The Haberdashery

When I was working second shift and still assigned to Santa’s Helper, we were assigned to the SE side of town frequently. There was an older house that had been converted into a Haberdashery, a fine men’s clothing store. A ditch ran between the back of the store and a strip mall. A thicket of woods was on three sides. Neither other houses nor businesses were in sight of the store. Because it was so isolated, the owners had installed a motion detector burglar alarm. We only had about 90 alarms in the town at the time, so it was not something that one would assume was installed. Most of the alarms were to detect broken windows or open doors, but this one activated when motion was detected inside the store.

At precisely 7 PM every night, the alarm would sound. It happened so often that when we weren’t busy, we would head toward the store even before it activated. The alarm had a piercing outside siren. It was so loud that we would have to tell dispatch that we had arrived about a block from the store because they could not understand anything we said over the noise. It would also go off if there was any kind of breeze. We figured that the air/ heating unit or drafty windows were the cause of the activation. The owner lived in a different city so no contact ever came out; the siren just reset itself after about 20 minutes leaving the alarm inactive for the rest of the night.

The alarm became routine, not something any officer should fall into. Santa’s Helper was always driving so that meant that I had the hand held radio. He would pull into the drive and walk around the east and south side of the house, shaking the doors and looking at the windows. An enclosed back porch stuck out off the back of the house. I would walk around the north side, around the jutted out portion on the west side. Santa’s Helper would meet me on the west side and we would walk back around one side of the house together. It was the same, night after night. The doors and windows would be secure, false alarm again.

It got so routine that often, we would not even get out our flashlights but depended on the flood lights installed around the building. At any other alarm, I would be ready; hand on my gun, flashlight in hand, body tense, watching, listening. I would peek around a corner high or low before I walked around one. At this alarm, we just strolled. We knew it would be false. We were just going through the motions so we could mark checked alarm, no contact on the dispatch card.

One evening during cool weather, the alarm went off as expected. We responded as usual. Santa’s Helper pulled right up in the drive just like we have so many nights before. I am not even sure that we told dispatch that we were there. Sloppy police work to say the least. He went around the front and I went around the north side. There was a nice looking shirt hanging in the window that I admired for a moment and then I rounded the corner of the porch area. I looked at moisture hanging onto a spider web. It was very pretty in the moon light. I rounded the next corner and it looked like roaches scattering when the lights come on!

I yelled, “Stop!” and grabbed my radio to tell Santa’s helper but he wasn’t in the car so he had no radio. Hearing the word stop apparently meant run faster! I could not yell loud enough to be heard over the siren wailing. Dispatch could not understand what I was saying.

One guy jumped up and ran into the woods toward the ditch behind the mall. Another guy took off around the south side of the house into the woods. He almost knocked over Santa’s Helper as he strolled around the southwest corner of the house. Can you say, “Caught by total surprise?” I struck out into the woods after the one that ran west and Santa’s Helper took off after the other one. They both had time to find a good hidey hole before we ran after them. Both got away! I guess that we are lucky that they did not circle around and steal our patrol car since Santa’s Helper left it unlocked and running.

I came back out of the woods with torn pants and a defeated spirit. Santa’s Helper didn’t run far enough to get winded before he lost his guy so he returned too. We started looking to see what they were doing and found a coat, hammer, and a couple of screw drivers. They apparently had been setting off the alarm every evening, waiting for us to check the building and leave. Then they returned and were slowly carving away the mortar on the bricks so they could get inside. They had just gotten the hole big enough to reach an arm in.

It made chills run down my spine when I realized how complacent I had become and to know that every time we responded to the alarm, they were lying in the woods watching. We never did catch them. I never took an alarm call as accidental again either.