Louisiana sporting goods store employees were terminated for their efforts “to help the police” when a suspect allegedly made off with one of their firearms.
(Video: WGNO)
The combination of soft-on-crime policies and corporations averse to conflict has repeatedly found workers fed up with rampant theft, feeling the heat for attempting to intercede over mere goods. Mid-December in Metairie, Louisiana at an Academy Sports + Outdoors, such a scenario played out with more than just general merchandise on the line, earning three employees Christmas on the unemployment line.
Speaking with WGNO, former Academy team lead Michelle Sutton explained how on Dec. 16 an alleged shoplifter had been handed a handgun under the pretext of considering a purchase only for the individual to hightail it out of the store with the firearm.
“I just took off,” explained Sutton, who reacted to word of the in-progress incident reported over the employee radio. “I knew I needed some form of way to help the police.”
Four days after she and two other Academy employees had raced outside the store with the stated intent of gathering as much information to provide law enforcement as possible, word came down that the company’s firearm compliance personnel had terminated them over their response.
“Because we did run out of the building, even though me and the other associate did stay on the sidewalk, it fell under ‘we left the porch,’ as they call it,” she explained.
“There’s no clarification on getting [the suspect’s] location for police. I know my store director had said that they want you to be able to get the make and model of a vehicle, you know, maybe a direction in which way the vehicle went,” noted Sutton.
While the Academy policy states employees are prohibited from chasing or physically restraining a fleeing suspect, it also states that managers and loss prevention associates are permitted to maintain a “non-threatening distance” from which they may ask a suspect to re-enter the store with ill-gotten goods.
“Every store that sells firearms, especially pistols that are concealable, need to have clear policy, they need to have extra training,” the former employee told WGNO, “they need to prepare for the unexpected.”
In a similar incident where the employee appeared only to endeavor in cataloging theft for the authorities, Santino Burrola had been terminated from his job at King Soopers supermarket in Arapahoe County, Colorado after he had filmed the reported theft of around $500 worth of laundry detergent.
Grocery store employee sacked for recording $500 laundry detergent thefthttps://t.co/pmpbZvz06m
— American Wire News (@americanwire_) July 6, 2023
“I just recorded, said what I said, and got so close to where I was able to rip the tinfoil off the license plate,” he explained the video that went viral with rapper Snoop Dogg among those sharing it. “All I did was just record criminals and reveal them!”
As is often the case in such situations, King Soopers voiced their displeasure with rampant theft but spoke to law enforcement’s importance in handling incidents. “We have security measures in place to help prevent crime and de-escalate such confrontations to minimize the risk to our associates.”
Burrolo, as it happened, was a former military police officer.
WGNO went on to report that Academy had not offered a statement on the termination of their employees as of Friday.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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