Ten months of business records does seem like a lot. I wonder what other areas were investigated back that far and that broadly?
@10ofRods-- I'm interested that you feel many businesses would release data about business practices including information about employees (and customers) without a warrant. I would have thought most businesses wouldn't. Have we seen other cases where businesses
volunteered to cough up that much stuff? I know business owners want to see crimes solved like we all do but still, I thought most preferred to see warrants these days.
JMO
The owner of Mad Greek did this (says no such customer came in; if there is any option for her to say there WAS a sighting of BK, by her own rubric, she would have to say so - or do people only say what they want to say to the press?)
Mad Greek definitely confirmed that MM and XK worked there. I suppose some people might say it doesn't matter, as they are deceased, but I don't see that rule written down anywhere - it's just common courtesy to respect the deceased.
But more importantly, business owners (say on TripAdvisor or Yelp) constantly chime in to confirm that a certain person does work at their establishment, that they are a great employees, etc, etc. Sometimes with more information that that.
This is freedom of speech. There's absolutely no law that I know of that says a workplace can't mention that you work there. Where I work and at every school in the US that I know of, the names of staff (often right down to the janitors and security officers) are all publicly displayed. My entire work schedule is online, as is true for millions of teachers (information at most colleges also includes what rooms people are in for most of the day - same at many Pre-K-12 districts).
The customers are different, although in the school system, yep, we do confirm whether a particular person has attended, it's considered non-privileged info (those students are our "customers"). Private businesses could follow that model if they wished - or they can respect customer privacy. I assume that in the DoorDash case, the DoorDash driver was likely an initial suspect. Why wouldn't he be? So was that Uber driver. So was that guy at the food truck (LE has said so, IMO). Some of these people were quickly ruled out, others were not.
For all we know, DoorDash said, "Hey yeah, our drivers want to help you, they might know something, what can we do for you?" And then, LE said, "That's great - but we'll get a warrant to cover our butts in court."
When a businessman was murried on his walk from his business to the bank, near me, many of the bank employees went public with appeals to help find the killers and the bank's corporate office said all employees would voluntarily speak to LE if LE wanted. Same thing happened with the other businesses in the area. Why would there be a reason why a business could not cooperate in a murder investigation?
Naturally, a business could also choose to be tight-lipped but personally, I like the small town cooperation and communication and I am constantly surprised that so many people think "no one should take to the police, ever" is becoming a rubric. We can all talk to police, if we wish. If we are ourselves under investigation, lawyers will tell you not to, but you still can. There's no law against it. And from my perspective, if I'm innocent and can help solve a crime, yep, I'm going to let LE have my video recordings back as far as they go (and I'd do it without a warrant but would understand why LE would get one anyway)
Just my thoughts and opinions. I am entitled to my more community oriented view and IME, many search warrants go to businesses/entities that were going to cooperate anyway. In a case that's still unsolved that I worked on, an electrical company employee was murdered when he went to do something on a house that was being renovated in an isolated place. PGE gave tons of employee information to LE voluntarily. LE found none of it helpful and did not get a warrant to try for more.
Where I live, community complaints against LE (or Fire or EMT) are all public and need no warrant. Disciplinary actions against doctors and nurses are also public. Again, DoorDash did not *have* to cooperate but all I'm saying is that it is possible DoorDash said, "Heck yeah, go through these records and see if any of our drivers noticed a white Elantra."
Why not? What prohibits that action? On what basis could an employee complain or sue? I'm pretty sure that DoorDash would have a contract with each driver that's *very* detailed, but if all that's needed was work schedules - how is that in any way privileged?
IMO.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
