Busted in dressing room with police

[misti]

Hi all,

I want to tell you a story of what happened to me today, because I can't tell anybody else. Please read it because it could happen to most of you some day! Sorry it's quite long, but every detail could help you in such situations..

Remember my thread Dressing room experiment ?

Well, of course I didn't want this to get my last pics now I found that great mixed (!) dressing room, so I went there a couple of times. So Today. I have a 512 MB SD and a 16 MB card and someone here had given the suggestion to have some "innocent" pics on another memory card - a thing I normally don't do, but today I took two pics of places that could be of interest for a tourist before I went straightly to the dressing rooms.. and this was a wise decision !

After being there for about an hour shooting to the left and to the right cabin about 60 pics, I heard that some customers must have noticed me by looking below the cabins from outside (they probably just wanted to see if there's somebody inside) and they immediately informed a woman working there. Luckily I heard them saying "the man there takes photos, many of them!" so I could prepare myself.

Starting now, I made new plans about what to do every minute. At first I took of my trousers so that anyone who would come inside must say sorry and leave. Then I thought this could be a bad idea, so I plugged the innocent SD card with trembling hands in and left the cabin hoping no one would stop me just walking out of the shop.
The female employee already called for her male co-worker but no one had arrived yet, so she asked me if I could stay. So we walked a few metres off and I almost forgot to ask why we did :-) - Well, I asked a bit late why I had to stay and she just said - smiling - "nothing serious.." - great acting! I almoste belived her..
This was the time I could have escaped easily, but all the cameras would record me and this would be like I admitted the crime.

No one of her co-workers arrived so she asked politley If I would follow her, and she escorted me to their office. I thought my SD card trick would be safe enough but then I was informed that they had already called the police.
Man! The SD card with all thouse pics of evidence was right in the pocket of my trousers! And police have the right to force you to show the contents of your pockets in Germany. So what to do? I had to get rid of this SD card.
I was getting uncomfortable and first tried to put it under the cover of my mobile phone.. but it didn't work. And they immediately noticed I tried somehting but just thought I would delete the pics. "I couldn't with my mobile eh?" I said and gave up. Then I put the card into my bagpack because there were some books inside and I thought perhaps they wouldn't look careful enough there.
Then I sat down on the opposite side of the room, hoping police wouldn't at all notice that this bagpack belongs to me. But thousands of thoughts rushed through my head and I was trembling because if the police would find the card this could get me up to 1 or 2 years of prison here in Germany
So I fetched the card and hid it in my calculator inside my bagpack. The two workers chatted and didn't really mind what I was doing. After a few minutes (police could arrive every moment) I thought they HAD to look through everything in my bagpack, also in my calculator and I was going straight into jail. So I gave up this attempt also and thought about dumping the card into their trash-can hoping no one would notice it. But the two employees were sitting right in front of the only one in this little office! I couldn't dump it without being very conspicuous. So I had the card back in my jeans ...
Finally I had a great idea.. I walked two steps - trying to look like I was looking around the office - walked to an open cupboard near the door with lots of papers in it and put the card there. So I sat back and police could have checked everything which belonged to me and wouldn't find anything!

Okay, next problem: What if they took me with them and I had no chance to get back the card? Some employee would find it tomorrow and of course they would know whom this SD card belongs when checking the content!

Well, before I could handle this police arrived and the employees accused me of taking pics in dressing rooms and they said they had two witnesses and the phone number of one. Luckily no one of the staff in person did see me taking pics, and they misunderstood the witness' words and thought I had used flash. Aha. (Of couse I use flash when taking secret pictures in dressing rooms..) The police-woman asked me to show how I could do flash with my cam. I didn't know why but I showed her how and showed her the innocent pics. I told the camera had fallen down and broken into parts (battery..) and I just took it up and they must have misunderstood this. Second bonus for me: They didn't have the name of the girl I was busted shooting. "No claimant, no accusal" police said.

