Safeway steps up efforts to prevent teen shoplifting
Safeway steps up efforts to prevent teen shoplifting
Police Chief's letter led to a meeting between store management, the high school, and the police department about working together to address this growing problem
An employee at the Sebastopol Safeway, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Safeway has sent several loss prevention professionals to work in the Sebastopol store to stop and detain shoplifters. If the shoplifters are teenagers, the employee said Safeway will contact their parents. They are also detaining and turning over shoplifters to the Sebastopol police.
These actions come in the aftermath of a letter from Sebastopol Police Chief Ron Nelson to Safeway’s corporate offices about the problem of teen loitering and shoplifting at Safeway.
“We are working with the Sebastopol Police Department to address recent safety concerns at our store,” said Wendy Gutshall, Safeway’s director of public and government affairs.
Regular Safeway store employees are still not allowed to stop and detain shoplifters. “They can get fired for doing that,” said the employee.
Sebastopol Police Captain James Hickey confirmed that “Yes, they [Safeway] did bring some of their regional loss prevention people in to start looking at it, and we've had one case so far that they turned over to us and we dealt with,” he said. “If there's a crime, they will detain people.”
Hickey reported that the Sebastopol Police Department attended a meeting with Safeway and officials from Analy High School earlier this week to discuss solutions to this problem.
“I couldn't be happier that Safeway and the school are working collaboratively,” Captain Hickey said “And we're going to continue to monitor with them when they call us. We'll be there. As it is, we're there every day at four o'clock, calls permitting.”
Analy Principal Chuck Wade said the school is also tightening things up a bit in an effort to help solve the loitering and shoplifting problem at Safeway. He said he recently gave staff more leeway to impose detention on students found off campus during school hours.
“We are empowering our staff to mete out consequences for students who are places they shouldn't be,” Wade said. “We're trying to streamline that process right now. In the past, it's been a little bit cumbersome. We don't have a whole lot of tools we can use, but one thing we can do is assign detention, and that's a little bit of a deterrent.”
Though Analy is ostensibly a closed campus, Wade said that’s hard to enforce. “We have just three administrators for a campus of almost 1,500 students. If we're policing the perimeter, then the center of campus isn't supervised.”
There’s not much he can do outside of school hours, but he said he goes down to Safeway on Friday afternoons just to keep an eye on things. (In fact, when we spoke, he had just returned from Safeway.)
“I try to go down there, when I can, Friday afternoon in particular, because that's a big day. Today was pretty mellow because it's kind of wet so there's just a handful of kids there. But often that's where parents arrange to pick up their children. And so I think that's a contributor to the large congregation that happens there before and after school. In any case, when you get a bunch of teenagers together unsupervised, a lot can happen so I have tried to be down there, when I can, just to be a presence.”
Wade said Safeway is putting together a letter spelling out their new policies—including a ban on school pick-ups in the parking lot—and he said that when he gets that letter he will share it with parents.
“I've already heard from some students that they see a difference there. So that's hopeful to me,” he said.
“This afternoon when I was there, there was a police presence,” Wade said. “A police officer was parked in front of the lot, and I saw one coming out of the store as well. So I think that's a good sign. Seems like everybody's working together to try to get on top of this.”