The begining of a mess

My story begins with events that took place a week ago at the Goodwill Superstore on Sixth Ave. in Portland, OR. The day was hot but a little cooler then the days prior as we were winding down from a week-long heat wave. I was doing what I have done everyday for the last four years unless I am lucky enough to get some photo work, Picking through stuff at the Goodwill Outlet store in Milwaukee. It was an OK day for stuff. Got a nice dry mount press and the usual variety of small electronic junk and notably a small satellite remote for my car satellite radio, more about that later. Took a break in the middle of the day to do some food deliveries for the St. Vincent De Paul. Goodwill has been very good about holding my cart of stuff while I take a break to do these deliveries. I came back and finished the eight hour day of picking to head to the next stop, The Superstore on 6th.

I arrived at the Superstore and as usual grabbed a cart and placed my dog Gonzo in the cart ontop of a blanket I put in the child seat area. Gonzo goes with me pretty much everywhere. He's a good dog and my best friend

So now the dog is in the cart and I'm ready to find some deals. I went in, checked the showcase and proceeded to the back of the store to check the shelves. Nothing much but a broken digital camera and a power supply with a network card attached to it. I set them in the cart next to the dog and moved through the aisles and did not see much else and looked over the camera and found it was not worth anything, it was missing the battery cover, and the same for the power supply. I Set them back in the cart next to the dog to place them back where I had found them and moved around for the a second pass to catch anything I might have missed. I found a USB digital scale scale that was kind of interesting. After looking it up on my data phone and checking it out I figured I would get it. I put it in the cart and headed up to the front to pay and go home. It had been a long day and I was tired.

I paid for the scale and headed out the door. A few moments later somebody called my attention and I turned around to see a man holding a badge stating he was Goodwill security and wanted to talk about the things in my cart under the dog. I realized at that moment that I had not set the camera and power supply back on the shelf. I pulled the items out from the cart, they were sitting between the blanket and the blue plastic flap on the back of the child seat. The guy escorted me to the back of the store into a small room and asked me what was going on. I told him I just wasn't paying attention and forgot to set them back on the shelf. He said he did not believe me and that he had been observing me. I really didn't know what to say except that I just forgot to set them back. He proceeded to separate the power supply and network card because he said they did not look like they went together. He then sent the network card out to be priced as it did not have any sticker on it. It came back $19.99. I disputed this as they were bundled together. His response was that Goodwill would not sell something like that together. I had to scoff at that as this happens all the time at Goodwill. Half the time they don't even know what they are pricing so they just put some ridiculous price on it in order to keep their production numbers up. That's a whole other story that should be written. He wanted to know how much money I had on me. I did not know how much I had and told him if he wanted to know he could count and I slid my wallet and pocket of papers over to him to count. He then asked me to sign some paperwork stating the items in question and basically an admission of willfull theft, a trespassing notice banning me from all Goodwill stores and another paper that had some civil penalty information on it. I looked over the papers and told him I was uncomfortable with them because of the list of items was inaccurate and by signing I would be admitting guilt to willfull theft. I told him I could not sign them. I tried to take a picture of the items in question and the forms but he got upset with me saying Goodwill has a no photo policy. I laughed at that and asked if he was going to provide me of copy of these forms and he said no. I tried again to photo them and he tried to cover my phone and told me he was going to take it away. I then figured I had better start writing some notes on what was going on and asked for a sheet of paper to write on. He refused me due to my lack of co-operation. I was able to find enough paper in my wallet to document the series of events. It was getting kind of ridiculous at this point. He left the room I guess to call the police and they arrived a bit later. He also said he needed to take a photograph of me which I made the comment " but Goodwill has a no photo policy" and told him good luck. He did not get the photo.

The police arrived and arrested me. The officer asked me what happened and I told him. He then asked me if I had any weapons on my person. I told him just a small leatherman tool. He ask to go through my items to count my money. When doing this I emptied my pockets and had three sets of keys, cell phone charger, headphones, a couple of batteries, lots of papers and the satellite radio remote. He looked a the remote and ask the Goodwill guy if it was theirs and he said it was because it had a sticker on it with a two day old date. I told him that it came from the outlet store I had been at most of the day. Goodwill guy said he did not believe me as Goodwill does not ship items to the outlet for at least three weeks. I told him that they get things down at the outlet with dates sometime within a day and that I probably had something else in my van that could show him that. He blew that off and the officer then said that the $2.99 price tag on the remote would change the charge from third degree theft to second degree theft because the value of the items had gone over $50.00. I disputed that and pointed out that the Goodwill guy had separated two items earlier and put a $19.99 on the unmarked item. He basically was using the price sticker against me on my remote but not considering the lack of a price sticker on the network card. The officer noted my frustration with this and decided to confiscate all the items in question as evidence. We then left the store with me in cuffs.

The police officer was very nice, He tried to see if I could just be cited and released rather than taken downtown to jail because I had Gonzo with me. He could not get an OK on that so he let me call someone to come pick up Gonzo so he would not have to go to the pound. I was very thankful for that. The officer waited for my friend to show up and then took me to jail. He was very professional, not judgemental and just nice. I wish all police officers were like this guy.