A recent rash of shoplifters has caused local business owners to take to social media, posting surveillance video screenshots in the hopes of identifying the perpetrators and warning other storekeepers.
In one suspect’s case, she was quickly identified as having hit two different businesses in one week — and the same woman has been charged in a shoplifting at downtown store Shoefly a little more than a month ago.
With the exception of the woman charged in connection with the shoplifting incident at Shoefly, the Empire is not printing the names of the suspects as identified on social media, because they have not been arrested or charged.
On July 15, a local who has been reportedly mounting something of a one-woman crime spree was caught on camera stealing from Hummingbird Hollow Gifts inside the Juneau International Airport.
While the store has had “quite a few” shoplifters over the years, sticky-fingered travelers who would then get caught while waiting for their flights, lately it has been more locals, said saleswoman Sarah Novell-Lane.
“It is kind of odd,” she said.
This particular woman, identified by the Juneau Police Department as a 34-year-old Juneau resident, managed to make off with an estimated $500 in goods. She was caught on camera taking items that included a leather bag and a beaded necklace.
“She was under my radar that day,” Novell-Lane said with a rueful laugh. “It was busy.”
At one point, Novell-Lane registered the woman walking by her with an item in her hand. Then, she said, “I noticed she was gone.”
She reviewed the security footage and caught the theft, but it was too late and the security person couldn’t find the suspect in the airport.
“We deduced she was a local,” Novell-Lane said, adding that a JPD officer identified her on the video.
The suspect “figured out she got away with it, and we were an easy target,” Novell-Lane said, adding that she came back the very next day with her son in tow.
“We had no customers, she made herself really obvious — it was a really different dynamic,” she said. “She was asking the price of the silver we had in a case.”
Novell-Lane speculated that the woman was scoping out the silver as her next target.
JPD Lt. David Campbell confirmed Thursday that the suspect was identified but that no arrest has been made. He said the case likely would be forwarded to the city attorney for charges.
It’s questionable whether anything will happen to the suspect, said store owner Kristi Elliott, not to mention getting the items back.
“They make the rounds,” Elliott said. “You can track that trail through social media. It’s just really frustrating. (Posting information) is the only recourse we have, it feels like.”
Elliott said she not only lost goods, she lost time for both herself and her employee as they struggled to document the theft, and is trying to work on a “proactive” approach to combating crime — to have some preventive measures, possibly involving some sort of networking with other business owners.
“There needs to be an outcry, to get something to change,” agreed Novell-Lane. “We need to ID these people and get no-trespass papers — that might be the approach we need to take. Hopefully this galvanizes people to fix the problem.”
Elliott said she was stunned to realize, after she posted about her shoplifter on Facebook, that the same woman appeared to be in a surveillance video posted Wednesday by the owners of downtown store Pretty Please.
That video showed two women working in tandem to steal approximately $250 in items.
According to co-owner Sara Dodd, the two women spent more than an hour in Pretty Please Tuesday night trying on items. Dodd said she figured out later that the two would bring out hangers that were missing clothing, deliberately causing confusion as to what they still had in the dressing room. The shoplifting was discovered only after they left, she said.
One of the women put items on hold under her name, while the other asked for a purchase punch card, “which made it very easy to make a police report,” Dodd said, laughing.
Campbell confirmed that JPD had the suspects’ IDs and said that the 34-year-old had been interviewed; the other woman was identified as a 25-year-old Juneau resident.
Dodd said she wished she had been aware of the earlier post from Hummingbird Hollow.
“When we see pictures from other business owners, we alert our staff immediately to watch out for these people,” she said. “If we had known she was making her rounds, we could have avoided (the shoplifting), my staff would have recognized her.”
Dodd said she hopes publicizing the shoplifting helps prevent other businesses from being hit by the same people.
“And also to let them know that we know they shoplifted and maybe they won’t come back,” she added. “That we’re not an easy target.”
Shoefly owner Sidney Mitchell said that same 34-year-old is the woman who shoplifted from her store at the end of June.
Monica Field was charged with misdemeanor larceny and is set to appear in Juneau District Court on Aug. 16 in connection with that incident, according to court records.
“It’s an unfortunate situation where maybe the risk doesn’t outweigh the benefits,” Mitchell said. “I will probably bring this up with the downtown business association. We are going to need to band together.”
Facebook community rallies to help business owners
Boarderline Legacy posted video stills of four different shoplifters with a scathing description of each one, taking it down a day later with a thank-you to the community for helping to identify all four of the thieves.
The information was subsequently handed over to the Juneau Police Department.
“This should help derail some of the theft, for a little while anyway,” the store posted on its Facebook page, noting that the initial post had over 180 shares and reached 21,000 people.
“Literally over 2/3 of the whole city was involved,” the post read. “It goes to show how fed up the community is and how much people want to see some change/justice.”
Boarderline owner Jake Liska said the social media outreach was a great weapon against shoplifting.
“It’s the best thing ever,” he said. “Basically all of Juneau saw it. There were hundreds of comments.”
Liska included three different shoplifting incidents in the Facebook post.
The first, which dates back to June 18, involved a local woman who “didn’t waste any time,” Liska said, heading straight for a sunglasses rack and slipping the glasses into her hoodie.
The suspect then “totally buddy-buddied with me for a half-hour,” Liska said, laughing. “She told me who her dad was.”
After the woman left, Liska noticed the empty sunglasses rack and reviewed surveillance video footage that showed the theft.
The second incident was on June 22, when another local woman layered several pairs of pants on her arm and took them into a dressing room, where she apparently stuffed them into a big purse, Liska said. She then headed for the counter before leaving suddenly.
A couple paired up to shoplift from Liska’s store on July 9, he said. The woman came in alone and spent some time telling Liska how much she loved his store, before asking him to show her some shoes — which required him to step into a “shoe room.”
As soon as he did, the male half “bolted” into the business, grabbed a few backpacks and was out the back door just as Liska stepped back into the main part of the store — with the action all caught on the surveillance video.
The male suspect came back to Boarderline just a few days ago, Liska said Thursday. Liska’s brother confronted him about the theft and the man threatened him with a bat.
Liska said Thursday he turned all the names of the four suspects to JPD and they are actively investigating.
Like Elliott, Liska would like to see local retailers put together some way to communicate more effectively to deter the not-so-petty theft.
“I do things to make shopping here what my customers want, and I get ripped off, constantly,” he said. “It upsets me because I try so hard. … I want to support the community of skateboarders. It sucks when what you get back is that (theft).”
• Contact reporter Liz Kellar at 523-2246 or liz.kellar@juneauempire.com.
A woman suspected of shoplifting from Hummingbird Hollow on July 15 is seen in this surveillance video. (Photo courtesy Hummingbird Hollow)
