Unfounded Searches

What is the name of your state? Texas
On what grounds do department stores usually discount stores: Costco, Best Buy, Fryes, Walmart, etc. hold the right to physically search their customers, with no reason to believe a crime has been commited, as you leave their place of business? Do the search and seizure laws, which our police are held to not apply to the private secter in regards to merchandise that has been paid for and legally is the property of the person leaving the store?
Thank you,
Gary and Martha Swarm

swgar said:

What is the name of your state? Texas
On what grounds do department stores usually discount stores: Costco, Best Buy, Fryes, Walmart, etc. hold the right to physically search their customers, with no reason to believe a crime has been commited, as you leave their place of business? Do the search and seizure laws, which our police are held to not apply to the private secter in regards to merchandise that has been paid for and legally is the property of the person leaving the store?
Thank you,
Gary and Martha Swarm

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Were you given a "pat-down"?? No? Were your bags checked? Yes? Perfectly legal. You do not have to do business with these stores if you object to their store policy.

Additionally - Costco really doesn't belong in this list. It is a member-only store. That means that you agree to their policy as a condition of your membership.

swgar said:

Do the search and seizure laws, which our police are held to not apply to the private secter in regards to merchandise that has been paid for and legally is the property of the person leaving the store?

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Search and seizure laws apply to government entities like police departments.

Curt581 said:

Search and seizure laws apply to government entities like police departments.

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Exactly. All of the limitations imposed by Constitutional Amendments apply only to the government, not to private entities.

The searches done by stores like this are not unreasonable searches anyway, which is all the 4th Amendment protects against. Think about it. Sure you paid for it and it is now your property. But 30 seconds prior it belonged to the store. Its not unreasonable for them to do a very minimal and non-invasive search of your shopping cart and your receipt to verify that you paid for everything. You also have a diminished expectation of privacy while you are on their private property.

I disagree with caveman lawyer and others. Even the check-your-receipt policies of many stores is still in litigation when people refuse to show the receipt. I am unsure how there can be an assured answer to a full pat-down. Shopkeeper's privilege's black letter law is *reasonable*. Random searches do not seem reasonable to me. I could be wrong, but I'd hate to bring it in front of a jury.

I never said anything about pat downs, if that's what the original poster is talking about. I have never heard of any store ever doing that as a standard practice to any given customer. The only searches I have ever heard of, being applied generally to all customers, are searches of one's cart and their receipt to make sure they match, and of course the search done by the magnetic scanner that sets the alarms off. To do a physical pat down, the security officer would really need to be able to articulate why they thought the person might be concealing something.

But even still, if a store does make an unreasonable search that opens them up to civil liability for that act. It still has absolutely nothing to do with a Constitutional violation. The 4th Amendment simply places no limitation on a Cosco employee.

tranquility said:

Random searches do not seem reasonable to me.

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Even within a government agency, as long as searches truly are "random" they are deemed constitutional.

Even within a government agency, as long as searches truly are "random" they are deemed constitutional.

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Only in certain instances like a DUI checkpoint because of the importance to public safety. Random searches by the government are not constitutional. We have a reasonable expectation of privacy and random searches are not reasonable. Think of it like this. The police can search "randomly". They get some computer to spit out a yes or no on every contact. They then search when yes. However, the search/no search function says to search 99.99% of the time. It's still random but, it is unconstutional.

(Sorry to caveman lawyer. I conflated some earlier posts with his and took the thread as a whole as to what he was responding to.)