Been caught stealing
cmpod's story reminded me of one of my own.
So back in the day I'm managing the Our Price in Clapham and we're having a lot of trouble with shoplifters. Now these are no ordinary shoplifters, these are crack-addicted, drink-soused, South London council estate shoplifters. We had one of those barrier things but all that did was beep noisily to tell you someone had just nicked something. The toerags generally picked saturday afternoon for their most audacious crimes (50+ dvds at a time) so we used to post a member of staff on the door to dissuade them, but given that most of my staff were shortarses and/or girls they didn't dissuade anyone. Then on particular saturday we snapped. We'd actually caught one and handed him over to the coppers in the morning and he was back (on Police bail) less than 2 hours later sporting a huge grin that said he'd just had a little toke on the crack pipe.
The blatant little sod tried it again, legging it out of the door with a dozen cds and dvds. Three of us gave chase, and after about ten minutes of hot footing it through the backstreets of Clapham we caught him. We called the cops and settled down to wait, knowing they would take at least twenty minutes to turn up. Cigarettes were smoked and we wondered how long until he got out again and started nicking. No More we thought, let's draw a line in the sand now. So the three of us kicked seven bells out of the shite, and broke a few of his fingers for good measure. Then we explained things to him very carefully:
"Steal from Superdrug in Future, the little old ladies won't chase you, won't catch you, and wont beat the crap out of you. Get it."

He did, we never saw him again. Result.
(Mr Steve is jobless and fancyfree!, Wed 2 May 2007, 13:19, Reply)