So ignoring the whole people guarding food (or literally any trash whatsoever) that's been thrown away thing and just focusing on the public health aspect, let's dive into this with a question at...
“Our store team became concerned that area residents would consume the food and risk food borne illness, and they engaged local law enforcement out of an abundance of caution. We apologize for the confusion.”
So ignoring the whole people guarding food (or literally any trash whatsoever) that's been thrown away thing and just focusing on the public health aspect, let's dive into this with a question at the end. Huge swaths of the legal system is based around the legal fiction known as the "reasonable person" (or reasonable [blank] for everything else). A reasonable person is summed up quite succinctly in that link as "a composite of a relevant community's judgement as to how a typical member of said community should behave in situations that might pose a threat of harm." There are thousands of fictional reasonable people; from the reasonable pedestrian (would a person of similar age, intelligence, and experience under the similar circumstances have walked into the intersection at that time), reasonable physician (would a doctor with similar experience have performed the same or similar treatment), reasonable officer (would a cop of similar experience with similar knowledge of the event also shot that unarmed man running away from him), and so on...
The "community" in question here would be individuals willing to dumpster dive for food. It seems obvious that no reasonable person in this community would be under the impression that there are zero risks associated with the consumption of food from a dumpster, regardless of how cold it may be when acquired. As a result these persons would determine on a case by case basis if the consumption of said food to be within an acceptable risk threshold based on their experience. Fred Meyer states they guarded the food out of concern for the area resident's health. The area residents in this case being those individuals willing to dumpster dive for food.
With all that said, the question: Can anyone point me to a lawsuit or criminal action against a grocery store (or any other food establishment for that matter) in which the store was found negligent in their duties to impede a reasonable person from consuming discarded food and contracting a food borne illness from it?
Because if not I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit.
It's the standard ploy where they only want to charge for it. When the freegan thing took off, stores started locking up their dumpsters citing similar reasons, and also conveniently now making it...
It's the standard ploy where they only want to charge for it. When the freegan thing took off, stores started locking up their dumpsters citing similar reasons, and also conveniently now making it illegal to get into the dumpster.
I can't think of any that I've heard about or found with cursory Googling (but IANAL, I'm just a department manager at a grocery store), but that's the exact logic that my company (and the other...
I can't think of any that I've heard about or found with cursory Googling (but IANAL, I'm just a department manager at a grocery store), but that's the exact logic that my company (and the other grocery chain I've worked for) uses to justify locking up our dumpsters and compost bins, at least to us production-level staff.
Grocery chain legal departments (admittedly, probably just like every other company's legal teams) are terrified of being sued, whether it's from people suing from getting sick from dumpster food, people faking injuries in store (this one is by and away the most common that I've seen personally, we get a few every year pulling that shit), or other issues. Given the litigious streak endemic in American society, I wouldn't be surprised if there are a collection of cases that are the source of legal's fears.
Also, at least in my company's (or at least my store specifically) case, anything that's ending up in the dumpsters is spoiled as shit or otherwise undonateable. No matter what, if our coolers go down, all that dairy and meat is getting tossed because those are the hardest thing to guarantee safety on outside of a cooler. My produce? That's getting donated unless it's literally mold filled and rotting.
Granted, we've never guarded our dumpsters (well, the only ones accessible to the general public are our compost bins, our trash is run through a compactor with zero outside access), and we have a vested interest in ensuring people aren't diving in a trash compactor for things.
Most groceries, including Fred Meyers, work with local food banks to donate leftover or unsold food. There's a financial incentive as well as the obvious moral incentive - such donations are...
Most groceries, including Fred Meyers, work with local food banks to donate leftover or unsold food. There's a financial incentive as well as the obvious moral incentive - such donations are tax-deducible, and there's also usually laws preventing groceries from liability when donating through a food bank. They have every reason to want to safely donate old food.
Donating meat and cheese that has been sitting inside of an insulated building without power for 12+ hours to food banks and shelters is highly irresponsible and dangerous. I think trying to prevent others from giving rotten food to the homeless is a good idea. I don't think it's irresponsible for the store employees to have called the police when they "felt the situation was escalating and feared there may be a physical confrontation". I also don't think the police behaved irresponsibly when dealing with a crowd that "refused to have an open dialogue with them and continued to shout insults at the officers and store employees".
aside
“I’m just interacting with officers and trying to get their information"
This has always confused me - it's a requirement for police officer's badge numbers (and henceforth identity) to always be visible, no? Maybe I'm missing something?
I do think this is a (successfully) sensationalist article about someone who (successfully) tried to make a scene. There are very good reasons to dislike and distrust the police system. What happened here is not a good reason, and hinders successful conversation and reform.
