Scott Henson over at Grits for Breakfast posts a story about a Texan in Georgia who went to jail for refusing to pay a $7 tab at an all-you-can-eat buffet. They like those buffets a lot in Georgia. And Texans want good value for their fine dining. So how did this marriage made in heaven go so wrong?
Fulton County authorities arrested 40-year-old Dan Linscomb of Texas City, Texas, last week for refusing to pay his tab at the all-you-can-eat Iron Skillet buffet in northwest Atlanta. Officials say Linscomb ate at the buffet and let his girlfriend eat from his plate.
The restaurant charged him for two $7 meals, which he refused to pay. Linscomb was taken to the Fulton County Jail on a charge of theft of service. Fulton County Sheriff’s Sgt. Nikita Hightower said Linscomb was released two days later after pleading guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct.
Linscomb stood on principle. It cost him two days in jail until he pled to disorderly conduct, though there is nothing to suggest that he was disorderly in his refusal to pay the tab, which makes the whole principle issue seem rather silly. Unless he finally figured out, after two days in the hoosegow, that this was just totally foolish and his chances of becoming known as the Gandhi of all-you-can-eat-buffets were getting mighty slim.
Scott sees this as a failure of police authority to moderate petty disputes in the field.
Frequently police officers enter an emotional situation and find themselves moderating informally in some dispute between individuals where very little is helped, and the problems are only postponed or aggravated, by taking someone to jail.
I’d like to see community policing strategies give officers more dispute resolution authority in the field to resolve cases like this one, if possible without necessarily taking anyone to jail.
I think cops have always engaged in ad hoc dispute resolution of petty matters. Traditionally, they have a great deal of discretion in handling disputes, and generally try to avoid turning them into police matters if they can.
But I see another problem with Linscomb’s arrest. It’s a distinction that might not readily appear to the non-lawyer, but one that seems painfully clear to me. Why do police become embroiled in matters that are purely civil in nature, and why, when they do, do they invariably side with the business over the individual?
While one might question whether Linscomb’s refusal to pay the tab for his girlfriend’s eating off his plate was tantamount to theft, it is not. It is a civil question of whether the girlfriend’s nibbling constituted an obligation to pay an additional $7. A contract question, and nothing more. Contract questions are resolved by courts in their civil capacity everyday, and the parties involved always believe they’re getting the shaft rather than a bona fide dispute exists.
But when the problem arises between a business, like the Iron Skillet, and one of its patrons, Linscomb, the cops are inevitably called to the scene. Why? Because there is an inherent bias by the police to protect their local businesses from disagreements with patrons. Cops have no role to play in civil disputes, but they have overarching power in matters of crime. Hence, the cops have a choice to make, whether to treat the incident as a dispute or a crime. Here, they opted for crime and it cost Linscomb two days in jail.
Now Linscomb could have stood on principle by paying the $7 tab under protest, avoiding two days in jail, and suing the Iron Skillet to recover his $7. He chose to be recalcitrant to the cops and paid the heavier price.
Unlike Scott, I’m not inclined to place greater decision making authority in police to resolve disputes. Aside from resolving civil issues being outside the police officer’s scope of authority, I am not inclined to place my faith in a police officer’s sensibilities as to how such disputes should be resolved. This is true because of their inherent bias in favor of local businesses, but even more so because their opinion on who is right and wrong is utterly irrelevant. Who cares what some cop thinks?
So the base question remains why the police should be involved at all. Simply because some local storeowner calls 911 does not convert a civil dispute into a criminal matter. Had Linscomb tried to sneak out the door without paying the bill at all, then police intervention would be appropriate. But he did not engage in criminal conduct by any stretch of the imagination. Nor does disagreement with Linscomb’s position render his position criminal, or even quasi-criminal. If anything, the police at the scene should have made sure that the parties had each others’ names and addresses (for service of process) and wished them both a good evening.
But police favor business over people. So Linscomb spent two days in jail as a matter of principle over a $7 disagreement. The police have no business being the collection agent for businesses in disputes with customers, and their involvement in this dispute, and arrest of Linscomb, was simply wrong.
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How is something like the following for a middle ground? The police could have served Dan Linscomb with notice that he was permanently banned from the property (if the business owner wanted them to do that). Then if Dan came back, he could be arrested for criminal trespass — at least he could in Illinois. Of course, the police don’t need to serve the notice, but they sure would make nice witnesses to the notice if there was a later prosecution.
And let me add that I think Dan’s actions were selfish and dishonest. That food isn’t free and someone has to pay for it, someone has to cook it, someone has to place it on the buffet, etc. He paid for one person to eat and not two.
Why would you want the police, for whom your tax dollars are used, spending their time making sure that a business owner gets paid in a civil dispute? What if your child was involved in a dire emergency, and there were no cops available because they were protecting the restaurant owner’s $7? Still a good idea?
