Katoria Lee refused a carjacker’s command to surrender her car-keys in 2001, so he shot her in the back. This, a Georgia state court jury decided, was the fault of Wal-Mart, who owned the parking lot where the shooting occurred. Eric Deown Riggins, 22, was caught within minutes, and is serving a 15-year sentence in state prison for the crime.
Lee’s attorney, Lance Cooper, mentioned the 398 visits by police to the Riverdale Wal-Mart in the twenty months before the accident as evidence that there should have been “more” security that made Wal-Mart at fault for a third-party’s malicious crime, but that figure is highly misleading, because, until very recently, Wal-Mart had a zero-tolerance shoplifting policy to press charges for even the most minor of shoplifting crimes. (Kathy Jefcoats, “Woman shot in Wal-Mart lot awarded $4.2 million by jury”, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Aug. 10).
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The conservative columnist Sam Francis had a term for this: “anarcho-tyranny.” Anarcho-tyranny is a social condition by which the great crimes and criminals go unpunished, but minor crimes and even the innocent are punished instead. As if the society still has the need to “punish” someone or some thing, but for reasons of political correctness won’t go after, say, carjackers and rapists, but will tuck into dog walkers and business owners. The latter have the benefit of being easy to catch and crush and because they actually abide by the rule of law enough to be subjected to its processes.
And so, Wal-Mart investors and shoppers are forced to foot the bill for the brazen criminal actions of others.
This looks like a pretty good tactic to me. I hope it backfires, but I can’t see how. That big yellow smiley face seems to have become a bull’s eye these days. The only way I see to counter this would be to find out if the local Police have written any citations for Fire Lane and Handicap Parking Space violations at this store and use that to try to show that the local Police have some responsibility for security in the parking lot.
After reading the referenced article about Walmart’s change in prosecuting shoplifting violations one thing bothers me. Since when is our legal system supposed to be cost effective? I have seen people let go because it would have cost too much to bring them to trial. We have had several local Police forces disbanded because they didn’t generate enough revenue to pay for themselves. The local government in the article actually gripped about having to add an extra Police officer because of the Walmart store.