Also, power was out in Portland for what, two days? This is completely standard practice, there aren't going to be food shortages, and if anything, food banks are going to have more food than usual from the goods gone stale while less people are in groceries from the snow and power outage.
Workers at the Hollywood West Fred Meyer threw away thousands of perishable items because the store, like many others, had lost power in an outage brought on by the region’s winter storm.
Images on social media showed mountains of packaged meat, cheese and juice, as well as whole turkeys and racks of ribs that had been tossed into two large dumpsters near the store.
So ignoring the whole people guarding food (or literally any trash whatsoever) that's been thrown away thing and just focusing on the public health aspect, let's dive into this with a question at the end. Huge swaths of the legal system is based around the legal fiction known as the "reasonable person" (or reasonable [blank] for everything else). A reasonable person is summed up quite succinctly in that link as "a composite of a relevant community's judgement as to how a typical member of said community should behave in situations that might pose a threat of harm." There are thousands of fictional reasonable people; from the reasonable pedestrian (would a person of similar age, intelligence, and experience under the similar circumstances have walked into the intersection at that time), reasonable physician (would a doctor with similar experience have performed the same or similar treatment), reasonable officer (would a cop of similar experience with similar knowledge of the event also shot that unarmed man running away from him), and so on...
The "community" in question here would be individuals willing to dumpster dive for food. It seems obvious that no reasonable person in this community would be under the impression that there are zero risks associated with the consumption of food from a dumpster, regardless of how cold it may be when acquired. As a result these persons would determine on a case by case basis if the consumption of said food to be within an acceptable risk threshold based on their experience. Fred Meyer states they guarded the food out of concern for the area resident's health. The area residents in this case being those individuals willing to dumpster dive for food.
With all that said, the question: Can anyone point me to a lawsuit or criminal action against a grocery store (or any other food establishment for that matter) in which the store was found negligent in their duties to impede a reasonable person from consuming discarded food and contracting a food borne illness from it?
Because if not I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit.
It's the standard ploy where they only want to charge for it. When the freegan thing took off, stores started locking up their dumpsters citing similar reasons, and also conveniently now making it illegal to get into the dumpster.
I can't think of any that I've heard about or found with cursory Googling (but IANAL, I'm just a department manager at a grocery store), but that's the exact logic that my company (and the other grocery chain I've worked for) uses to justify locking up our dumpsters and compost bins, at least to us production-level staff.
Grocery chain legal departments (admittedly, probably just like every other company's legal teams) are terrified of being sued, whether it's from people suing from getting sick from dumpster food, people faking injuries in store (this one is by and away the most common that I've seen personally, we get a few every year pulling that shit), or other issues. Given the litigious streak endemic in American society, I wouldn't be surprised if there are a collection of cases that are the source of legal's fears.
Also, at least in my company's (or at least my store specifically) case, anything that's ending up in the dumpsters is spoiled as shit or otherwise undonateable. No matter what, if our coolers go down, all that dairy and meat is getting tossed because those are the hardest thing to guarantee safety on outside of a cooler. My produce? That's getting donated unless it's literally mold filled and rotting.
Granted, we've never guarded our dumpsters (well, the only ones accessible to the general public are our compost bins, our trash is run through a compactor with zero outside access), and we have a vested interest in ensuring people aren't diving in a trash compactor for things.
Most groceries, including Fred Meyers, work with local food banks to donate leftover or unsold food. There's a financial incentive as well as the obvious moral incentive - such donations are tax-deducible, and there's also usually laws preventing groceries from liability when donating through a food bank. They have every reason to want to safely donate old food.
Donating meat and cheese that has been sitting inside of an insulated building without power for 12+ hours to food banks and shelters is highly irresponsible and dangerous. I think trying to prevent others from giving rotten food to the homeless is a good idea. I don't think it's irresponsible for the store employees to have called the police when they "felt the situation was escalating and feared there may be a physical confrontation". I also don't think the police behaved irresponsibly when dealing with a crowd that "refused to have an open dialogue with them and continued to shout insults at the officers and store employees".
aside
This has always confused me - it's a requirement for police officer's badge numbers (and henceforth identity) to always be visible, no? Maybe I'm missing something?
I do think this is a (successfully) sensationalist article about someone who (successfully) tried to make a scene. There are very good reasons to dislike and distrust the police system. What happened here is not a good reason, and hinders successful conversation and reform.
Also, power was out in Portland for what, two days? This is completely standard practice, there aren't going to be food shortages, and if anything, food banks are going to have more food than usual from the goods gone stale while less people are in groceries from the snow and power outage.