Joe Losos District Manager Number Duane Reade

At the 250 Broadway Duane Reade are, from left, shop manager Arssath Uthumalebbe, Duane Reade district director Joe Losos and 1st Precinct Crime Prevention Officer Brian Nelsen. Photograph: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

The managers who run ane of Lower Manhattan's most shoplifted stores had come up to say thank you.

The two-level Duane Reade at 250 Broadway has been a notorious victim of thefts, with routine pilferage of large quantities of diet pills, cold medicines, perfumes, makeup and more. But at a recent meeting of the 1st Precinct's Community Council—a monthly gathering that routinely draws complaints from residents about rubber and quality-of-life concerns—Joe Losos, district manager for the 13 Duane Reades below Canal Street, and Arssath Uthumalebbe, manager of the store, stood up to offering praise for the precinct's help.

"I wanted to cheers guys at Precinct One for all the support," Losos began. "Our employees safety is very important to us and we become striking with a lot of shoplifting, mostly petty stuff, just some of these guys get a lilliputian belligerent and it's nice to know that you do take our backs."

In a telephone interview after, Losos said that a little over a year ago the store began to suffer a rash of shoplifting. That triggered a closer relationship, he said, between the store and Crime Prevention Officer Brian Nelsen, who he called "the virtually thorough and engaged policeman that you'd always desire to work with."

Uthumalebbe texts video and still photos of shoplifters, captured past surveillance cameras, to Nelsen, who in plough sends the pictures and information to a plainclothes unit, the detective squad and Criminal offense Analysis Unit as well equally to other Downtown Duane Reade stores.

"Nosotros try to become it out as quickly as we tin can," Nelsen, a fifteen-twelvemonth veteran of the forcefulness, said in an interview at the 1st Precinct. "I usually send betwixt 2 and four emails a week with wanted photos. The Criminal offence Assay Unit makes a report with some statistics for [the stores] and then they can see what'due south been going on, what kinds of items they've been hitting. This week it could be common cold medication, the adjacent calendar week it could be body balm." The photos and information alert store managers to await out for the suspects and possibly display smaller quantities of sure products or lock them behind glass cases.

"There'due south a lot of moving parts that makes this all piece of work," Nelsen noted, downplaying his role in the anti-theft effort. "I'm happy that they feel that way about me but it's non just me. I'm a small part. I'grand a guy whose funneling data from 1 place to another, trying to get it to the right people."

Of all the Duane Reade stores, Nelsen said he has an especially proficient relationship with the 250 Broadway store, in part because it gets hit the about. Simply also because the direction is especially receptive to suggestions from him and his partner, George Liropoulos, who propose them on better theft protection. (Store employees are told to keep a safe distance from shoplifters and not attempt to block them from leaving the store.)

Thefts at the Duane Reade accept decreased since January, Nelsen said, but it is difficult to pinpoint a single cause. Cooperation between the store and the 1st Precinct is one. The possible arrest of a team of repeating thieves, nevertheless in jail, could be another.

The NYPD would non provide total comparative numbers of shoplifting incidents and arrests for the 250 Broadway store, saying but that at that place have been 28 more arrests this year, to engagement, than the same period the year before. "We had two or three [shoplifting incidents] a 24-hour interval before, and sometimes information technology's become similar two or three a week," said Uthumalebbe, who has managed the store for nearly three years.

The 250 Broadway store is hit difficult, said Losos, the Duane Reade district managing director, because its location is peculiarly busy and a subway entrance is on the same corner. "If you lot're nearly a subway end, you're upward 10 to 20 percent in shoplifting activity," Losos said.

The human relationship between the Duane Reade and the 1st Precinct sometimes extends beyond offense prevention. Recently, Uthumalebbe arrived at the station with boxes of masks, wipes and gloves for the precinct's collection for hurricane victims in Puerto Rico. It was a donation from a clemency through his Duane Reade shop and Nelsen was there to accept it. Still another sign of gratitude.

"You e'er back up me right away," the store manager told the cop with a grinning.

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Source: http://tribecatrib.com/content/teamwork-cops-brings-some-relief-store-hard-hit-shoplifters

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