Interviewer: Have there been cases, where an elderly person becomes confused and accidentally takes something? Can that happen where he faces some issues? Can we hire an attorney that say, “Hey, can we get case dismissed because this is our understanding, he is elderly and going senile.”

Brian Geno: A person who can’t formulate the intention to steal is supposed to be able to get off. The law says that you have to take and carry someone else’s property with the intention to permanently deprive them of it. In that example a person who is going senile can’t intend to take it to permanently deprive them of it. The law is supposed to allow for that person to be either acquitted or just not prosecuted. I find that the bar is so high on, for that person, I should say so low for the government that it is sometimes they have to fight tooth and nail to prove that they didn’t intend to do it. They couldn’t intend to do it. Yes, they could have problems.

Children Might Take Things and Hang on to Them With the Parents Being Unaware

Interviewer: Are there any chances where sometimes maybe a child or a baby that accidentally gets an item, holds on to the item, puts it into the basket. Does that ever happen?

Brian Geno: Yes, that does happen. kids do crazy stuff. They grab stuff and they play with them. Little kids, three, four, five years old even. They take things, play with them, they’ll want to hang on to them. They’ll even mean to keep it not realizing what kind of trouble that could bring upon everyone else. Most often, if there are going to be any charges the loss prevention people or the police will assume that the parent is actually stealing and is using a child to do it. Which is a horrible thing to say. That you meant to use your child to steal when, in fact, it was the child who took something. I am sure that if you talk to loss prevention people at the different retail establishments, they would say that they could tell the difference between a child who took something as part of a selfish playing or whatever and when an adult is using a child to help conceal something.

Loss Prevention Personnel or Police Might Assume that Parents are Using Children to Facilitate Shoplifting

I think that accidentally taking it as a child or as an infirmed older person or even a person who appears normal but had a lapse in their clear thinking for a while, maybe they were distracted, maybe they were on the phone, I think that happens a lot more than you would see in court. Court seems to be really going after stuff like that even though to me it is so obvious that mistakes happen. Mistakes do happen.