I've started working as a retail security guard in a toy store few month back, and have become interested in the methods used by thieves in order to for me become as good as I possibly can be at the job. It's sort of like a game in a way! But I haven't stumbled upon much in depth content about this on the net so I'd like to hear your experiences of witnessing people steal, or even what you would do if you were a thief.
The first important thing for me was being able to tell the messers from the thieves. Messers are annoying because although I'm nearly certain they won't steal anything, but yet it would be irresponsible of me not to keep an eye on them. The worst they normally do is leave a few scooters lying about the store. If they were really going to seal something, they wouldn't dare draw that attention on themselves.
You can't literally watch everyone, so I try to rule people in or out of being worth watching with the following criteria:
Another thing that can happen is that the thief might realise that I'm on to them so they abort their plan, and get a friend (who I won't recognise) to come back later and steal the item instead. This is something that I wouldn't have considered until it happened to me. When I first started out the job, I considered every incident to be separate from others, and once I'd written the incident report I assumed that that was the end of the matter. For example, one evening I felt good about myself as I'd prevented a man from stealing a buggy - but he just returned first thing the next morning and stole it before I arrived at the store. It was only then that management considered putting that item up higher on the shelf from then on! I now consider measures like this myself.
I think my greatest achievement was probably one day when I was able to realise that a person was baiting me. This person mis-directed me so that her friend could steal something. I suspected she meant to distract me because she kept looking at me. Thieves may act strange in store, but (in my experience) they never make eye contact while acting scared of you... they'll do one or the other. So I checked the cameras over both exits during the time that I was distracted, and low and behold, I saw someone friend walk out with a tricycle. And having backtracked further on the cameras I saw that these two people both entered the store together! I shared their images an the other store security guard ended up spotting them in store one moth later, and called the police!
Another important lesson for me was knowing when to leave something alone. Now, once I'm 90% sure that a person didn't steal something, I won't investigate any further. I wasn't able to do that before. I'd go looking through other cameras to see where somebody went and so on, and it's too much time to be in the camera room.
But catching people is the only thing that makes the job fun. So sometimes I get annoyed when, after all my hard concentrating, there aren't any thieves. And often it's when I go on break that somebody will come to me to say that a robbery is occurring! I guess that makes sense that it would happen when I'm gone, as I was told by some that I was there merely as a visable deterrent. But unfortunately my training has taught me nothing other than to not accuse anyone unless I'm 100 % sure they've stolen. The phrase in the industry is "if in doubt, let them out". But the thing is that you're never going to be 100 % sure, so if I took that literally I'd never get to accuse anyone!
In my country the laws are very much on the side of the thief/customer. So in order to be 100 % sure you need to have everything on the ASCONE model. So that means you need to see thief Approach the item, Select it, Conceal it, Observe them the whole time, see them Not pay, and then Exit the store. So if you were to take all that literally it would mean that you could not accuse a thief of anything if you didn't see them approach the item, but witnessed everything else on this model. Ridiculous right? And in order to be able to observe them for the whole duration of the theft, this might mean that the guard would need to be following them around the store for about 5 minutes. So as if the thief is not going to notice that they're being followed. I'm also not allowed to accept third party information from other staff about thefts as such info could be incorrect. But I think it would mostly be okay to confirm that someone didn't pay for something with the till staff if I had already spotted that person myself beforehand.
I know there are shoplifters out there who don't look suspicious, and they're the ones who are next to impossible to catch. But it's not worth the energy to scrutinise everyone in the same way. I would love to be able to catch someone who does not fit the culprit image of a shoplifter. That would be satisfying!
The first important thing for me was being able to tell the messers from the thieves. Messers are annoying because although I'm nearly certain they won't steal anything, but yet it would be irresponsible of me not to keep an eye on them. The worst they normally do is leave a few scooters lying about the store. If they were really going to seal something, they wouldn't dare draw that attention on themselves.
You can't literally watch everyone, so I try to rule people in or out of being worth watching with the following criteria:
- Do they have shopping bags with them (having come from other stores) that they could slip stuff into?
- Do they have empty bags with them? And if so, are they folded & held under their arms, or are they being carried as if there's something already in them?
- Do they have backpacks on them?
- Given that it's a toy store, lone adults (or two adults without kids) are possibly going to be considered more suspicious.
- What part of the store, is the item that they're carrying, from? In our store we have checkouts in two separate sections, so it might be unusual for someone to be seen in one section carrying an (unpaid for) item from the other section. And if such an item is expensive and that person didn't bother to ask staff questions about it before taking it off the shelf, then that's a red flag.
Another thing that can happen is that the thief might realise that I'm on to them so they abort their plan, and get a friend (who I won't recognise) to come back later and steal the item instead. This is something that I wouldn't have considered until it happened to me. When I first started out the job, I considered every incident to be separate from others, and once I'd written the incident report I assumed that that was the end of the matter. For example, one evening I felt good about myself as I'd prevented a man from stealing a buggy - but he just returned first thing the next morning and stole it before I arrived at the store. It was only then that management considered putting that item up higher on the shelf from then on! I now consider measures like this myself.
I think my greatest achievement was probably one day when I was able to realise that a person was baiting me. This person mis-directed me so that her friend could steal something. I suspected she meant to distract me because she kept looking at me. Thieves may act strange in store, but (in my experience) they never make eye contact while acting scared of you... they'll do one or the other. So I checked the cameras over both exits during the time that I was distracted, and low and behold, I saw someone friend walk out with a tricycle. And having backtracked further on the cameras I saw that these two people both entered the store together! I shared their images an the other store security guard ended up spotting them in store one moth later, and called the police!
Another important lesson for me was knowing when to leave something alone. Now, once I'm 90% sure that a person didn't steal something, I won't investigate any further. I wasn't able to do that before. I'd go looking through other cameras to see where somebody went and so on, and it's too much time to be in the camera room.
But catching people is the only thing that makes the job fun. So sometimes I get annoyed when, after all my hard concentrating, there aren't any thieves. And often it's when I go on break that somebody will come to me to say that a robbery is occurring! I guess that makes sense that it would happen when I'm gone, as I was told by some that I was there merely as a visable deterrent. But unfortunately my training has taught me nothing other than to not accuse anyone unless I'm 100 % sure they've stolen. The phrase in the industry is "if in doubt, let them out". But the thing is that you're never going to be 100 % sure, so if I took that literally I'd never get to accuse anyone!
In my country the laws are very much on the side of the thief/customer. So in order to be 100 % sure you need to have everything on the ASCONE model. So that means you need to see thief Approach the item, Select it, Conceal it, Observe them the whole time, see them Not pay, and then Exit the store. So if you were to take all that literally it would mean that you could not accuse a thief of anything if you didn't see them approach the item, but witnessed everything else on this model. Ridiculous right? And in order to be able to observe them for the whole duration of the theft, this might mean that the guard would need to be following them around the store for about 5 minutes. So as if the thief is not going to notice that they're being followed. I'm also not allowed to accept third party information from other staff about thefts as such info could be incorrect. But I think it would mostly be okay to confirm that someone didn't pay for something with the till staff if I had already spotted that person myself beforehand.
I know there are shoplifters out there who don't look suspicious, and they're the ones who are next to impossible to catch. But it's not worth the energy to scrutinise everyone in the same way. I would love to be able to catch someone who does not fit the culprit image of a shoplifter. That would be satisfying!
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