Woman steals Ark. library’s fine money

A long time worry
This kind of situation concerned me for a long time. Larger libraries taking in a few hundred in fines or more every day are really ripe targets for any thief looking for an easy score. I mean, we don’t have as much on-hand cash as a bank but some larger branches might have as much as a convenience store. But the whole amount of money isn’t as attractive as the other features marking a library as an easy robbery.

We’re certainly not armed, or at least 99% of us aren’t. And even if we were, would we be stupid enough to initiate a gunfight for a few hundred dollars? And I apologize to the ladies of our profession, but thieves know that libraries are primarily staffed with women, who just don’t seem to be as likely to start something when someone waives a weapon around. There’s no panic button, no dollar bill trap, and how many of us really have a written, practiced, and standard protocol for what to do in the event of a hold up?

The libraries I’ve worked for had emergency plans for fires, bomb threats, and stuff like that. But nothing in the realm of armed robbery.

In other words, there’s a pretty good chance we won’t know how to respond afterwards and that might give them extra time to make a clean break.

Got cameras over your desk? Above the door? The last two libraries I worked for didn’t. The one I work for now does have cameras covering the lobby. However they’re black and white, no audio, hardwired, poor signal to noise, and picture is just good enough to let you know that’s a humanoid walking through the door and not, say, a slime monster.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m am 100% pro patron privacy and 100% against the camera world police state cities like London are adopting. But at the front desk, everyone can see you. The guy behind you knows what you’re checking out because he’s right there with you. He can see that you have copies of The Da Vinci Code, How to Get More Out of Sex, and Gonorrhea and Syphilis. When you’re checking stuff out, you have far less privacy than you have when browsing the stacks, Everyone sees you and they can tell what you have without much effort. So a camera above the desk (and not the self checks) isn’t really an invasive thing.

Besides, there’s no money in the stacks, at least nothing liquid.