I was talking to my friend and neighbor who keeps the candle and incense shop next to our gallery/gift shop today, and she relayed a disturbing tale.
She had been in the shop, just going about her business as usual. A young man of maybe 20 had come in, looked around for a while, asked a couple of questions... and then — quite openly — punched a hole in the lid of a donation jar she keeps to collect money for homeless shelter animals and started filling his pockets with the bills in the container.
My friend approached him and asked — quite loudly — "What the HELL do you think you're doing? Put that BACK!"
Heart of one of our camellias
This is where it gets creepy.
He just looked at her with a blank expression and said "uh oh, my bad!" and then continued taking the money, unperturbed.
My neighbor is NOT someone to be trifled with, and can be a pretty "formidable" woman when angered, so she dialed it up a notch and said "Put that back NOW, thief!"
Again, the youth seemed completely unperturbed, and just said "my bad," with a blank look on his face... then swiftly turned, left the store and was gone in a flash.
She was still quite shaken, when she told me the story.
Dreams of summer...
The police were less than helpful — evidently the theft of maybe $20-25 from a donation box did not warrant a visit, although they took the young man's description.
It made me sit back and wonder what sort of world we live in... in which thieves being called on their actions don't even react.
We talked a bit more and figured it was likely the young man was mentally ill, or possibly in some kind of drug haze. Still, pretty disturbing. I guess we will no longer be taking donations "visibly" for worthy causes...
What do YOU think? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 190419 00:35 PST
0984
I'm sorry that happened to the donation box, but please don't let it stop you from fundraising in future. It does sound like he was on something perhaps, or maybe just so numb to the world and he figured the shopkeep wasn't going to fight him over it. I've stopped thieves before, and had a couple of them run off, but that always made me laugh, because what did they think I was going to do, tackle them to the ground as part of my $10/hr job to save the corporation a few bucks? When I worked at the 7-11, we were specifically told NOT to intervene for safety reasons. Generally thieves know they can get away with it, unless there's a mall cop who really loves their job around. So unless she was swinging a broom at his head, he was probably going to finish taking the money anyway. I mean it extra sucks that that was donation money, and that it was a mom and pop shop, but y'all are probably not in danger if you put the donation bucket back on the counter. Maybe just empty it more often.
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Our own donation bucket is mostly to raise funds for "starving artists" so they can have free space in the gallery, and we can afford to advertise their work. We've been doing the collecting informally so far, but now I'm inclined to look into one of those donation boxes you can BOLT to the table or floor, made with bulletproof plexiglass. But that brings up the whole "spending $200 for a collection box that collects $200 a year" issue... is it really worth it?
For now, I guess we'll just be more vigilant.
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Hmm, yeah. Maybe get one of those little metal piggybanks and bolt it to the table?
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I guess you have to really mean it when you say: "Put that back NOW...". Otherwise his next crime will be emboldened. It would have been better for her to say nothing than to not mean it.
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Emboldened seems an appropriate term. Things have changed, in the retail business, over the past 30 years. I used to apprehend shoplifters last time I had a store (mid-80's, 90's) and a stern word was usually enough to send them running or the threat of police action would get them to give up their loot. Now they just stare you down and threaten back, or ignore you.
If course you have to mean it. That said, your typical 2019 petty thief/shoplifter is way more likely to be strung out on drugs than they were in 1985. Which makes a big difference to their mental state.
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The people need to understand the police are more a cleanup crew by definition and rarely the intervention. Nothing against police as I train many of them in many countries, but they can not predict where a crime will be. It is society which must realize that it is us that need to make the change, not government. Crime will go down when people take a stand.
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And that would also suggest we need more freedoms to do so. I know lots of people are cautious about stopping a crime for reasons of being sued into bankruptcy by some greedy attorney who decides they can make a "wrongful arrest" or "improper procedure" case that makes the criminal win and the citizen lose. At least that's somewhat prevalent here in the US.
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A return to common law with jury nullification well understood so that good people stand to protect good people. But without people standing up instead of always backing down or cowering, we do not stand a chance at rectifying this problem.
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I wonder about the same thing. We know there are very good people out there, we interact with them everyday, but have we crossed the 50% point on the curve? It seems like it. If so, how and why?
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Seems like last time we had a "trend" in "who cares" like this was in the early 1980's during the Reagan-era, yuppie-glitz, conspicuous-consumption period. For a while, we swung back towards something that seemed a little more human-based, and now we've swung back towards a kind of social bluntness I cannot recall having seen before.
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What does it take to change a pendulum's motion?
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In my experience, usually patience. You have to wait for its movement to run out of momentum... after which the return swing begins.
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I'm not at all surprised; it's been a while since mere words could stop a crime, at any level.
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Things have definitely changed. Shoplifting/petty theft used to be more for money, now it's more for drugs.
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Also, there is no shame anymore in being seen and called out, only inconvenience in getting caught and having to face consequences.
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Fact. And getting caught and called out might even make you a renegade YouTube star...
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