CVS employee calls for better security as police investigate four weekend robbery attempts
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (March 23, 2015)– An Indianapolis CVS pharmacy employee is calling on the company to make big changes in their stores in order to discourage robbery attempts. The woman, who does not want to be identified, says she has been through five robberies and two robbery attempts at her job. She has personally been handed a robbery demand note while working at the pharmacy counter.
“It always starts as a list of drugs,” she said, recalling a recent robbery note. “Toward the end of the note, it says ‘this is a robbery, I have a gun, I’ll kill everybody in here.’”
The employee says she and her coworkers are constantly on edge, never knowing when the next robbery attempt may happen.
“Every person who walks through the door in a hoodie, you want to say ‘is this that guy,’” she said. “Oh no, here it goes. You get that sick feeling. And when you have to turn your back to get a medication off the shelf, you have to look over your shoulder.”
Her concerns follow another rash of CVS pharmacy robbery attempts over the weekend. On Saturday, robbery attempts were reported at CVS locations in the 2300 block of East 46th Street, the 6500 block of North Keystone Avenue and the 6200 block of Allisonville Road. All three northeast side incidents happened between 12:40 and 1:50pm. In each case, employees told police a male between the ages of 18 and 20 approached the pharmacy counter and presented a note, demanding several prescription pain killers. Only one of the robbery attempts was successful. One attempt was thwarted when a security guard approached the suspect and he ran out the door. In another attempt, the suspect left the store empty handed when the pharmacist simply refused to accept the note.
A fourth CVS robbery attempt was reported Sunday afternoon around 3 p.m. in the 7200 block of North Michigan Road. A male suspect in his 20s approached the pharmacy counter and presented a note that listed several prescription painkillers. The rest of the note said “This is a robbery! I am armed! Do not push button or I’ll shoot you! Give everything! No trackers!”
The suspect in that incident also left empty handed when the pharmacist got on the phone to call police.
While three of the four robbery attempts were thwarted, the CVS employee we spoke to says the company needs to take steps to discourage people from even attempting the robberies.
“I mean there`s things they can do as a company to secure the safety of their employees and at least take part of the anxiety level off of us,” she said.
Michael DeAngelis, a CVS corporate spokesperson, sent a statement in response to the recent robberies:
“The safety and well-being of our customers and employees is our highest priority and we work closely with law enforcement in their investigations of robbery incidents. We have security policies and procedures in place at all of our stores and we regularly review them to ensure effectiveness, including hi-def security cameras (pop over to this web-site for options)and security guard presence at select locations. We do not comment on specific security measures because we do not want to undermine them. We are committed to ensuring that CVS/pharmacy remains a safe environment for our customers to shop and fill their prescriptions.”
The CVS employee says the company needs to remodel their older stores to make working conditions safer for employees. She says pharmacy counters should be protected behind bulletproof safety glass, security guards should be posted at all locations from open until close, and popular narcotics should be stored in special safes behind the safety glass.
Steve Dubois, of Central Indiana Crime Stoppers doesn’t know if bulletproof glass is the answer. He believes it could get in the way of the personal interaction between a pharmacist and a customer. But he also thinks CVS and other pharmacies need to constantly be analyzing their security measures and store layouts.
“So that industry has to create something,” Dubois said. “They have to get something in between, where they can still have that interaction but they keep their pharmacists and their people safe.”
Dubois also points out that people who are addicted to prescription painkillers, and those who make their money from illegally selling them, will stop at nothing to get them.
“You could probably have an armed policeman in some of these places, and there’s still going to be a robbery,” Dubois said. “And there’s going to be that confrontation between the policeman and the armed robber.”
Metro police are still investigating the weekend robbery attempts. It’s not clear if all the incidents were the work of the same suspect, but detectives always investigate possible connections between cases.
Filed under: General Problems
Cvs in Des Moines , Iowa
Southside of Des Moines is open til 10 pm they are very short staffed
The theft at that store is non stop. Worse between 4 and 10 pm
Alot of nights they only have one person to close the store.
