoring cameras. They look for concealing of merchandise as well as suspicious behavior and start recording individuals even if they never stop the person inside the store. If these employees called asset protection specialists notice someone they think is stealing they will allow them to pass the front registers past "all points of sale." Then an asset protection associate will stop the person who has been alleged to have committed theft and detain them while they call police. Wal-Mart prosecutes every instance. A typical Wal-Mart has over 300 cameras that provide almost complete coverage of a store.

Wal-Mart will issue a criminal trespass warning to individuals that go to the store after they were identified as having committed theft by Wal-Mart employees. If someone returns to a Wal-Mart store after being issued a criminal trespass warning they could be arrested for a Class B Criminal Trespass offense on future visits.

Wal-Mart has over 300 cameras that provide almost complete coverage of a store.

Another common method of theft prevention is to monitor for "skip scanning" which is a method of theft that occurs when someone intentionally skips scanning particular items in the self-check-out line of a retail store. The person may even pay for some of the items but if anything is skipped and the person heads for the door they will likely be charged with Theft based on the "skip-scanning."

Possible defenses are mostly related to identity, "maybe they have the wrong guy" or intent "I didn't mean to skip scan it I was confused or I didn't know my child had put that in the bag."

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