A woman who dined at a California restaurant said she was left shocked and angry when she discovered a security camera placed under the bar that would be pointed “straight up” the women’s skirts, sparking fierce opposition from restaurant owners.
“I feel like it was incredibly hidden,” Lindsay Lahargoue told CBS News.
Lahargoue told the outlet that she and her husband were dining at Sampino’s Kitchen in Sacramento on July 6 when she bent down to hang her bag from a hook on the bar and saw a white security camera hanging on the wall of the bar.
“It would be aimed right at my skirt,” Lahargoue said of the placement of other cameras.
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Sampinos Kitchen at Joe Marty’s in Sacramento (Google Maps)
The woman said she took the camera to the bartender, who reportedly replied that they were unaware of the camera and brought the owner of the restaurant out to speak to Lahargoue. The woman said her conversation with the owner of the restaurant turned hostile and the couple was kicked out of the restaurant.
The owners have since resisted concerns about the camera, arguing that it has not been in use since the pandemic. Gaby Sampino, one of the restaurant’s owners, posted on Facebook that the camera was installed during the pandemic, when diners were not allowed in restaurants, to monitor the outdoor crosswalk amid spikes in crime.
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“During covid, while we had no indoor seating and no bar stools at the bar, the camera was placed there to monitor the crosswalk,” Sampino wrote, according to CBS News. “We had a lot of incidents of burglary and theft when our kids were manning the front and we were trapped in the kitchen. Once eating inside was allowed, we shut it down.”
Sampino continued that the monitor with security camera footage is near the bar and “there’s no image coming out of that camera”.
A security camera at a Sacrameto restaurant raised concerns. (Getty Images)
“We should have removed it instead of just turning it off and we apologize for scaring anyone. It wasn’t our intention at all, it’s just something that has escaped our minds,” Sampino continued.
An attorney representing the restaurant’s owners added in a statement to CBS News that Lahargoue’s claims are “absolutely false.”
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“It has come to the attention of Sampino’s Kitchen at Joe Marty’s Italian Restaurant & Bar that an individual who was in the restaurant on July 6, 2023 is making allegations that customers have been inappropriately recorded by a camera in the restaurant. This is absolutely false . ” said attorney Dillon Fleming. “The camera in question was unusable and this was confirmed by law enforcement. This was also explained to the respective patron and verified by several witnesses.”
The State Capitol in Sacrameto, California (Universal Images group via Getty Images)
Lahargoue has since objected to the restaurant owners’ explanation, saying she wants proof that the camera can even capture street footage from the bar location.
“My expectation of privacy exceeds his expectation of surveillance,” she said, explaining that she was a victim of sexual assault and that the incident “has shot me into the most extreme PTSD, anxiety.”
Police determined that the camera had not been recording and had not been functioning for the past 24 hours at the time of the investigation, according to CBS News.
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Sampino’s Kitchen and Fleming did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for additional comment Sunday morning.
Restaurant under fire after COVID crime-era security camera sneaks into customer
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