Trip Report: Tony stops a robbery

[Tony_P]

Most of you know I work in a large bookstore. I manage the cashiers. It’s a boring as hell job, but once in a while I’ll have a day like Monday.

It’s a Holiday, so naturally we’re short-staffed. At 2:30 pm, our morning security guards leave, and only one afternoon one shows up. We hire off-duty police officers to work the store (in uniform), so we have one PO and one guard. The PO takes the front door and the guard stations the security base by the back door. At about 10 to 3, I’m directing the line at the cashiers and then the fourth floor manager calls over the radio “Code Adam, 4th Floor” Code Adam means a missing child. I get on the radio and ask the PO to head to the fourth floor to assist, tell the security guard to take the front door post, and head to man the security base myself.

I get to the base and switch on the security camera monitor for the fourth floor. I see the mother, who is <u>completely</u> frantic switching between telling the cop what her son looks like and screaming “JOHNATHAN” at the top of her lungs. I figure I’ll try to find out what the kid looks like and scan the cameras. I radio the PO and ask him to find out what time the mother and kid came in the store. I went to the footage from the store entrance from the time she said and saw the woman come into the store…alone. I radio the cop again and have him ask the woman if the son came into the store with him…she says “yes, of course”. Uh oh. Alarms started going off in my head that something was wrong. A call then comes into the radio from the Coffee shop. “Large till in transit to CO” – over $2,000 was going to be carried from the coffee shop to the cash office.” Sh-t. This can’t be happening. What do I do? Should I stop them from moving the money? Based on what? I knew in my bones we were about to get jacked, but I have no proof. I start scanning the security cameras to find the employees with the coffee shop till. I see them heading down the escalator from the second to first floor. There is a huge guy waiting at the bottom of the escalator grilling them. sh-t, sh-t, sh-t I get on the radio “PD to base, Post 1 lock down” (Cop to the security base, door guard lock the front doors) Guard: “negative, [4th floor manager] has the keys, and he’s on the Code Adam”

I jump from the chair and run out to the bottom of the escalator. The cashier and her escort are getting to the bottom, and when they reach the floor the huge guy lunges at the cashier and grabs the till from her and jets towards the door. I run after him and as he gets towards the door the guard moves in front of him to block him. He runs straight into the guard I grab him from behind and pull him to the ground. The guard is on the radio telling the cop to come help and a few seconds later the cop gets there as I’m struggling with the dude on the ground. He already dropped the till and was now just trying to get away. The cop maces the guy and I get it too of course since we are so close, and then the cop gets in, does some cop moves and has the guy flat on his stomach with his legs crossed. I hold his legs down as the cop cuffs him. Several people had dialed 911 while this was happening and by the time he was cuffed additional cops were arriving. They arrested the guy and EMS pulled out my contacts and flushed my eyes out with some [censored], but they still burned all day.

Happy Labor Day.