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University Daily Kansan, December 6, 1983
Holiday season brings shoplifting to its peak
By MICHAEL PAUL
Staff Reporter
Officially, the Christmas shopping season began the day after Thanksgiving.
Unofficially, so did the shoplifting season.
"There are more shoppers, more distractions." he said.
Avery said that, nationally, the average price of shoplifted items was $35.
The heaviest part of shoplifting is now," said Robert Avery, a Lawrence police officer in charge of the crime's prevention program.
MOST PEOPLE who shoplift do it once or twice, Avery said, but some shoplifters have done it so often that they are considered professional shoplifters.
"The professionals make a living at it." Avery said. "Some of these people leave town with $300 to $400 worth of merchandise."
"They're interested in leather, jewelry, cameras — the expensive items. They don't want the $10 blouse that they can sell for $5. They want the $200 leather coat that they can sell for $100."
Avery said that during this time of year he received more inquiries from store managers about ways to prevent shoplifting.
One deterrent to shoplifting, he said, is not to let the customer shop alone.
"The employees should be on the same side of the counter as the customers." he said.
BUT EVEN THAT policy is no guarantee that shoplifting will be stopped.
Mark Miller, manager of King Of Jeans, 740 Massachusetts St. , said that he hired more part-time help during the Christmas shopping season to wait on customers, but he said it was not a deterent to shoplifting.
"You can't see everybody," he said. "It goes on. I don't see all of it. But at least I know it happens."
Ron Schmidt, owner of Robert's Jewelry Inc., 833 Massachusetts ST. has been more fortunate. He said that he had had only four or five shoplifters in seven years. One reason for that, he said, was that he did not put valuable jewelry out in
HE SAID THAT during this Christmas season he would not be using any more security but would be adding more part-time help to wait on the customers. The effect of his, he said, was that the customers
would know that employees were there and this might deter shop-lifting.
Garland White, manager of J.C. Penney Co., Inc., 830 Massachusetts St., said that he thought the percentage of shoplifting at his store would stay the same during Christmas. He said his store had had no weekends with shoplifters during the first weekend of Christmas shopping.
Avery said shoplifting was a year-round problem. He said he received about 15 police reports a month on shoplifting.
Ken Morris, manager of Morris Sports, 1016 Massachusetts St., said that shoflifting became such a problem for a store in Florida that it prohibited more than two minors being in the store at the same time.
MORRIS SAID that shoplifting cost his store about $2,000 a year, less than 1 percent of sales. But he said that he did not catch all thefts, and that he takes as much as $10,000 worth of sporting goods from his store each year.
He said that sweat pants were among the items being shoplifed this year. People carry two or three items into a dressing room and leave the room wearing one of the items, he said.
Some stores check the number of items that a person carries into a dressing room and the number of items taken out. Morris said, however, that such a practice would be difficult to do in his store because of the number of people who shop there.
BUT NOT ALL shopfitters are as sophisticated, he said. Some shopfitters pick up small items, such as cosmetics, hair and nail products, and walk out of the store with them.
Morris said that most of the shoplifters in his store were junior high or high school students. He said that they came in the store in groups of five or six. Two of them would ask if they had others who would walk through the store.
But shoplifting is not something that is done only by young people, said Lawrence police Sgt. Don Dalquest. Dalquest, who has worked with the police, said that he had once caught a superintendent of schools shoplifting.
DALQUEST SAID that detecting a potential shoplifter was easy.
ways looking at somebody," he said. Dalquest said that he did the security work for only two years.
"Watch their eyes. They're always looking at somebody," he said.
"I burned out," he said. "It got to the point where I began to mistrust people.
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