Justice is served! :D In a wussy retail approved way.. (Shoplifting adventures)

[flyonthewall]

So Mrs. AP/LP/Security head person/bad ass returned a few display items this morning to our department. I said, "Ah, another toddler with sticky fingers?" In a good natured way. Mrs. Security Bad Ass responded with "No, this was an adult. I found this in her purse. She also had swiped some smaller items from their packaging and put them in her purse." Me = I thought that security wasn't allowed to search bags. Mrs. Bad Ass told me that if they saw someone take something and there are witnesses and security footage, they can search people's things but not by force. The lady let security search her and escort far into the back of house, where security has their lair.

After the interrogation, she wasn't allowed on the sales floor again. She was led by two store security guards and two "mall cops" through the back hallways to her car.


I asked why the cops weren't called and she said it was because the woman hadn't stollen enough for the cops to come out. (Magic numbers!) She had stollen little, extremely petty things. Things that a small child would steal at preschool. Mostly stealing things out of packages that would then have to be removed from stock because they were unsellable.

At least she was properly humiliated and grilled. (Mrs. Security Bad Ass is ex-military and has interrogation training.) And we got our stuff back! Sadly, that's the best we can hope for in cases like this. I was watching Aladdin a few weeks ago and thinking how deprived contemporary retail is. We can't beat the shit out of thieves and wave knives around like they did back in the day.


This situation fractionally restored my faith in retail security. My expectations were so low, it wasn't very hard for them to be surpassed.


What does you store do to thieves?

[eltf177]

Was the banhammer dropped? One hopes it was...

Can she be banned from the entire mall/shopping center?

[drjonah]

At my Dollar Admiral, the rule is it's not shoplifting until they actually LEAVE the store. We are not allowed to detain but we can call the police and they can handle the matter once the shoplifter actually walks out. In the tiny town my store is in, the police will arrest you for shoplifting, doesn't matter if it's 50 cents or 50 dollars. AND if you are busted you are banned from the store for life.

However since we have like 50 million stores, it's pretty much impossible to enforce the ban.

[RealUnimportant]

Over here at least, that's not just a rule - it's the law. It's not theft until you actually (attempt to) take it off the premises. Makes for some interesting scenes outside the most unlikely stores sometimes!

[MoonCat]

At my Dollar Admiral, the rule is it's not shoplifting until they actually LEAVE the store. We are not allowed to detain but we can call the police and they can handle the matter once the shoplifter actually walks out. In the tiny town my store is in, the police will arrest you for shoplifting, doesn't matter if it's 50 cents or 50 dollars. AND if you are busted you are banned from the store for life.

However since we have like 50 million stores, it's pretty much impossible to enforce the ban.

Always reminds me of the idiot who was arrested in a nearby town a few years ago for shoplifting. Somehow she had gotten the idea that once you leave the store, the store loss prevention people aren't allowed to stop you. Apparently she screamed her head off when they grabbed her the moment she passed the doors, yelling that they couldn't detain her because she was outside the store. They weren't impressed with her backwards reasoning.

[notalwaysright]

Since we have no loss prevention in the form of humans, we just lock everything up. After our last inventory, we took a bunch of stuff and locked it in cages behind the registers. We always had some stuff there, like the nice scissors, but now we have way more. Also, we have locked pegs. But! We used to keep our sewing machines locked up, and now we don't. So if someone grabs one and walks straight out the doors, we can do nothing but watch them go, and maybe ask if they need help with anything.

[Enjis]

At my store, the thief had to a) hide the item on their person (or in their bags/stroller/cart) in some way and b) pass by a number of register stands, before they could be approached and apprehended by security. They did not have to actually leave the store.
The reason for this was that if they passed by at least one register stand, they had ample opportunity to pay for the item/s, and they cannot use the excuse that 'I was going to pay for that!'.
And believe me, security members waited until they saw the thief get enough items to make a good theft report.
The only sad thing was that we salespeople were not allowed to make reports on what we saw...the security people had to witness the theft themselves, as only they could testify in court. At best, if we witnessed something, we could call security and get them to watch the thief as they made their way around the store. It usually was okay tho, as most thieves were greedy and stole more than one item.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

At my Dollar Admiral, the rule is it's not shoplifting until they actually LEAVE the store.