Every day it gets worse and alot are same people coming back. Sales are nil at night.
It’s a bad area and company won’t do anything. Cops do there vest
I’m worried for safety worried about armed cash robbery.
When I worked at CVS, you never heard about a robbery at another store unless you watched TV or read the newspaper. They just did not talk about it.
CVS is the worst company I have ever worked for. Loss Prevention is only there to watch employees not to protect them.
Cameras are no good anyway, usually not admissible in court, defense will say imagine is altered. Only way a camera works is if you can ID the person anyway, if they are unknown, they will never be caught.
Retail pharmacy in a few years will be a shooting gallery.
Need to get rid of Gun Free Zone Drug stores. Bad guys wont touch if they believe place might be armed
Employees must submit to a “smock” check in case we have some stolen jelly beans in our pocket. If we bring anything in for “lunch”, it must be “tagged” by the manager on duty. Internal theft must be a real problem. However, there is no “panic button”, no training on what to do in the event of a robbery, and no counseling if we are the victims of one. I have told my family that if I should be killed in a robbery, they should be sure they end up owning the company.
With the new regulations on painkillers, I expect there will be more and more of these robberies, not just pharmacies, but anywhere the addicts feel they can get a few pills. Whenever a customer has to show their ID, anyone who sees that knows they might be getting pain meds. When I was at the pharmacy last time, both people ahead of me had to show their IDs.
Where I work there are 11 cameras inside the pharmacy. We had an incident where we needed to know how many prescriptions were dropped off by a patient. I went to the security room and had them play back the video feed from the cameras. I could not see the person dropping off the prescriptions, but I could see quite well the tech taking those prescriptions.
A lot of states have a gun carry law where people can actually wear a gun in public. Stores can post signs saying no guns allowed. But, you are not going to find many chains that will do this. So, just wait on a customer that is wearing a gun and see how safe you feel when the chain will not allow you to bring a gun to work. Oh, and I have had an unstable customer wear a gun to our pharmacy. One of the pharmacists tried to get something done about it. She could not get anything done. They will not even post a sign on the door.
As long as the customer had a legal.permit to carry and it was concel carry state no there wasnt anything she could do about. Maybe ask her to leave. But even those Moms against guns have zero legal staus on having businesses to tell people not to bring guns into their establishments if they are legally licensed and it is concealed.
Here in Harrisburg Pa loss prevention watches staff from his laptop..RPh written up twice in the same day….oh and lots of cameras on the script pro as well.
How about if pharmacy workers could push a button (they could wear like a beeper) that would immediately connect them to a law enforcement officer, opening up a video feed so that someone sitting at a desk would instantly see the suspicious activity in the pharmacy. How expensive could that be to set up?
“Hi-Def security cameras”! What a joke! Hey Mike have you been in the stores? Cameras are all pointed on looking for internal activity. How about asking Larry for some of his bonus and protect our employees with better camera system on drop off, DT and outside lot? You have no idea what you are talking about.
By “select” locations he means pointed at the safes to keep an eye on employees. My store doesn’t even have one pointed at the “drop off” window. Only enough money in the budget to have them on the safes.
Michael DeAngelis says they have hi-def security cameras. Ain’t this wonderful. The robber can shoot and kill you and maybe, just maybe they can identify the robber and arrest him. They call this security??? These cameras are a joke. They provide no protection. The bullet proof glass sounds like an excellent example. But, oh, we don’t want to limit customer access to the pharmacist. Its ok if a robber also has access to the pharmacist. The robber can then get the drugs and shoot the pharmacist. We want bullets to have access to the pharmacy too. These idiot chains don’t give dip about their employees. All they care about is MONEY. The only protection we have is what we can provide ourselves. This is why pharmacists should ban together and force change within these chains. We have learned that pharmacists and techs being killed is not going to change the status quo and we have learned that prescription errors and killing patients is not going to change the status quo. We are left to our own devices. It is time that we pharmacists and techs let those chains know that we are not going accept things as they are.
My bet is this person will or has been terminated for speaking to media .