My very first stop...

In early 2003 I was working as a corrections officer for a small suburb of Cleveland. During my time there, it seemed like the majority of people incarcerated in the jail were shoplifters and other petty thieves. I was constantly booking in the "best" of what Cleveland had to offer. Occasionally one of the loss prevention people would have to come back through the jail to hand the people they caught a trespass notice or a civil demand notice (I'll explain this later.) One day, I struck up a conversation with one of the guys about his job and it intrigued me. It sounded like a ton of fun. I inquired about open positions with his company and he informed me that he had a part-time position at the store around the corner. I applied, interviewed, and was hired. For a while, I was working both jobs part time. The store I worked at was in a very quiet suburb so I didn't see any action there at all. During my training, I was sent to another store in a not-so-nice area and was offered an additional 20 hours a week at that store. It promised to be much more active than what I had been used to. I accepted and quit my corrections job. The whole training process took about 2 months.



It was a quiet and cold Sunday afternoon in February and I was working alone in the not-so-nice store. There were very few customers in the store, but even if it had been busy, this "customer" would still have been rather noticeable. He was a short and young male with very unkempt hair and incredibly stained and torn sweat pants. He was wearing a very large over sized black winter coat. While working for this retailer, I had the luxury of a very nice camera system that pretty much allowed me to work a whole case from beginning to end without having to leave the office. Now, I'll take a quick moment to explain one of the common and cardinal rules of loss prevention:



"The Five Steps"

I thought long and hard before deciding to post this, but then I realized that the shoplifters know the rules better than most loss prevention (from here on referred to as "LP") people do. I'm not going into anything too specific and I'm not going to mention any specific policies relating to any single retailer. Basically, the "5 steps" are the elements that an LP person needs to establish a suspect's intent to steal. A law enforcement officer needs only probable cause. For example, if a certified law enforcement officer observes a subject conceal store merchandise into a purse, a coat, a pocket, or a shopping bag (not the "green" re-usable kind), then he can reasonably determine that the subject intends to steal the merchandise and may legally arrest the person for theft on the spot. In fact, some retailers in some states (not Ohio) do allow retail security people to detain shoplifters the moment they've concealed merchandise. I won't discuss these situations, but I digress.



Basically, an LP person must observe a subject enter the department or area empty handed or without merchandise already selected from the department (step 1). Next, LP must observe a subject select an item or items from a display and know exactly what it is that was selected (step 2). Further, LP must then observe a subject conceal the merchandise (step 3.) Concealment can mean many different things. In most cases, it will mean that the subject places the items into a purse, pocket, shopping bag, coat, etc. In some cases, there is no concealment as the subject simply pushes items out in a shopping cart. Obviously, if concealment is not an issue, then step 3 can be omitted from the process. Next, and probably most difficult and important, LP must maintain continuous and unbroken observation of the subject and the purse, coat, pocket, shopping bag, etc. in which the merchandise was concealed (step 4). This prevents LP from not seeing the subject discard the merchandise if they feel they have been detected. And finally, LP must provide the subject every possible opportunity to pay for the merchandise. Only after the subject has proceeded past all open, manned, and functional points of sale (step 5) and has not made any attempt to render payment for the merchandise, can LP initiate a confrontation of the subject for theft of merchandise. It is a myth that, legally, a person must be allowed to fully exit the store before a stop can be made. No such law exists in Ohio. In court, it will certainly eliminate the possibility for dispute if the stop is made outside the store on the sidewalk, however it is not necessary. Stops are most commonly made either at the entrance/exit, or in the threshold between two sets of doors. So that's it in a nutshell.



Back to my story...



I was sitting in the camera room and it didn't take me long to spot this guy. As soon as he walked in, he headed straight to the electronics department. He quickly selected 15 CD's seemingly at random. He made no attempt to remove them from their packaging. He didn't even attempt to remove the security sensor stickers that were on every CD. Then, in plain view of the few customers that were nearby, he shoved the entire stack of CD's down the front of his sweat pants. It was at this time that I noticed he was actually wearing two pairs of sweat pants. Shoplifters will often do this and tuck the legs of the inner pair of pants into their socks so that any merchandise placed down the pants will not fall out. He then immediately proceeded to the front of the store and out the door. I rushed out of the office to stop him with my adrenaline pumping and my heart racing a mile a minute. This was it! This was my first stop and it was going to be a good one. I didn't know if the guy would try to run or fight me but I was ready for anything he had to offer. I rush outside and was a little shocked and very much caught off guard to see the guy just sitting on the bench outside the store. "Hey! You lookin' for me man?" the thief asked. "Sir, I'm with store-" he cut me off... "Yeah man, I know who you are. Let's just go inside, it's fucking cold out here." I was stunned. I simply escorted him back inside the building and to the holding area. The merchandise was recovered, he was processed, and the police were contacted. When they got there, they asked him why he did what he did and why it seemed like he wanted to get caught. Simply stated, this 19 year old man was homeless. He had been living in his car for the last 4 days and had run out of gas to turn on the heat. He figured he'd go and steal something that he could sell easily. He wouldn't try to be deceptive or not get caught. If no one came after him, he'd be able to sell the CD's for enough cash to put some gas in his car to heat it for a few more days. If he did get caught, he'd have someplace warm to sleep and some food to eat. This was complete culture shock for me.



I was raised relatively sheltered, and over the years I would gain more life experience than most people do in a lifetime. My shock in how this young man was living was only slightly overshadowed by my disappointment that that my first stop wasn't just a bit more exciting.