The Bunker Blog

This guy stole! Plain and simple, he’s an admitted thief. But you know what? He probably won’t be off the team, and he’ll probably pay his fine, maybe get some community service, and that will be that. In the meantime, young kids are watching football, and at least to some, he’s a hero. So, what do you think they’ll see? Maybe they’ll think it’s cool to steal, since DeMarcus Granger did it.

What’s bad is that most news stories I’ve seen have made this to be something terrible for Oklahoma. Hey, what about the store? What will Oklahoma do without their star defensive tackle? Who cares?! This guy put himself, and his team in this situation when he decided to break the law.

Does anyone believe that Granger stole out of necessity? That he needed that jacket so badly, and just couldn’t afford it? Because I don’t. In fact, in my experience, most of those who shoplift have enough money on them when they’re caught to pay for at least most of what they stole.

This problem of shoplifting is just growing and growing. This isn’t the first incident of a famous or at least, semi-famous, person stealing in the news, but that just shows that the problem continues. Anyway, here’s the news take on this…

Oklahoma starting defensive tackle DeMarcus Granger will miss the Fiesta Bowl after being sent home from Arizona following an arrest for shoplifting.

Granger, 21, was arrested Saturday in Tempe after he tried to steal a jacket from the Burlington Coat Factory inside Arizona Mills Mall, Tempe police reported.

“Mr. Granger removed an anti-theft device from a jacket and then concealed the jacket in a bag. He exited the store walking past the cash registers without paying for the jacket,” Mike Horn, a spokesman for the Tempe Police Department, said in a statement.

Granger admitted committing the offense and was booked into the Tempe City Jail on one count of shoplifting, Horn said. He later bonded out of jail.

ESPN – Stoops pulls Granger from Fiesta Bowl following arrest – College Football

Technorati Tags: loss prevention,retail theft,DeMarcus Granger,Oklahoma Football,Fiesta Bowl,LP,football player shoplifter

Popularity: 13% [?]

Those who know me will tell you that, when I’m wrong, I will admit it, and if possible, correct it. This is one of those times. It seems that my assumption about the circumstances behind the injury of Cheryl Greene, the employee from Grover, NC who was thrown from the hood of a car driven by shoplifters, was totally wrong. In fact, from what I have learned, Cheryl was only on the hood of that car because she had no place else to go because the driver, Donald Joshua Jones, tried to run her over in the parking lot of the store where she was working.

Since my first article, I have been contacted by someone close to Cheryl and her family. In an email earlier today, this is what I learned:

The couple were in the store a couple times earlier and left. They were suspected since each time, the female would distract the employees while the male stole the goods(mostly electronic stuff). When they came back in the 3rd time, Cheryl finally caught on and while watching them she noticed their "scheme". She told the other clerk on duty(there were 2 employees working) to call 911, she followed them out of the store to try and wait for the police and to get a license tag number. When she was in the parking lot trying to get the plate number, the criminals "gunned" the suv towards Cheryl, and her split second defense was to try and jump out of the way, but ended up on the hood(she was just trying to avoid getting run over), so the major misconception is that she jumped on the hood purposely to try and stop them. That is not the case, she was trying to get out of the way. Since the criminals accelerated quickly, her defense was to just try to hold on for dear life. Unfortunately about a half mile down the road when they took a turn at an intersection(still at a great rate of speed), the windshield wiper in which she was holding onto broke and she flew off unfortunately hitting her head on the curb pretty badly. She was found face down in a pool of her own blood. This curb is about a half a block(stone’s throw) from where she was staying with her mother. She is on a ventilator since her breathing became very week on Tuesday. She is still in a coma and has not regained consciousness since the moment of impact. The only movement was on Thursday when her leg "twitched" a couple times while her mother Ann Robinson(also of Grover) was speaking to her. She had to have a new shunt inserted into the top of her head late Thursday to drain more fluid from her brain. The prognosis is very critical and optimism is fading. But we are all hoping and praying as hard as we can. There is always a chance of a recovery, but from a medical standpoint(God does do miracles), there is no chance of a FULL recovery without brain damage. But once again, It’s in God’s hands.

