How a shopping trip to Home Depot went very wrong

All he wanted on a recent Saturday was to return a faucet he’d earlier purchased and pick up a new lock for his front door. So he headed to a Home Depot in Richmond Hill. Checked out and paid, left the store. Heading for his car in the parking lot, Tayefi noticed a man walking towards him and then another. They claimed to be security guards and accused Tayefi of swiping a pair of pliers along with some other items.

Tayefi said they were mistaken and who are you guys anyway? Because they weren’t in uniform, never showed any I.D. But they did try to block Tayefi from leaving, though he navigated around them and drove away.

Within minutes of getting home, there was a knock on the door. Standing there: Four York Region police officers. On the driveway: Three police cars. Like he was some kind of dangerous felon.

“They said, there’s a report you stole something from Home Depot,’’ Tayefi recounts to the Star. Huh? “I showed them the door lock I bought and also the receipt.’’ But there’s been this report of theft, see, the cops countered, purloined goods with an estimated value of around $100.

“Seriously, you’re here for a hundred bucks? Even if I took it, which I didn’t, you have to send four officers and three police cars?

“They told me I had two choices. Either I return the stuff or we have to charge you.’’

There’s been a mistake, insisted Tayefi, who is an employee of the Star. Perhaps he physically resembled a suspect? Have you checked the security cameras? “That’ll prove I never stole anything.’’

It might seem a small matter amidst urban crime but it was a rather big deal for Tayefi. And what a ridiculous waste of resources when police departments are all the time complaining about being understaffed, hard-pressed to respond to urgent call-outs.

Though Tayefi describes the officers as polite — he’s not complaining about their attitude — the situation just got tenser and weirder. “I’m not saying they weren’t nice. I’m saying it wasn’t appropriate. Four cops, three cars? Handcuffs?’’

One of the cops did set out to speak with the Home Depot security guards. Who were, in fact, “loss-prevention employees,’’ hired from an outside agency, who have no authority to make an arrest. They doubled down on fingering Tayefi. When that officer returned, he walked towards Tayefi, extending his arm. “I thought he wanted to shake my hand. Instead he put me in handcuffs, then they put in the police car. My neighbours are watching all this.’’ Tayefi was mortified.

“Just give back the stuff and you won’t be charged,’’ Tayefi was told. “But I didn’t take anything! So they charged me.’’

Couple of hours later, two of the officers were back at his house. “They’re, like, yeah, your charges are being dropped.’’

Turns out, after store management viewed the video, they “lost’’ Tayefi in the footage, couldn’t verify he’d swiped a damn thing, only that some items had gone missing. Tayefi wasn’t buying it. “I told the cops, you know this is a lie, right? I’m sure they’ve checked the cameras and they know it wasn’t me. The cop actually agreed.’’

Tayefi delivered the officers a lecture about how his friend recently had his car stolen from his driveway and it took hours for them to respond. Yet here they were, a mass of them arrayed, hot on the immediate trail of allegedly stolen pliers. Sheesh.

Tayefi called a lawyer and was informed the officers could have just sent him a notice, told him to come to the police station. Why such a show of force? Further, the lawyer explained that even though the charge was dropped, that info would come up if ever Tayefi was stopped by cops again, for whatever reason, even a driving infraction. He’d have to explain and explain.

Twice in the following days, Tayefi returned to the store, hoping for at least an apology, maybe some kind of documentation proving his innocence. Nope. He did subsequently receive a phone call from a woman at the agency who said the company never issued such letters of non-criminality. Tayefi was also concerned that loss prevention officers, with no uniform or I.D., could easily be impersonated by real criminals scamming customers. “It’s such a strange framework and people could take advantage of it.’’

A Home Depot spokesperson says they have apologized to Tayefi and that "while I can’t get into the specifics around our loss-prevention protocols, I can tell you we have processes in place for identifying and apprehending shoplifters, and we immediately launched an investigation to see if that process was followed in this case."

York Regional Police did confirm the incident, as well. “The officers were acting on the information provided by the Loss Prevention officers,’’ spokesperson Const. Lisa Moskaluk told the Star in an email. “In this case, it was a theft in progress. The reason for more than one officer to go to a home? We ride alone in our vehicles, unless it is an officer with a coach officer. For safety reasons, we do not respond to incidents alone.

“It is our policy to investigate all reports of crime, which is why the officers attended the individual’s home shortly after the offense occurred. As soon as further information became available, it appears the officers acted correctly and withdrew the charge immediately.’’

I remember another case, from another winter’s night dreary years ago, also involving York Region officers, who turned up at the home of a family where the 17-year-old son had been pulled over for investigation of a driving offence — a week earlier. That did not turn out well, no harm intended and no hard feelings. That doorstep encounter escalated into shots fired mayhem — the boy’s father killed, the teen seriously wounded. Three cops (one from Durham Region) were ultimately acquitted in court on all charges, including aggravated assault and second-degree murder.

Sometimes a little thing escalates suddenly into a very big disastrous thing.

This Tayefi arrest was an unnecessary and grotesquely overdone thing.