Why I arrested my best friends girlfriend….

One of our LP managers had a problem with an employee who was ripping off merchandise on Saturdays, which happened to be the manager’s day off. When I found out about it, I asked her why she didn’t call me so I could come in and take care of it. Well, the girl in question was the girlfriend of my best friend, and he himself was a LP manager at one of our other stores. I explained that I didn’t have a problem with it and she’d be treated like any other suspect. The case became mine.
The first Saturday, I came in and positioned myself in a tower behind a display so that I’d have a clear view of her department all day. Well, that didn’t work because all hell broke lose during the shift. The first major call I got was a customer attempting to walk out the store with some comforters that he hadn’t paid for. I caught his ass on the escalator, tall ass brother with two expensive comforters and no store bags. I jumped on the escalator behind him and gently whispered something to the effect that, if, he attempted to leave the store without paying for the merchandise, he’d have to deal with me. He never said a word, never turned around. When the escalator got to the bottom, he dropped the merchandise on the floor and headed straight out the door. First crisis over!
I got back into position. As soon as I was settled, I got a call that a customer had a gun. Damn! I left my perch and went to check on the situation. I got to the department just as the guy was exiting the store. The department manager walked with me, telling me what the guy had said and done in the department. Not his lucky day. I walked outside and the first cop that came by, I relayed the info to him. They picked his dumb ass up for aggravated assault. By the time everyone had finished with their statements, the day was over. The girl I came to watch, she smiled and waved on her way out the door. I swear, I couldn’t remember, but, I thought those sunglasses she had on belonged to us. Oh well, one thing about a successful thief, they are like satisfied customers. They always come back.
The next Saturday, I met her when she entered the store. I walked her to her department so I could make a mental note of everything she had on and in her possession. I instructed store management that I was working on an internal case; I was not to be disturbed unless it was absolutely necessary. The first couple of hours in my perch were boring. The fun started when the girl working with her in the department went on a break. She made her way over to the costume jewelry counter and removed a pair of earrings. She did the whole bit and placed them beside her ear while looking into a mirror. No doubt, she was looking for me. She then removed the earrings from the backing and put them on. I had to admit they looked pretty good on her. She then put the backing in the drawer under her register.
Later, she walked into the women’s clothing department, next to where she worked, and selected a pink jacket. She took it back to her department and put it on. When she tried on that jacket, everything clicked. I knew then what was different when she left the store the week before. It was a tan scarf. I didn’t notice it when she left because I was so busy, but I could see it vividly in my mind. Also, it didn’t hurt that the same scarf was hanging in the department next to where she got the jacket.
So what she’d do was, the day before, select the items she wanted to steal. She’d wear something that would match the item she was going to take and no one would notice because it didn’t come from her department anyway. She put that pink jacket on, and I swear, it matched her outfit perfectly. My heart started beating fast, especially when she started looking for scissors to cut off the tag. When she couldn’t find a pair in her department, she simply tucked the tag inside the sleeve.
Everything was cool until the girl working with her came back from break. She said something about the jacket, probably about how pretty it was on her, and my suspect began twirling around in front of the mirror like she was a customer. I knew, at that point, she couldn’t take the jacket because the other girl had commented on it. Damn. But I still had the earrings to hope for.
It’s funny, if you ever go into a loss prevention office, watch the officers work, we go into this cheerleader mode and we become the little voice in the suspect’s head whispering, “Come on, take it, please, nobody will know, nobody.” All the time, we’re rooting for people to fuck up so we can catch them.
Finally, my suspect went on her lunch break which meant she was probably going to be exiting the building. When she went to clock out, I went into her department and retrieved the backing from the earrings.
When she was leaving the building, I managed to run into her but I made no mention of her new earrings. Actually, I could have arrested her as soon as she left the facility with the merchandise. But, management was a little soft and they might believe her story that she’d tried them on and forgot to remove them before she went to lunch. However, when she returned and I faked going to lunch, the earrings mysteriously disappeared.
Now, all I had to do was watch her for the rest of the shift to insure she didn’t try to put the item back without my knowledge. This would be rather difficult since I now had the backing in my pocket.
After a while, I started rooting for her to put the items back, but with less than twenty minutes to go before closing, I didn’t think she would. Damn. Even though I’ve arrested employees before, this one was going to be hard. This was my best friend’s girlfriend; she’d even been to my house, met my girlfriend. Damn. I do have a bit of a conscience.
Shit! I picked up the phone, called my friend, told him the situation, and informed him that I could go downstairs and tell her to give the earrings back and there would be no harm and no foul, or the other option was, I could treat her like all the rest of our suspects and bust her. It became his decision. He didn’t even think about it, he said, “Do your job, bust her dumb ass!”
She exited the store, said goodbye to me and the store manager (who didn’t have a clue what the hell was going on). I followed her outside and arrested her. She cried like a baby. Then, she begged me not to tell her boyfriend and pleaded with me to pick her up from the police station so she didn’t have to call him or her family to get her. I felt bad but I had to explain to her that I couldn’t pick her up because it’d be a conflict of interest. So I told her to call my girlfriend and she’d pick her up from the station.
That was one of the toughest things I had to do in my early years in LP. As for my friend, it didn’t bother him at all. He broke up with her that same day; he told me it was disrespectful for her to be stealing when she knew what he did for a living.

A funny but true Security Story

When you first start working for a guard company, they usually send you to different locations until they find one that fits you or one that they have trouble filling.  Unfortunately, most time of the time, it’s the latter of the two.