Over here at least, that's not just a rule - it's the law. It's not theft until you actually (attempt to) take it off the premises.

At the swamp, LP used to consider it shoplifting if the subject passed all possible points of sale without attempting to pay for what they had hidden on them.

We have two entrances at the front of the store and a door to the strip mall some distance off to the side. There were times when LP stopped somebody who was still in the store but close to the mall door, because by that time they had passed all the cash registers and the service desk and it was assumed they were just going to keep going anyway.

AFAIK no shoplifters contested this.

[raudf]

At the Mart of Wal I worked at the policy was dependent of if the store manager or the assistant store manager was in charge for the day. The store manager was "leave the store." The assistant store manager was of the "they passed all points of sale and are at the security pylons." LP rotated between three or four stores in three cities, but the ones I spoke to preferred the assistant store manager's approach.

LP were the only ones that any ability to stop a shoplifter. Otherwise, we used very aggressive "Can I help you find anything?"

[judecat]

Orange apron store policy was to "customer service them to death" until the LP was called.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

One of my former LP people had a great way of mind-fucking shoplifters.

If she knew somebody had a particular item concealed on them, she'd go grab that same item off the shelf and walk past the subject, holding the item, Glare of Death™ firmly plastered on her face.

[flyonthewall]

One of my former LP people had a great way of mind-fucking shoplifters.

If she knew somebody had a particular item concealed on them, she'd go grab that same item off the shelf and walk past the subject, holding the item, Glare of Death™ firmly plastered on her face.

That's brilliant!

Did they put the item back or at least react in a creeped out way?

[An Haddock]

I remember a friend of mine told me about going into the local Clover (remember that, fellow old people?) with another friend of mine and the LP guy was following them around the whole time. Because they had long hair and were wearing metal t-shirts.

He was very obvious, too - carrying a walkie talkie in a clear plastic bag and basically tailing them within a few of them.

They finally got pissed off and started discussing the security guard they had to kill at JC Penny the month before. The LP guy got all pissy with them and got in their faces, telling them that wasn't funny. They responded that they didn't think getting profiled by a poor excuse for a rent-a-cop was very funny either and they would be taking his unwarranted harrassment up with the store manager.

The one guy is vindictive enough he would do that, too, but I don't recall if he actually went through with it. The threat must have helped because the LP guy finally backed off and left them alone... or at least kept a respectable distance.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

That's brilliant!

Did they put the item back or at least react in a creeped out way?

All I remember is she said she recovered a lot of merchandise that way. And that was the point; to get the stuff back before it left the store.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I remember a friend of mine told me about going into the local Clover (remember that, fellow old people?) with another friend of mine and the LP guy was following them around the whole time. Because they had long hair and were wearing metal t-shirts.

He was very obvious, too - carrying a walkie talkie in a clear plastic bag and basically tailing them within a few of them.

They finally got pissed off and started discussing the security guard they had to kill at JC Penny the month before. The LP guy got all pissy with them and got in their faces, telling them that wasn't funny. They responded that they didn't think getting profiled by a poor excuse for a rent-a-cop was very funny either and they would be taking his unwarranted harrassment up with the store manager.

The one guy is vindictive enough he would do that, too, but I don't recall if he actually went through with it. The threat must have helped because the LP guy finally backed off and left them alone... or at least kept a respectable distance.

I've had that happen to me before, too, for the same reasons; once, a security guard followed me all over the store, very obviously. Meanwhile, while he's following the girl with dyed hair and the Marilyn Manson t-shirt, a little old lady is stuffing merchandise into her trolley on wheels.

Where I work, all shoplifters get the police called on them and are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. They're also banned. Lots of shoplifters are actually surprised at this.