Friday February 13, 2004
To protect and serve Wal-Mart
Since store opened, Harrisville police have found themselves on the alert 24-7
By TIM GURRISTER
Standard-Examiner staff
tgurrister@standard.net
HARRISVILLE -- It's what happens when you drop four acres of anything with 100,000 items for sale 24 hours a day into a small town next to a higher-crime area.
Since the Harrisville Wal-Mart Supercenter opened in February 2001 in this community of 4,000, the four-man police department has grown into a six-man urban unit dealing with the influx of Ogden 's late-night crowd.
"Our officers are now a lot more adroit at picking up on the drugged-up driver just because of the draw Wal-Mart is at night," Harrisville Police Chief Max Jackson said.
The majority are from Ogden , he said, and on methamphetamine. And they are "never, never ever," from Harrisville, Jackson said.
The department now sees more drug-related driving-under-the-influence arrests than alcohol-related, Jackson said.
He estimates as many as 40 percent of the calls to his department are Wal-Mart-related.
But no one is saying shoppers are unsafe there.
"Oh, heavens no," Harrisville prosecutor Mike Junk said.
"We've got a very strong police presence there. And the Wal-Mart is their major priority."
"No, they aren't saying that," Harrisville Justice Court Judge Jim Beesley said on the safe shopper question. "I understand that everything but about 50 square feet there is covered by cameras."
"No, no. It's still safe to shop there," Jackson 's star DUI enforcement officer Nate Thompson said. "The crime is directed against Wal-Mart, or it's drug-related in some way or another."
Jackson said the only time a customer might be in danger is when a shoplifting case "turns violent at apprehension. When they try to bust and run" as Wal-Mart security confronts them and police are called.
"Or they'll try to run them over with their cars," he said. "We'll get some pretty nasty knockdown fights maybe three times a year."
Thompson said of the department's 175 DUI arrests last year, 140 were headed to, or coming from, Wal-Mart.
"And most of the people we do arrest are from Ogden ," Thompson said. "Definitely more than half, maybe as many as 65 percent."
Thompson said, "It was pretty much the Wal-Mart parking lot" that earned him the Utah Police Chiefs' Association Peace Officer of the Year Award in July, based on his DUI and drug arrests.
And officers have been told by Wal-Mart employees since a Jan. 28 shooting inside the store of an Ogden transient suspected of stealing that the Harrisville supercenter is the most active Wal-Mart for arrests in Utah north of Salt Lake.
"They've been joking, 'We're No. 1,' " Jackson said.
Local store officials deferred any comment to the media relations office at Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville , Ark. , which released a statement:
"We value our relationship with the police department there. They are always very cooperative and good to work with, and we look forward to a long relationship."
That was followed with a denial by Bentonville-based spokeswoman Sharon Weber of the claim to No. 1 for arrests in Northern Utah Wal-Marts. "We don't break-out our numbers like that," she said. "I wasn't able to find anything statistically that would confirm that.
"I talked to a number of our officials, and no one could confirm that for me at all."
The Jan. 28 shooting that left a suspect hospitalized after he pointed a real-looking BB-gun pistol at officers in the store has local officials talking about the Harrisville Wal-Mart's status as a crime magnet.
"Obviously we've had an increase in theft filings and other related crimes," Junk said. "It's increased our visibility there for people out late at night."
Junk is part-time in Harrisville and a full-time prosecutor for Ogden city.
"I've found that people driving late at night might often have some drugs in their system," he said.
"And we're seeing more drug DUIs in Harrisville than I do in Ogden ."
He has also been a part-time prosecutor in Riverdale, but he didn't seen the crime aureole at the Wal-Mart Supercenter there.
He said in Riverdale, with scores of other large stores abounding, including national retailers like Target and Home Depot plus numerous car dealerships, Wal-Mart is not the colossus it is in Harrisville.
"In Harrisville, it's just Wal-Mart,." he said. "As far as comparing it to Riverdale, you can't."
"It's tweakers (meth users) who can't sleep who decide to come to our Wal-Mart," Jackson said, since little else is open late at night.
His department conducts seminars with store employees on the items meth abusers buy or steal, so they can alert police.
"It seems almost nightly they get something tweaker-related there," Jackson said. "At 2 a.m. , you should come look. It's a circus."
Thompson agreed.
"It's just amazing to see. First of all, tweakers are paranoid. The hard-core users are unable to control the way they act, the way they walk, their demeanor. Have you ever seen the movie 'Men in Black?'"
Jackson believes the man who was shot Jan. 28 was drug-addled to the point he was intent on an "officer-assisted suicide" in the 2 a.m. confrontation.
James Ryan Loosemore, 25, remains in McKay-Dee Hospital . In addition to recovering from his wounds, Jackson said he has been confined to the mental ward there.
He faces likely charges for brandishing the BB-gun pistol at two officers, a Harrisville patrolman backed up by another from Pleasant View, responding to shoplifting and auto-prowl complaints.
"We're relatively certain he was high," Jackson said.
"On the flip side, Wal-Mart is a great outfit to work with," he said. "You really couldn't ask for a more community-oriented business. And with the sales tax revenue, it's worth the headaches."
That figure is estimated at $800,000 a year.
Wal-Mart recently gave the department the near-$1,000 match it needed to partner with state funds for new computer equipment for a simulated shooting range, he said, and the home office in Bentonville regularly matches the proceeds from the annual police-fire golf tournament fund-raiser.
"They realize their presence has an impact," he said. "They try to help us as much as they can."
Copyright ©2004, Ogden Publishing Corporation
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