There was this time that the Director of Housing Services called me directly, because she was worried about a problem that was brewing in one of her buildings. Apparently, a young man had mailed a Valentine’s Day gift to his girlfriend, who lived in the dormitories. The gift was a necklace, valued at about $100, not too terribly bad, but it never arrived in his girlfriend’s mail. When she didn’t receive it, he checked the postal service tracking and saw that it had been received by Housing Services. But when Housing Services checked, it seemed like the employee that received the package, put it in the wrong mailbox. The resident whose mailbox it was, we will call her Amanda, was given the package and off she went with it. This was confirmed by Housing staff when they reviewed the video from the camera behind the Mail Room desk.
The Director was upset because when her staff contacted Amanda, she said she didn’t know what they were talking about. There was nothing more that Housing staff could do and when the young woman who was supposed to receive the necklace called the police the dispatcher said that there was nothing we could do. I also agree that most of my officers would have had the same answer, except to refer her to the Postal Inspector, however, from my previous experiences, since the USPS had already delivered the package to the address, they wouldn’t have investigated either.
But I had an officer on my shift that was kind of a badger. He just didn’t give up on things. I asked him to look into it. He checked the mail delivery confirmation, reviewed the video, spoke to the Housing staff, and then called Amanda. When he spoke to her over the phone, he explained what he was looking into and gave her an out. “I’m just trying to recover the necklace, if I can. Do you still have it?”
She said that she did not, that when she realized that the package had not been for her, she had simply thrown it away. The officer thanked her and hung up. Then he prepared some paperwork that included two Consent Search waivers. Since she was home when he called her, he immediately went to her dorm room and knocked on her door.
He explained to her that his boss (me) was being a real jerk and ordering him to make sure that all his Ts were crossed and his Is were dotted before he could close the investigation out. Would she mind terribly if he searched her room? She said it wouldn’t be a problem. He put two Consent Search waivers on her table. He asked her if she would sign the Consent Search waiver for her apartment and one for her car. She hesitated for a moment before signing the one for her car. She didn’t seem to have a problem with him searching the room, so he knew it was in her car.
He gathered the forms and told her that searching her car would be so much faster, so they should do that first. They went out to the car in the parking garage and he asked her if there was anything fragile that he should be careful with. She said that she had some expensive camera equipment in the trunk and wanted to know if she could collect that first. He told her that he would be very careful with the camera equipment as he was a department evidence photographer and understood. He also now knew that the necklace was in the trunk of the car.
He opened the trunk of the car, slid the hard case protected camera equipment to the side and found a small jewelry box and opened it. Inside was the necklace. It was a well-written and beautiful report to read.
He issued her a citation for theft.
By the way, she later tried to file a complaint against him for “entrapment.”