"Robberies, you saw those go up, but, if you also look at our thefts, they have gone up as well. In particular, shopliftings. We saw a dramatic increase in shopliftings," said Springfield Police Major Kirk Manlove. "The robberies really parallel the increase in shoplifting, so that's one explanation that we saw and we haven't seen that before."
Zack Williams owns Mr. Eddies novelty store. A few years ago, he caught a customer with sticky fingers.
"The whole time I was just thinking I've got to get this kid to stop, that was my goal, just get the kid to stop," said Williams. "I ended up just tackling him in the street. Whenever I tackled him, there were a few scrapes involved."
He added a bloody photo of the shoplifting suspect to Mr. Eddie's wall of shame as a warning for anyone with the same idea. While Williams was not hurt, Springfield police warn a shoplifting experience can be dangerous.
"What we are seeing is employees becoming involved in the shoplifting. So, where it started off as a shoplifting event, it turned into a robbery, because then it becomes a force-on-force situation and we saw a lot of those," said Manlove.
This last year, Springfield became a target for even more shoplifters, including out-of-state crime rings.
"Very organized and they steal thousands of dollars. We saw several of those groups move through and we think we were able to successfully make criminal cases on them," Manlove said.
While detectives try to solve some cases, they have a message every employee: don't try to stop a thief. Many stores have policies echoing that sentiment. Managers explained the policies are not in place to make it easier to shoplift, but to keep everyone in the store safe.
For Williams, his future response will depend on the situation.
"Yeah, I'd probably do it again, as long as there is no major force involved or if I didn't feel super threatened," he said. "If I felt very threatened, I would just probably call the cops."
Although cases of robbery and shoplifting went up last year in Springfield, the number of robbery cases solved or cleared by police went down. In 2011, officers cleared fewer than 40 percent of robbery cases. That number fell in 2012 when police solved only about 34 percent of robbery cases.
sourcekspr