A Lawyer has described the dangers of self-checkout lanes at supermarkets.
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Many customers may prefer self-checkouts since they may scan and bag their items at their own leisure without having to converse with a store employee in the meantime. But a lawyer has warned people against doing this on the popular social media platform TikTok.
As a criminal defence lawyer, Jernigan stated in the video, which has amassed millions of views, ‘I advise most people to avoid self-checkout’.
Jernigan stated that there were three primary groups of theft, and while that may seem like a lot, two are wholly innocent, and that the self-checkout machines make it simpler to prosecute a person for stealing.
The first group is those people known as guilty shoppers – those people that go to shops ‘with the intent to steal’.
She explains in the video ‘When self-checkout first started it was a very basic theft approach. They would scan a few items that they would pay for and then they would drop a few items that they did not pay for in their sack’
@carriejernigan1 Reply to @afamily20202 ♬ original sound – LAWYER CARRIE
Those who steal “by mistake” make up the second category of persons, but their unintentional error doesn’t prevent them from getting in trouble.
Big-box businesses won’t use their time and energy determining whether you took it on purpose or by accident. They are just adopting a “tell it to the judge approach,” she added, adding that they had lost any empathy.
The third and final group, according to Jernigan, is the “truly innocent”
‘They will begin watching hours of video to see the last person who checked out with the Mario Lego set because they’re two short or an Xbox game. And, for some reason, they pinpoint that they think you did it. The shop she reveals need “very little evidence” to prosecute shoppers.
This means even if you’re 100% innocent then you could still get a sentence for doing nothing wrong.
In his last remarks, Jernigan advised viewers to always retain a record of their purchases and to pay with a card at self-checkouts.
Will you be changing the way you shop?
