For many students, Stanford Shopping Center is a familiar weekend spot to shop, eat, and hang out with friends. But after a Macy’s security guard was charged with filming young girls through in-store security cameras, some are rethinking how safe they feel in places where surveillance is supposed to protect them.
According to The Almanac, 20-year-old Menlo Park resident Bernardo Garcia, who worked as a loss prevention officer at the Macy’s at Stanford Shopping Center, was arrested by Palo Alto police on April 7 after an eight-month investigation. Garcia was charged with felony possession of more than 600 obscene images of minors and two misdemeanor counts of using a concealed camera to invade someone’s privacy. Investigators said they found evidence that Garcia used Macy’s security cameras to zoom in on underage girls inside the store.
Prosecutors allege Garcia used a hidden security camera to look under or through the clothing of at least two young girls on July 4 and 5, 2025. Macy’s told NBC Bay Area that customer safety is its “top priority” and that the company was cooperating with Palo Alto police. Garcia is set to return to court in June for a plea hearing.
Student Reactions
For some students, the allegations felt especially unsettling due to the proximity of Stanford Shopping Center and visits being a part of their routine. Junior Aleah Nelson goes to the mall around three times a month with friends. She occasionally visits Macy’s and recently stopped by to try on prom dresses. When she heard about the case, her initial reaction was disgust. “It’s really disgusting, because it’s very possible that that could be me,” she said.
Freshman Clare Duran goes to Stanford Shopping Center and often visits Macy’s, and found the news frightening. “It’s crazy [that] someone did that,” she said. “Scary the fact that I’m a minor and I’ve been there before.” Although she was not completely surprised that something like this could happen, knowing it happened close to M-A made it feel more alarming.
The allegations have made Duran more wary of retail security. “It changes the way I trust employers to hire their security guards,” she said.
The case also called into question how both students thought about spaces where shoppers expect more privacy. Nelson says she feels less safe in areas like dressing rooms and is now less likely to go to Macy’s to try on clothes.
She also questioned how stores handle surveillance, saying hidden cameras feel more unsettling than reassuring. “It’s a little weird when cameras are kind of hiding and they try to cover them up, because then it’s kind of suspicious, and it just feels like where are you trying to capture, because I feel like part of the safety of cameras is having them visible so that people can tell that they’re being watched,” Nelson said.
An anonymous M-A alumnus and former Macy’s employee explained that loss prevention operated separately from regular retail employees. “I think we had a general idea that there [were] people watching the cameras, but we didn’t really think about it beyond that,” they said.
According to them, loss prevention employees had their separate space, while regular sales employees did not have access to the cameras or detailed knowledge of who was watching the footage. “They had their own room and office with all the security cameras in it,” the alumnus said.
The alumnus didn’t notice anything unusual or suspicious while working at Macy’s. Still, their experience points to how much of store surveillance happens out of view, even for employees working on the sales floor. For student shoppers, cameras may seem like a familiar part of mall security, but who is watching, and how closely that access is supervised, is less obvious.
Police Response
Palo Alto police reported that the investigation began after the department received a referral from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on Aug. 1, 2025. According to Public Affairs Manager David Lee, detectives identified 20-year-old Menlo Park resident Bernardo Garcia as a suspect and served a search warrant on Oct. 22, 2025. Police later obtained an arrest warrant on April 6, 2026, and Garcia was booked into Santa Clara County Main Jail. The charges were one felony count of possessing obscene material involving minors and two misdemeanor counts of invasion of privacy.
While the police response provided a timeline of the investigation, there are limits to what authorities can disclose while a case is ongoing. The department was not seeking additional public tips at this time and declined to comment on whether victims had been identified or notified. When asked whether PAPD has a standard procedure for notifying a business, licensing agency, or the public when an investigation involves the alleged misuse of a private business’s surveillance system, Lee pointed to a gray area between criminal investigation and private company policy. “We do not have a standard procedure for alleged misuse of a private business’ surveillance system,” Lee said.
Lack of License
The status of Garcia’s security guard license was an important part of the case. The Almanac reported that state records showed his license expired in September 2025, while police records showed he continued working for Macy’s through the end of October.
The Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, or BSIS, confirmed to the M-A Chronicle that Garcia previously held a security guard license, but that it was no longer active by the time police issued a search warrant for his Menlo Park home in October 2025. “License G6714414 [Garcia’s] expired and was not renewed on September 30, 2025,” BSIS spokesperson Kenneth Wright said.
Working as a security guard in California without a current, BSIS-issued license is illegal. However, oversight is often weak and fails to capture expired licenses.
While the allegations have not completely changed Stanford Shopping Center from a familiar hangout spot into a place to avoid, they have made the mall feel less secure for some students and turned a security system once seen as protective into something more questionable.
