The Shopkeeper's Big Headache

In Atlanta, a preacher who had al ready looted a sackful of Bibles was trailed to a grocery, where he tried to make off with a dozen steaks. In Hous ton, an irate father brought his two daughters back to a department store, to gether with the $460 worth of clothes they had shoplifted. In San Francisco, a family of 1 5 -- including mother, broth ers, sisters and cousins -- swept through a department store and collected hundreds of dollars worth of goods. Detectives who trailed them found that the father was waiting outside in the family car with the motor running.

Similar incidents are occurring across the U.S. as store owners battle the Christmastime invasion of shoplifters, who each year become more numerous and more greedy. The annual shoplifting take has doubled in seven years, to more than $2 billion in 1967, and early returns indicate that it will rise even higher in this year's season of heavy demand and light fingers. Detroit Detective Lieut. James Johnson says, "There's lots of money and good employment, but they're stealing everything from razor blades to fur coats. It's difficult to understand why there's so much shoplifting so early this year."

Asking the culprit is not much help. One standard reply is that he is working on an article about shoplifting, and wanted to pull only one job so as to write with authority. In years past, apprehended shoplifters would often break into tears and beg for leniency. Not today. According to the security manager of a State Street store in Chicago: "Their attitude now is one of hostility and belligerence. Their outlook is 'I don't care. I've been there before.' And there's more violence--just the other day one of my people was bitten when she made an arrest."

Shopkeepers estimate that half of the thieves are teenagers. They often raid stores in gangs of ten or more: one kid grabs the loot, and it is then swiftly passed from one to another until the store detectives cannot tell, as one put it, "What's what or who's who." Some San Francisco store owners, particularly those in the immediate vicinity of high schools, have become so intimidated by the kids that they close their doors during lunch and when students are going to or from school.

The Enemy Within. Store owners have also learned to their sorrow that the enemy is within as well as without. V. W. Green, security chief for Foley's department store in Houston, notes that many shoplifters take temporary pre-Christmas jobs in stores for the express purpose of supplying their personal needs free. "The employee has a lot more chances to steal," Green says. "He's here 40 hours a week; he's probably not watched as closely as the prospective shoplifter in the aisles, and it's easier for him to get away with it."

Christmas is also the busy season for pickpockets and con men, for the bogus-check casher, the passer of counterfeit money and the fraudulent user of credit cards. According to Police Lieut. Allen Gore of New York City, all of these criminals are difficult to spot. "No one looks like a pickpocket or a shoplifter," says he. "There are no 'types.' " Gore advises that the best way for men to protect their money is to carry it in a shirt pocket or the inside pocket of a jacket; women should bury their wallets deep in their handbags after every purchase.

New York City detectives, under the auspices of the First National City Bank, conducted a fraud clinic to acquaint merchants with ways of cutting their losses. Similar campaigns have been launched by retail associations from Georgia to Texas. Chicago retailers have urged the courts to take a tougher stand against shoplifters, asking for higher bond, fewer continuances and stiffer fines and sentences. Penalties already run as high as $10,000 and ten years in jail, but teen-age first offenders often get off with merely a reprimand.

Few retailers have any hope for a decline in shoplifting. One Los Angeles department-store executive says, "We'll go on having more and bigger stores--and more opportunities for the person who wants to steal. We just can't have enough security men and clerks. You reach the point where the cost of employing them is prohibitive." Owners shudder at the thought of what the problem may be like when youngsters, who are breaking in today with imaginative petty thievery, grow up and develop an even greater appetite for goods.

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