I’m a cop and I’ve never apprehended a shoplifter. Never even tried.

I’ve been a cop for 11 years on a small force. We’ve had body cams the whole time. If I were to arrest a shoplifter, I would have to watch that footage at least 6 times. I wouldn’t get paid an extra cent for any of that time. It often takes 3-4 hours just to write and submit paperwork for a single arrest. That’s three hours I’m not on the streets. Three hours of overtime I’m not getting paid for. Add in the occasional court appearance and that’s a total lost time of 15-20 hours per arrest. If a store wants to prosecute, they have to send someone to the station to fill out paperwork, which never happens. And there’s no guarantee the DA will prosecute even if the store does their part. Honestly, it’s not worth it for something so minor and it can be detrimental to the community to waste that time and man power. <br><br>I’ve only actually detained someone for shoplifting once. The call came from a grocery store and was very unusual. The employees were describing a man and woman who were just walking all over the store, into the parking lot and back in, loading free food into their car. They were in the store for almost an hour before we got there. It wasn’t until they left without paying for anything that the employees called us. I found the couple a block away on the sidewalk. They were loaded down with shopping bags, cooler full of deli meat and dairy products. I asked them to stop and they said they were in the middle of a “social experiment.” I tried to do my job and told them I wasn’t going to keep them but I had to get their names to put in my report. When I said I was going to ask them one more time to comply or I would use force, they both started running. I tazed the man but it only worked for one prong so it didn’t count. The woman got tazed and both got pepper sprayed. They were arrested and booked. My reports were turned in within the hour. Never heard about it again and I was told they had no charges pending when their names and DOB came back blank on our system. <br><br>I’ve been told to stand by at stores when employees feared someone was shoplifting. Either nothing happened or the people left without incident before I was helping. Honestly I don’t like standing by on those calls because someone is going to end up dead. I’m not going to die over some steak and I’m not going to kill someone because they stole some steak.