This poor young lady is hanging on by a thread, thanks to two idiots who, for whatever reason, decided to try to run through her with an SUV rather than be charged with a misdemeanor larceny. This should outrage all of us. All she was trying to do was get a plate number for the police, and for her trouble, she is fighting for her life in a hospital.

Who is at fault here? The two shoplifters are at fault, and they should pay for this crime. Here is what they have been charged with:

The suspects and charges

 
Pamela Dockery, 21, of 915 Grass Hollow Court, Charlotte
Cleveland County Detention Center, $25,000 secured bond
North Carolina charges
Aiding and abetting DWI
Felony hit and run
Failure to stop for an injury
Permitting a vehicle to be driven by a non-licensed driver

Donald Joshua Jones, 26, of 107 Sprouse Lane, Grover
Cleveland County Detention Center, No bond
North Carolina charges
DWI
Driving with a license revoked
Reckless driving
Felony hit and run
Failure to stop for personal injury
Possession of an open container
Extradition/fugitive from another state
South Carolina charges
Felony assault and battery with intent to kill

Cheryl Greene is a heroine, and my prayers and the prayers of my family are with Cheryl and her family.

Popularity: 14% [?]

I recently had the pleasure of having a review of our little project here by Darn Good Reviews. Here’s part of what Mark had to say:

With his unique and informative style, he takes us into a world that exposes the underbelly of shoplifting. You wouldn’t believe some of the things he brings to light.

I appreciate the compliment. I only wish I could figure out a way to do even more to raise public awareness of this all-too-common problem that faces society today.

It amazes me to think that there are people out there who make their living by stealing from all of us. But, I’ve been in the business long enough to know that there are plenty of them.

His posts are to the point and gives us an insight we only hear about on the news.

Thanks, Mark, for the review, and the critique. As you will notice, I made some changes, and converted the blog to Wordpress, for several reasons.

So if you are just starting out in blogging, or if you’d just like an objective opinion from an experienced blogger, you should click on over to Darn Good Reviews and submit your blog for review. You’ll get some good constructive criticism, plus a little boost in your traffic.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Here is still more parenting geniusry for you to review. Police have their hands full with this type of crime.  It sure seems to me that it is time society sent a stronger message to those who take their kids along on their crime sprees. Unfortunately, this is all too common.

Elisa Galdamez, 24, and Sindy Guerra, 22, both of Campbell Avenue, face fourth-degree larceny, risk of injury to a minor and conspiracy charges. Galdamez and Guerra allegedly took $672 worth of merchandise without paying for it. The risk of injury charge was added because a 1-year-old child was present and in the custody of Galdamez and Guerra when the alleged theft occurred, police said.

The Connecticut Post Online – Holiday shoplifting nets 2 arrests

Popularity: 40% [?]

I have tried quite a few RSS readers, including the ones built into Firefox, Thunderbird, and even IE 7. There are plenty of Open Source readers/aggregators out there, too. But for me, Blogbridge has all the bells and whistles I need.

I read a lot of blogs and news. I’ve made some pretty cool connections through blogging, and I like to keep up with what my colleagues are writing about out there in the big old blogosphere. For example, I just happened to stumble upon a great way to meet other bloggers and boost some traffic here at Michael Martine’s blog. 

Anyway, after trying readers like RSS Owl and Greatnews, which are both excellent RSS readers,  I found Blogbridge, and it changed the way I read blogs.

First of all, Blogbridge has something called "Smartfeed", which allows me to search multiple blogs and news feeds based on keywords that I enter. It does all the searching for me, and then pulls all the articles together in one place. You can have a similar list of news articles emailed to you by Google, but Blogbridge gets them all, where Google will give you the top 5 or 6.

Blogbridge is also very easy to use, even for me . And, with their free sync service, you can back up your feeds so that if your computer dies, when you re-install Blogbridge, your feeds are right there waiting for you.

Finally, Blogbridge uses "Guides" to group your feeds into categories for easy organization. That way, if you want to just see what’s going on in the world of Retail Loss Prevention, you open that guide, and, hopefully, my blog will show up there .

Like they say, Blogbridge has super powers. You should check it out. It’s Open Source, meaning it’s free, and it does so much more than most other readers. This one is worth downloading. It’s a definite keeper.

Introduction and overview of BlogBridge – a free, open source and cross platform blog and rss readerBlogBridge

Popularity: 12% [?]