A businessman has been arrested after parading an employee he suspected of stealing along a busy shopping street with a sign saying "thief" hanging around his neck.Tut, tut! Fancy humiliating a person like that? It's wicked, so it is. Doesn't he realise that thieves have human rights?
Mr Cremer, 44, took matters into his own hands after discovering that an employee had allegedly stolen a business cheque, forged his signature and cashed it for £845 before going on holiday to Cyprus.Of course, Mr Cremer will have been thinking 'A thief, caught bang to rights! I'm doing my civic duty'.
Although he believed the stunt, designed to shame the man, constituted a form of citizen's arrest, he found himself under arrest himself alongside three other fitters who helped him.
While the police thought 'Score! Five arrests and we don't even have to get off our backsides or leave the station! Suckers...'
I say 'five' because surely they arrested the thief too...? The report doesn't say, but we haven't sunk that low.
Have we?
7 comments:
We probably have.
'White collar crimes' like forging cheques are more difficult to prove than, and hence not hounded like shoplifting, ergo, the police are unlikely to arrest the original thief on the basis of hearsay.
Plus said employee will probably be awarded a handsome bung by an Industrial Tribunal for unfair dismisal.
"dismissal", obviously.
Do the words suspected and allegedly not mean anything to you in this context?
Yeah, they mean quite a bit. I don't see anywhere that you can't 'citizen's arrest' someone until you have cast iron proof.
Even the real police (when they can be bothered, as Mark points out above) arrest 'on suspicion of'...
Incidentally, according to the report of this incident in the 'Mail', they DID arrest the suspect too.
I agree.
However, a citizen's arrest does not entail parading the suspect down a busy street wearing a sign reading "thief" around his neck. That's vigilantism.
"However, a citizen's arrest does not entail parading the suspect down a busy street wearing a sign reading "thief" around his neck. That's vigilantism."
Really..? I always think 'vigilantism' only when I see them warming up the barrel of hot tar and shaking out a pillow of feathers.
Not simply handing a suspect to the police, because had they tried phoning first, it's highly unlikely anyone would have bothered.
I think Mr Cremer believes he did the right thing, regardless of the outcome. He isn't "alone
...
However, a citizen's arrest does not entail parading the suspect down a busy street wearing a sign reading "thief" around his neck. That's vigilantism.
I thought that sort of thing was called 'naming and shaming'.
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