February 28, 2006

Snatch and Grab
   by jhyde

Never take your eyes off a drug abuser. For one, they will use every moment to take advantage of their situation. I literally had someone steal methadone from the pharmacy counter window a week ago, a FIVE foot reach. On the video, the person checked the contents, and put it into their own bag nonchalantly. Yeah, like nobody was going to know. What's worse, when they left, they said, "Well I got my pain meds now!"

So we set a trap. We called the doctor's, told them what happened, then they called their patient and said that they called in a prescription for an even stronger narcotic. The police knew about it, and we were going to call 911 the minute we knew the person was in the store, and play it off like we were filling the medication while we waited for the police to show up to make an arrest.

After a week of waiting and hoping that this would go down on my shift (and hoping that it wouldn't happen simultaneously) the person came in. First off, I didn't even realize what as going on at first. I went and looked for the prescription that I knew didn't exist. I said, "Have a seat it'll be right out." Then I walked over to my supervisor and explained what was going in on a hushed whisper.

The cops came, but the perp was long gone. In an amazing feat of stupidity the perp actually called in while the cops were still in the store. They wanted to know if we could just deliver it, but not to the address in the computer, some other address, "Oh suuuure," we say, "What's the address? We'll send that right out to ya, you going to be there for an hour or so?"

Perp in pokey. Now THAT'S service!

Published: February 28, 2006
Editor: stacy