Criminal Intent

I’m sure everyone has some kind of story about thefts from your workplace. It’s just a part of life, and often annoying and expensive. It can be devastating, but sometimes very funny.
Last year we had a cashbox, a tall plastic money keeper for people who wanted to donate funds. It usually got spare change and often a bill or two and would add up to several hundred dollars a year. It had been there for at least the ten years I’ve been there and surely many years before. It was a tall rectangular clear plastic box, about 40”tall and 14” square. We had gotten a new box, smaller, and able to sit on our front counter, and were going to use it to replace the old one which was sort of falling apart.

Some event was going on at school, and we moved the larger box farther down the hall. At the time it contained about $12 or $13, but had been just emptied. It was there on a Friday evening and we noticed on Monday morning that it was gone.

What a big job for so little money! Someone had to sneak the box out of the back door, put it into some sort of vehicle without being seen and breaking the box open and getting rid of the parts! All this for the $12 or $13!

Years ago two men came into the school where I was working dressed in gray work clothes. When we see men in gray work clothes, we usually don’t see them. That outfit is a cultural cloak of invisibility.

The men entered the building and went directly to our darkrooms. They had a tool box with them, and they carefully dismantled two very good enlargers, packed them up and left. No one, of course, even bothered to ask who they were or why they were doing this. Clearly, it was assumed they belonged. They didn’t!

In the 80’s, we were missing a large, student wall hanging. It was nearly 8’ wide and 5-6’ high. It was removed from a bulletin board hallway art display in a classroom building. When it was reported as missing, we asked around and lo and behold one of our armed guards saw the woman take the piece. She was very well dressed, it was described, so no one would question why she was walking out of the building with a large piece of art, carefully folded over her arm! She also was seen getting into her Mercedes and driving away!

When I worked for the department store in the 60’s, we were always on the lookout for shoplifters. The ones we never caught were probably men in gray uniforms and well dressed women. The ones we always caught were those who were so obvious that no one could ever miss them. When I was on duty on the first floor, near the back door, I can remember watching these potential thieves walk in and my calling security to say, “Here he comes, he’s coming up the stairs”. This would usually be a guy in the hot summer time wearing a large pocketed long raincoat in to the store, or carrying it over his arm. There are some things we just couldn’t miss.

The problems with gangsters, criminals etc., is the more they play to their stereotype, the easier it is to be recognized. The best of criminals are the ones whose neighbors are at least shocked that good old Ralph is really some horrible sociopath, because he’s always been a good neighbor.

Last year I told the story of the theft from my office in Detroit where the criminal took my umbrella, a free gift from Aramis Aftershave and did not take $30,000 worth of prints. However, to be fair, it may just have been raining outside but I doubt it!

I seen several embezzlement cases, one I wrote about last year, usually it takes a while to spot. There was one I wrote about some time ago, where our Business Manager, Jim Coffman, saw this box of paint carefully put away in a faculty office.

He watched that box of paint, which had my name written on it, for weeks, waiting for me to "steal" it. Finally, in desperation, he asked me about the box. I had no idea there was a box of paint with my name written on it but I looked into the situation and found out it belonged to the sculpture department. They put my name on it so no one else would steal it! Jim assumed I was the culprit!