So they didn't even ask if I had another camera in my huge bagpack! Nor did they take my SD card for analysis although they thought I could have deleted the pics! So I felt much safer now and I told the police officer politely that they should know for their future, that delete photos can sometimes be restored easily. Everyone couldn't get this I shook hands also politely with everyone of the staff who were pretty sure I was guilty but they couldn't do anything about it. I walked behind the police out of the office stretching my arm to the cupboard near the door, picked up my "evil" card and left. They didn't notice, perhaps they had all to shake their heads.

To be a real asshole I turned around and asked through the door if I was allowed to buy the T-Shirt I was having with me in the dressing room. What should they say, I was allowed to and so I bought it.

Of course police wants to make a note in my (formerly not exitsting) file, and I shouldn't get caught with anything similar in the future, so the pics I took till now will be all dressing room pics for a while.
But I have a bunch left I didn't post... so look forward to see part 2, 3 and perhaps 4 of "Dressing room experiment".

And BE CAREFUL ! This was real close and if I hadn't been that lucky the whole thing could have ended completely different !

[mammariecammery]

man, you're so lucky....I don't know how i'd hold up in such a situation, it's a good thing you could think logically, and weigh up ALL of your options, because if you didn't you would have been caught for sure.....could you really have went to jail for 1 - 2 years? is that just in Germany? Anyway, thanks for writing about this experience in such great detail, had me in suspense lol.....hopefully you've learnt from it for the future.....

[athomeinspace]

damn that must have been crazy scary

[johnnyeye]

ddddeeeeeaaaammmmnnnnn!!! 1 to 2 YEARS!!!
I would officially like to nominate you BIGGEST BALLS OF THE YEAR!! you rock dude, for even taking the pics in the first place, for grabbing the memory card back on your way out, and for rubbing it in by asking about the shirt! And good job for having the 'non'evil' memory card handy just so you could show the cops and get off that much faster!!!
i will be looking out for more posts from you soon!

[angrypillz]

Did you manage any upskirts pics of the shop assistant as she led you off?

[mutant]

f*****ck man!
you're lucky. cool thinking under pressure!

god must like you

[blash]

omg? youre from germany? well i am too! why didnt you just walk away? denkst du die rufen ne fahndung nach einem aus der beschuldigt wird paar voyeurbilder gemacht zu haben? das nächste mal hau einfach ab und schmeiss die karte dann irgendwo weg.

[Boxer3]

Take that as a sign.......that type of shooting is a one way ticket to jail, and it will fuck up your life.....what's wrong with being a real candid street shooter and not doing spy peeping tom stuff? It's your decision though....but if you continue to do that stuff, I won't feel sorry for you when you go down.

[RD313]

Yeah..... shooting inside a mall? Shooting in a dressing room? Yeah, that's crazy scary. Like, back when all of this high-tech voyeurism stuff was new, you could say that something like this would take balls, but nowadays, with all the media exposure, something like this is just too risky to be worth it.

You are such a lucky man... I mean, do you know how close you came to the fray? My suggestion is to NEVER shoot in that mall again.

Oh, and if you must continue doing this (probably in a different city, too) , then you might want to refine your technique. Malls don't usually target voyeurs, in fact, most people are usually LATE upon arriving to the conclusion.

Figure out how to do what you're doing faster, more cleanly, and without being exposed. Learn to act non-conspicuous, and learn to do what you're doing without anyone ever seeing you (let alone, suspecting you)

Far too often on this board, someone will post a shot and say "She busted me in this photo" then everyone applauds. "Oh yay, you got caught!"

You probably won't want to be caught again : the police have already been alerted to you. So, either you quit doing this, or figure out how to never get caught again.

[t.v.s]

hehehe....:-)..something like that happened to me also..
i said that's it i'm quitin' this voyer adventures...i was scared, but TWO months later i was back at it again'... but never went to that store ever again.
this happened about 4 o 5 years ago.
good luck..n be carefullll...
thanks 4 sharin' your exp...