A woman dining at a California restaurant said she was left shocked and angry when she discovered a security camera positioned under the bar that “would be directed right up” women’s skirts, sparking fierce pushback from restaurant owners.
“I feel like it was incredibly concealed,” 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 place her purse on a hook on the bar and noticed a white security camera secured on the bar’s wall.
“It would be directed right up my skirt,” Lahargoue said of other camera’s placement.
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“During covid while we had no indoor seating and no barstools at bar, the camera was placed there to keep an eye on the crosswalk,” Sampino wrote, according to CBS News. “We had many incidents of break-ins and theft when our kids were manning the front and we were stuck in the kitchen. As soon as indoor dining was allowed we turned it off.”
Sampino continued that the monitor showing security camera footage is located near the bar and “there is no feed coming from that camera.”
“It has come to the attention of Sampino’s Kitchen at Joe Marty’s Italian Restaurant & Bar that a person who was in the restaurant on July 6, 2023, is making allegations that patrons were inappropriately recorded by a camera in the restaurant. This is absolutely false,” attorney Dillon Fleming said. “The camera in question was inoperable and this was confirmed by law enforcement. This was also explained to the patron in question and verified by several witnesses.”
The state Capitol in Sacrameto, California (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Lahargoue has since taken issue with the restaurant owners’ explanations, saying she wants proof the camera could even capture street footage from its location on the bar.
“My expectation of privacy supersedes his expectation of surveillance,” she said, explaining she has been the victim of sexual assault and the incident has “shot me into the most extreme PTSD, anxiety.”
