DETECTIVE WORK IN DEPARTMENT STORES
There are, in my opinion, no business concerns that suffer a greater
loss, nor are occasioned more worry than are the department stores of
our large cities. Annually they lose thousands of dollars worth of
merchandise mainly through the operations of store thieves known as
shoplifters, and through the dishonesty of employes. In any of our
large up-to-date department stores the services of no less than a dozen
trained detectives, both male and female, are required to properly
guard such stores against thefts. Inasmuch as department stores offer
one of the broadest fields for private detectives, I shall set forth
some of the many ways by which such stores are robbed and defrauded
daily; also one of the best known methods for detectives to cope with
the offenders.
As previously stated, in department stores, both male and female
detectives are employed. Although I have known instances where
experienced female store detectives have been of valuable assistance
to department stores, male detectives, as a rule, can give the best
protection. The store detective must be a person of good, sound
judgment, be able to think and act quickly, and must always be alert
and wide awake during business hours at the store where he or she may
be engaged. It is essential that store detectives dress well, but not
conspicuously, and while in the store, if the detective be a man, he
should wear his hat and coat at all times.
If it be in the winter time the detective should wear a light overcoat,
and on rainy days should carry an umbrella. It is a very good plan for
the detective to carry a package under his arm, the purpose of all
these things being to give out the impression that the detective is a
customer instead of what he really is. The detective should keep moving
about in the store, pretend to make purchases, and if possible change
his hat and coat several times a day.
In order to emphasize the necessity of these things, we will look at
shoplifting for a few moments from the shoplifter's point of view.
Usually when a shoplifter decides upon some particular store to operate
in, he or she may first visit the store a dozen times if necessary in
order to pick out the store detective. After becoming satisfied on this
point the shoplifter figures on how best to avoid the persons he or she
have picked out as being detectives, then will begin to operate.
The professional shoplifter, if she be a woman, usually wears, during
cold weather, a long coat and wide skirt in which are capacious pockets
for concealing and carrying off stolen merchandise. The shoplifter
rarely will bother with cheap merchandise, but will confine her thefts
to valuable laces, silks, furs, jewelry, etc., which she secretes in
the pockets of her skirt or coat. During the summer season when it
would be out of place to wear a coat, the shoplifter takes advantage
of the rainy days and enters stores with her umbrella, in which she
secretes and carries off such articles as she may find an opportunity
to take from the counters unobserved by the clerks or floorwalkers.
Very often a professional shoplifter will take with her to a
store a confederate, especially if she has reason to believe that
her operations have aroused the suspicions of any of the store's
detectives. The confederate will proceed directly to the ladies' toilet
or rest room. After the shoplifter has taken one or more articles
she joins her confederate, and unobserved passes the articles to the
confederate. Then in case she has been watched or is arrested upon
leaving the store, no goods will be found on her person.
I have known careless store detectives to arrest shoplifters whom
they observed stealing goods in the store, but who did not have the
goods on their persons when they were arrested. When an arrest of
this kind is made it is usually the beginning of serious trouble for
the management of the store. The detective will have played into the
hands of the shoplifter; she will promptly take advantage of the
circumstances and bring suit against the management for false arrest.
Ordinarily department stores do not relish such undesirable notoriety;
damage suits are expensive, so usually they settle such cases. If the
shoplifter, after having been observed taking some article, enters the
rest or toilet room before leaving the store, it will be best for the
detective not to take any chances in causing her arrest for the reason
just mentioned.
The detective, as a rule, should not make an arrest under any
circumstances until after the shoplifter has left the store. I have
known cases where shoplifters and store thieves were arrested inside
of stores with stolen goods on their persons, but who, immediately
after being arrested, set up the claim that they had no intention of
stealing the goods, but that they were just taking the goods to the
light to examine them. Later when their cases came up in court they
would be represented by shrewd attorneys who took advantage of the law
itself by maintaining that inasmuch as the goods had not been taken
from the premises of the store, no theft was committed.
I would state that as a rule if the detective is watchful he will have
no difficulty in picking out the shoplifters. Persons so bent usually
keep looking about them furtively to note if anyone is watching them.
Quite often they are nervous and flit quickly from one counter to
another. If the detective be in doubt he usually can, with half an
hour's careful watching, determine to his own satisfaction the real
purpose of any person's visit to the store.
Department stores suffer serious losses through the operations of other
classes of criminals who make a practice of preying on such stores. A
large department store of the present day may have on its list from one
to two thousand customers, who have with the store what are known as
charge accounts. Such customers may visit the store, make a purchase,
and have the amount of same charged to their account. Often they make
such purchases by telephone, or may send a maid or other person to the
store to make the purchases. A certain class of store swindlers make
it a point to ascertain the names of persons having such accounts at
stores after which they visit the stores, impersonate the customers,
and very frequently secure and make off with goods of great value.
Usually such swindlers are not discovered until the end of a month,
when the customer receives his or her bill, but by which time the
swindler may be in some distant city preparing to victimize another
store. Dishonest employes and discharged employes are usually
responsible for giving out information regarding customers' charge
accounts. The swindler, however, can easily secure such information
in many other ways. We have also the store swindler who goes to some
large city and purposely registers at a leading hotel. He then visits a
department store, purchases an expensive suit or overcoat, in payment
of which he tenders a bogus check. He requests that his purchase be
delivered to his hotel, which may be done, but the swindler will be
gone long before the store discovers that it can not realize on the
check.
One may ask how stores can be so easily victimized. There are two
reasons, and they apply not only to this class of swindle, but to many
others as well. The swindler may have, by his smooth and suave manner,
impressed the management or clerk that he was all that he represented
himself to be, and they, in an unguarded moment, allowed themselves to
be swindled. On the other hand, it may have been the anxiety of making
a sale at a good profit with an apparently good customer that may have
caused them to overlook ascertaining the genuineness of the swindler's
check before delivering the goods.
Another source of loss by department stores is through dishonest
clerks being in collusion with outside parties. A clerk, for instance,
employed at a silk or lace counter, will have a friend or confederate
call at her counter during the day. A yard of silk may be purchased
and paid therefor, but it is quite an easy matter for the dishonest
clerk to cut off and have wrapped a yard and a half or two yards of the
material purchased. I have known respectable, well-to-do women enter
into such arrangements with clerks at stores, seemingly treating such
matters lightly, and even telling their friends about such transactions.
There are innumerable other ways by which employes steal from stores.
Some clerks inclined to steal become very bold and very often carry out
openly stolen goods that they claim to have purchased. At thoroughly
up-to-date stores all clerks and employes, when leaving the store in
the evening, are required to leave by some certain exit, where there is
stationed a watchman who examines all packages that are carried out.
The watchman holds up all packages that do not bear the O. K. of some
floorwalker or other official of the store.
During such times as the Christmas shopping season, which in large
cities begins about November first, the management of large stores
find it necessary to double their detective forces, and well they may,
as November and December are the months during which shoplifters,
pickpockets and others figure on reaping their harvests. Pickpockets in
stores must also be given attention by the store detective. Customers
do not relish having their purses or pockets picked while in stores,
and when it does happen to a customer, he or she usually remains away
from that store in the future. Much more might be said upon the subject
of department store detective work, but I believe what has been gone
into will be sufficient to guide the average person in this branch of
the work.