Bear in mind, it’s irrelevant whether Linscomb was right or wrong, and I can think of scenarios where it wasn’t selfish at all, such as he took too much, was about to throw it away because he was full, and his girlfriend thought that wasteful of resources and took what was left over on his final plate. Don’t rush to judgment. Only cops are allowed to do that.
“What if your child was involved in a dire emergency, and there were no cops available because they were protecting the restaurant owner’s $7? Still a good idea?”
Why would the cops stick around the restaurant if there was a dire emergency? Most the cops I know would gladly leave the restaurant for some “real action.” And cops tend to be mobile. They don’t just stick around HQ waiting for a call. They drive around. There is no reason to believe they would be further from the dire emergency by going to the restaurant than not going to it.
What if the police didn’t arrest our man Dan, but still provided a service by defusing an explosive situation? Isn’t there value to that? Of course that didn’t happen here, but as long as we are throwing out hypos ….
And restaurants are *quick* to call the cops. True story: I was in Alexandria, Louisiana, passing through on a business trip, and pulled into one of those big national chain restaurants for some dinner. It took a while before a waitress seated me, I ordered, and then five minutes later I was bored (this being before cell-phone Internet). So I got up, walked out, ignored the man yelling “Hey!” behind me since I had received no service and thus owed no money, went to my car, got out a book, walked back in, and walked back to my seat and started reading my book. I was out of the restaurant for perhaps two minutes.
A few minutes later, an Alexandria police car pulled up, blue lights flashing. I looked at the front and the manager of the restaurant was looking a bit embarrassed as he talked to two cops. Eventually my food arrived, I ate, I got the bill, I paid at the register (which is what you do at this national chain), and nothing was said by anybody.
But in any event, this is where the theory of law clashes with the reality of law. The reality of law is that police officers do not work for the people. They work for the city government, which in most communities is chosen from amongst the business leaders of the community and then presented to the people via advertising and other means as the people to vote for, and the people dutifully do so. Said business people have passed laws criminalizing various civil disputes because, well, it’s convenient to have the State prosecute rather than they themselves have to pay an attorney to file a civil complaint. This is the reality as vs. theory of law at the local level in far too many places. The sheeple vote for the guy with the biggest advertisements much the same way that when they need an attorney they open the yellow pages and vote for the shyster with the biggest ad, the one that says how “aggressive” he will be (at pushing them to take a plea, most likely, since he operates on volume not quality with that kind of overhead), and other than a quantum revolution in human intelligence enhancement I have absolutely no idea how to change that.
Granted, Linscomb was both wrong and dumb.
But I can’t let pass your assertion that cops should be given more authority to resolve disputes in the field.
The whole point of the rule of law (the principle that every act of enforcement by an official must be backed up by a written law) is to protect us all from gratuitous bullying by officers whose badges make them unanswerable.
The “cowboy” mentality among many if not most police officers throughout the US is proof that such bullying is very much a problem, especially for those whose ethnicity or appearance the officer doesn’t like. Therefore, no one but a judge has any business being trusted with ANY power to resolve disputes.
Grits…dummy
So explain to me how is stealing a civil matter. He stole from the restaurant, that makes it theft, which in NY is a criminal matter, NYS Penal Law 165.15 (2.)
And it’s stealing because . . . you say so? There’s no theft involved at all, just a dispute over whether the girlfriend should pay the price for the buffet because she ate something off his plate. Nothing to suggest that anyone stole anything from anyone. By the way, the NYS Penal Law doesn’t apply in Georgia. They have their own laws.
Indeed, if there were any stealing at all, it was by the girlfriend. It is unclear why the restaurant held that the man himself was “stealing” and why the cop arrested the man himself for “stealing” when it was the girlfriend who committed the action in question.
There was no stealing by anyone. The Penal Law section cited, which is theft of services from a restaurant, relates to the person who tries to sneak out without paying. There is nothing remotely similar here. Linscomb disputed the bill. He didn’t run away without paying. He went to pay the bill, and disagreed that a second $7 charge was due. PL 165.15(2) is clearly inapplicable and requires no further discussion. There was no crime.
It would perhaps be applicable to the girlfriend. But certainly not to Linscomb, who paid for the food he ate.
More Risky Shopping at Target, Courtesy of the Local Cops
From J-dog, it appears that getting cheap stuff at Target involves a hidden price that some may prefer not to pay.
More Risky Shopping at Target, Courtesy of the Local Cops
From J-dog, it appears that getting cheap stuff at Target involves a hidden price that some may prefer not to pay.
More Risky Shopping at Target, Courtesy of the Local Cops
From J-dog, it appears that getting cheap stuff at Target involves a hidden price that some may prefer not to pay.
More Risky Shopping at Target, Courtesy of the Local Cops
From J-dog, it appears that getting cheap stuff at Target involves a hidden price that some may prefer not to pay.