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We had a kid stopped for stealing from someone in our store. Our LP lady stopped him and had the police there pretty quick. We asked if the police could search him and they said no because they had no evidence and no witness that he did it, but they did say our LP manager could search him since he's on our property.

I would assume they would be pretty dumb to stop you physically without knowing for sure you have something on you. Otherwise the cost of a lawsuit is too high.
Our company goes waaaaaay overboard on making sure they don't get sued.
 
I caught shoplifters for a major retailer for a bit as a young man after I got out of the army. ORS gives the authority to make a citizens arrest when a crime is committed in your presence, and to use reasonable force to apprehend someone who resists your lawful detention.

So that's what we did. I laid hands on many, many people... detained them against their will, with lots of force if necessary, handcuffed them, drug them to and kept them in a locked room, held them for police. Worst case, anyway... most just complied with my commands. You can do all that.. and in the words of a Portland cop in response to a particular shoplifter's inquiry about how much authority I had to do what I did, "in this store, on this property, he has more 'authority' than I do."

Most security gigs are, as the other guy said, "observe and report." That's not a legal thing, it's a company policy thing. But Loss Prevention is a little different... they don't wear uniforms, they actually go through quite a bit of professional training, and have no problem going hands on if they need to.

And LP doesn't make mistakes often. Nobody is going to tackle you, question you, or even wonder about you just because you have a bulge under your clothes. If he happens to see you walking out of his store, AND you look like the type to steal, he might chuckle and think to himself it's cool, I'll probably get you next time.

As mentioned, the liability is huge. If you're wrong, and you do something outside of store policy (and store policy is INCREDIBLY CYA, so if you're wrong, its BECAUSE you went out of policy), you get sued - every time, and your store doesn't back you up. So you make damn sure you are always right. There's no guessing. You are either 100% positive, or you let it go. Period. I was only wrong once, in hundreds of arrests, and it was a pretty justifiable error - the dude had made an exchange, and the cashier stupidly told him "just go get the other one off the shelf and leave." Uh, no... that's how you get people arrested for shoplifting wrongly. I wasn't sued (I hadn't broken policy, so the store would have had to pick that up anyway).
 
I don't shoplift, so any accusation made against me would be false or in error.

Since I carry concealed, I have an obligation to go to any lengths necessary to avoid a physical confrontation that could escalate. That means that if a store security person ever tried to detain me, I would probably cooperate to the extent of being willing to voluntarily remain there, until the police arrived. The inconvenience of being temporarily delayed is preferable to the risks involved in getting into a scuffle with an overzealous mall cop while being armed. My "cooperation" would be limited to standing and waiting in a public area with witnesses present; I would not consent to being handcuffed or taken away and locked in a room and would use all necessary force to prevent that from happening.
 
YouTube has some cool videos of how they deal with shoplifters in Canada. The laws there are far more lenient in regards to the ability of store security to use force to detain shoplifters. I for one have no problem with security pounding the snot out of some lowlife thief who wont submit to being arrested. You don't see it here very often due to liability concerns but apparently it is much harder for thieves up there to sue stores for excessive use of force.
 
Perhaps we're just more discreet about it... I had several leave in ambulances.

Never had any issues with excessive force - some just needed a solid pounding to reach that "reasonable force necessary to detain" criteria. You wouldn't believe how hard some guys would fight for a backpack full of Sonicare toothbrushes.
 

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