A Safford police officer was dispatched to Walmart last Wednesday morning in reference to a shoplifting incident. When the officer arrived, asset protection staff told him that a woman who was known from prior incidents entered the store and was recognized by some of the door greeters. The woman selected several items and went to the self checkout registers. The woman stopped scanning the items while checking out, which caused the register to lock. A store employee reset the register and told the woman to scan all of the items again, but the woman only scanned the items that she had not previously scanned. As the woman was leaving the store, she was stopped by the asset protection staff. The items were scanned and it was discovered that several of the items had not been purchased.
A manager approached the woman and asked her to meet with him in the customer service area. The woman began to follow him but then fled the store, leaving the merchandise behind. The woman called the store a while later and said that she was going to come back for the items. Sometime later, the woman’s brother came to the store and asked for a refund of the items the woman had actually purchased. The refund was put on the woman’s EBT card that her brother had brought for the transaction.
The asset protection manager told the officer that he wanted the woman trespassed from the store. The officer contacted the woman by phone at a later time to talk to her about the incident. She denied that she had attempted to take any of the items. The officer told her that she was trespassed from the store. She told the officer that she would not return.