            During this moving period, you meet some cool people.  I met a fat guy who worked with me at a gated community one night.  He told me all about the company and the good places to ask to work on a permanent basis.  

            They had given me a schedule for the week.  Each day was at a different location, so, I showed it to him and he looked it over.  When he got to my fourth day, he told me he didn’t like that post because it was at a cemetery.  

            He told me the reason they had guards there overnight was, people would steal the flowers from the graves and then resell them.  That’s pretty sad but there are some screwed up people in this world.

            He also told me, on the property at the top of the hill, was a crematory, that the son of the guy who owned it was pretty much a wacko.  He said the son had been seen driving by the guard shack with dead bodies sitting in the front seat, and that was why they had a hard time keeping permanent guards there. 

            By the time he finished his story, I was thinking I’d probably call in sick that day and leave it to someone else to work.  Luckily for me, he told me that, at night, they always had two guards working, instead of one, like the day shift.  Whew!  That was a relief. 

            The day came for me to work at the cemetery and something told me to call in, but it was a new job and my girlfriend was on my case about being responsible.  She also liked teasing me a little about being scared of ghosts and goblins.  So, to prove her wrong, I went to work. 

            I pulled up to the post.  It was well-lit so that made me a little more comfortable.  Also, I thought I’d have someone to work with to make the time go by fast.  I went into the guard shack and the first thing the guard on duty said was, the other guard had called in sick, so, I was going to be working there alone!

             I couldn’t let this guy know that I wasn’t too happy about being at this cemetery all by myself all night.  I couldn’t allow him to question my manhood.  He gave me a quick post briefing and showed me everything I needed to know.  Before he left, I started to feel a little better about the situation.  Then, he informed me that the only person left on the premises was the son of the crematory owner and he’d probably leave in an hour or so.  Damn, I’d gotten so comfortable I’d forgotten about him, now I’d have to worry about this wacko until he left.

            Once the guard I relieved was gone, I turned on the radio and used the phone to call my girl.  There was really nothing to do except to make sure no one entered the grounds until morning when the property opened for business.  Since the post had been started a year earlier, flower thieves had to go elsewhere for merchandise. 

            About an hour into my shift, I heard a car start behind me.  I stepped out and saw the headlights of the only car left turn on.  The son was headed down the hill towards the gate and me.  It’s amazing how much crazy stuff can go through your mind in a matter of seconds when you get a little scared.

            The car came closer to the gate and I positioned myself in front of the guard house in the center of the median so I didn’t look nervous, and, also, I wasn’t too close to the lane where his car was.  As soon as he neared the gate, he slowed down, and when he did, I thought he might say goodnight or something.  When the car moved alongside the guard house, I looked inside and, I swear, all I saw was a female arm.  He was pointing it at me. 

            I screamed like a little girl and hauled ass.  I was running down the street and this guy was following me.  I couldn’t get away fast enough; it was like a bad dream.  There were no other cars coming.  On one side, I had the cemetery and I damn sure was not going to climb the fence and run through there.  So I went full speed down the side of the road. 

             I ran about a half mile until I was exhausted but this guy was still following me.  Finally, I grabbed a big rock because I’d had enough.  When he saw that rock, he stopped the car and opened the door.  I bolted again.  In the distance, I heard someone calling my name.  When I finally got enough nerve to look back, I saw the son and thought he looked kind of familiar.  He kept calling my name, and when I finally recognized his voice, I knew I’d been had. 

             There was no son, and the arm was a mannequin arm.  The culprit was my fat co-worker from a few days before.  I should have hit him with that rock.  Come to find out, his uncle ran the crematory, and, three days a week, he worked for his uncle as a janitor cleaning up the place. 

            He was laughing so hard he couldn’t catch his breath, and I was so pissed I was wishing he’d have a heart attack.  He had tears rolling down his cheeks and, after a while, I laughed too.  On the way back, I was trying to figure out how I could keep his fat ass from ever telling anyone this story. 

When we got back to the gate, the guard I relieved was standing at the gate and before we got out of the car, he, too, burst out laughing.  I found out later that all new hires went through this ritual.  In the end, it wasn’t so bad; hell, later, I helped set people up for their night at the cemetery.

Watching Shoplifters on my day off

The one major downside to working in asset protection or loss prevention is, you lose the urge to go shopping. You just don’t want to do it. On your day off, the last thing you want to do is go to a mall where people are shopping. My girlfriend does not even ask me to go shopping with her anymore. She says it’s too frustrating. She’s trying on clothes and I’m pointing out who’s stealing. It drives her nuts.
Also, I hate those little women’s stores, you know the ones that have two salesgirls working, and the store is three thousand square feet. They have these fake cameras and all these signs about prosecuting thieves. Yeah right. Who’s watching those cameras?
It had happened to me so many times with my girlfriend I could not take it anymore. We were in one of those stores and there was only one salesgirl, I guess the other was on her break. My girlfriend was in the fitting room and these two large black women were trying to get the salesgirl to go into the stock room to look for merchandise they knew the store did not have.
I could not take it anymore; I just blurted out that the store did not have the merchandise because the shipment would not arrive until the next weekend. I pulled out my badge and called the salesgirl by her name, which freaked her out (it was on her name tag), informed her that I had been sent to watch the store because of the losses. The two black women, as well as a couple of white women, saw that badge and headed straight out the door.
The sales clerk started to sweat because she really thought I had been sent by their corporate office, which told me she probably was ripping the store off too. My girlfriend came out, noticed the store was empty, and, immediately said, “What did you do?”
That was my last shopping trip with her. As for me, if the store I work for does not have it, I’ll order it online.