There are two legal pathways you need to understand; The difference between criminal and civil processes. You may be facing both but not necessarily. This is the decision of the arresting Loss Prevention personnel (so you might want to suck up a little as their report will determine the size of your civil fine down the road and also could affect the decision to contact police or not.
*IF THE POLICE WERE NOT INVOLVED YOU ONLY NEED TO HANDLE THE CIVIL PORTION*
Civil
The option in which Loss Prevention chooses to not contact police and release you
You have heard that you may just get a "citation" or a "ticket". However, Loss Prevention (or any non-law enforcement personnel) are not able to issue "citations" whatsoever. What they do have a right to do is issue a Civil Demand (some people refer to this as legal extortion).
A Civil Demand.
First the store forwards a written report of what you stole, how you stole it, why you claimed to have stolen it, and all other behavior you exhibited during the time you were in the store. It also includes the dollar value of merchandise and if it was damaged or re-saleable. Other things are taken into account such as the time it took to deal with you (LP has to be paid for this and you will be reimbursing them). The store's attorneys then receive this report and analyze it. The result is a huge bill that you receive in the mail (between $50-$1000). CA Penal Code 490.5
Do you have to pay the bill? What are your other options?
The Civil Demand bill is not exactly legally binding. LP Agents will try to scare you by saying that if you don't pay you will get arrested, have a warrant dropped on your name, destroy your credit or one of several other lies.
What will actually happen if you don't pay?
Two things:
1) You will receive additional letters demanding payment and threatening higher fines.
2) The store now has the legal right to subpoena you to civil court and attempt to sue you there. But will they? Is it worth it? Nope. It is EXTREMELY unlikely that they will ever waste their time to go to civil court just to end up with a very small financial award (of which they keep only a percentage) that doesn't even compensate them for their gas to court and back. So instead they send out mass amounts of threatening letters hoping they can scare enough people into paying (legal extortion) larger amounts willingly. And the people that ignore the letters? Oh well! Onto the next gullible thief.
So NOW what do you do?
You can decide to do a few different things:
A) Pay the fine and be done with it
Pro- The Civil portion of this situation is done. If the police were not called, the whole thing is done.
Con-You pay a lot of money you may not have needed to pay.
B) Ignore the fine and hope it goes away.
Pro- You don't pay any money and if the situation disappears you've basically won
Con- You may have lingering stress or worry regarding the matter
C) Send a smaller amount of money and request to settle.
Pro- You may be able to make the whole situation go away with a much smaller amount than requested.
Con- Some attorneys believe this kills your chance at pleading innocent (Why would an innocent person pay?)
Trespass
You may have been informed that you are now banned from all stores owned by the company from which you stole. Your photograph will be taken. It is attached to a trespass form that you will be asked to sign. (Deciding to not cooperate with this process could be the deciding factor if police are involved or not). Once you have signed the paper and left the property (or refuse to leave in the first place) you can be arrested by police or citizen's for trespassing.
Part 2: Criminal Charges (coming soon)
