Last Tuesday evening, police responded to the Salvation Army thrift store on 4th Avenue South after hearing reports that a male suspect was trying to break into the building. But by the time police arrived, a police report says, the alleged robber had already made off with the loot.
Right after the store closed at 8:00 p.m., the report says, an employee was walking from the back of the store to the front counter when she saw a man standing near the counter. After she yelled at him to leave, he ran up to another employee, who had her back to him. “The male placed his left arm around [the employee’s] throat, but not tight enough to cause injury,” the police records says. “He held what appeared to be a hand-held knife cutting stone in his right hand as if it were a knife. The employees “could clearly see that it was not a knife,” the report adds. “He said, ‘don’t scream,’ and ‘give me money.'”
Without saying anything else, the man grabbed the $1,555 that they had been counting off the counter, exited the store and fled south on 4th Avenue S, the report says. Store employees said the suspect was a male “wearing a dark colored scarf and dark glasses.”
Police officers agreed that it “appeared the male came into the store while it was open and then hid downstairs until after closing and then came up to rob them.” Officers “encouraged [the employees] to consult management concerning changing the location and procedure of counting money at the end of the day instead of on the counter in plain view of the front of the store.”
In related news: Seriously! Who robs a Salvation Army?
Who counts the day’s receipts on the front counter? When I worked in a store, we counted in the back office. Didn’t stop a busboy from coming in and bashing me over the skull with a foot-long peppergrinder, though. Poor fool didn’t realize my head is solid granite all the way through. I saw stars, and bled a little, but he didn’t get anything except jail time. A few years ago I found out he murdered his grandfather. Sweetheart.
You can never have enough foot long peppergrinders.
Who robs a Salvation Army? Maybe a staffer who needs to pay medical bills for a partner sick with no benefits because the employee health plan explicitly excludes domestic partners on principle?
Aside from that, no idea.
What the hell is a “hand-held knife cutting stone?” I’ve got knives coming out my ying-yang and I’ve never heard of such a thing. (Sharpening stones, yes; I’ve got lots of them.)
That is keeping it mad fuckin real!
A really competitive Goodwill employee?
The Salvation Navy?
@3 Maybe someone who doesn’t agree with their politics, but most likely they didn’t care.
This anarchist dickweed I used to know (who goes by the names Jeff, Sassafras, and Rafter) would shoplift from the Salvie all the time. He had some random moralization, but really he’d rather spend his money on weed than clothing.
The salvation army is a surprisingly bigoted organization. They require that members only marry other members (and have banished people from the organization because of it), and actively discriminate against gays/lesbians/etc.
They just have great PR, as evidenced here.