Up until the purge of late April it was common, in the suburban working class supermarket I work in, for one of the lowlife stoners, junkies, food-stampers, shoplifters or whores to threaten an employee about once per week. Since the beginning of May we have seen on average of five threats per a week. I’m confident that I am not undercounting as threats are reported from employee to employee religiously. Management tends to distance itself from customer on employee threats in most retail food operations, and this one is no exception. Employees don't even bother telling management any longer. As with filling out a police report it is an exercise in futility.

There has been a much reduced police presence in this neighborhood beginning at exactly the same time. It has gotten bad enough that I have informally offered my assistance to my direct supervisor, as I saw more of this kind of action in a day in the city market I once managed than he is accustomed to seeing in a month. In fact he has been repeatedly threatened by male shoplifters, stalkers [of shemale (a typo, and I’m keeping it!) staff] pimps, and panhandlers.

This morning at 4:18 I emerged from the stockroom with a u-boat of yogurt as one 20 year old punk with brown curls walked by with two whipped topping canisters. His gauged, pierced, tattooed and barefoot grunge-hippie friend then addressed me, “Hey, Brother where is the whipped cream.”

Knowing he was going to snort it, but assuming he would pay for it after asking for it, I directed him and watched him float off upon clouds of intoxication. Ten minutes later the night captain brought two canisters back over, told me he caught the kid beginning to huff it—the other kid had already huffed his and we found those ditched behind the noodles an hour later—and that he caught the two girls who entered with the two guys stealing no-dose pills.

As he walked the red-handed thieves out, the brown curled huffer boasted to the cashier, Bubba, as he accompanied his friends, “If you accuse me of stealing I’m punching you in the face.”

The night captain, asked me for a rundown on how I used to deal with this stuff, and after I told him, he related the following, “We used to fine them fifty bucks, they pay or we take them to court, but they don’t pay. You take them to court –which necessitates paying one of us to spend a half day in court—and as soon as they open their mouth and tell the judge they have a substance abuse problem he’s like, ‘Oh, son you already have enough problems to deal with,’ and throws it out. He won’t do anything unless we catch them hauling off a truck load.

“They can swear at you, threaten you, hit you, steal from you, bust up your store and the judge says, ‘Do you expect me to lock them up for stealing a gallon of milk?’

“ ‘Well, yes!’

“I said, ‘Your Honor, what do you expect us to do, just let them take what they want, or should we cut off a finger?’

“Well, he didn’t want to hear that. That was it for me at the courthouse. We stopped wasting our time in court. Now I just block their way out and tell them they’re not getting past me until they empty their hands and pockets. And now the threats—everybody wants to punch you in the nose—and if I touch them back it’s my job, my ass—a law suit. This world is just upside down. Everything I was ever taught about right and wrong does not apply anymore.”

As far as I can tell there is a direct correlation with threats against staff and the near total absence of police on the property and in the vicinity, where previous to the April purge the officers of this precinct were high profile crime fighters. The cops now generally limit themselves to enforcing traffic violations on the primary road.