The incident occurred on July 23 at 3:23 p.m., outside the Intermarché store in Bolesławiec. A man appeared there that day who, according to the store owner, had been regularly robbing the premises for more than a month: – He takes bags with him, packs goods into them, and then escapes with them, either through the store entrance or (...) between the shelves and the fence made of metal tubing.
This time, “he stole goods worth PLN 794.64.” And he “did not care about the employee standing next to him (...), simply packing goods into his bags.” The woman, together with a man, probably one of the suppliers, tried to stop the thief.
Łukasz Dudzic, the store owner:
But the perpetrator escaped by jumping over a closed gate at the checkout area. None of the customers reacted, but I am not surprised, because I would not react either—not out of concern for my own safety, but because later the services might accuse me and drag me through the courts for violating the thief’s personal inviolability. That is how things are in this country.
Two employees, the Intermarché owner reports, chased after the thief. One of them, after leaving the store, noticed a police car at a nearby gas station. The women split up: one, chasing the thief, headed toward the forest, while the other approached the police car. (The first managed to recover only three beers during a scuffle with the robber).
The other noticed that there was no one in the police vehicle. The officers eventually returned (the person reporting the incident assumes they had been drinking coffee or eating hot dogs at the station). But when the woman asked for help, she allegedly heard that she should... call 112.
One of the employees, Dudzic reports, did exactly that: she called the emergency number. The owner does not conceal his outrage:
What did she hear? Not that a patrol would come and look for the thief, who might still have been in the forest or might have headed toward the town, but that she should secure the recording and report the incident to them.
Łukasz Dudzic concludes:
If the police officers who were at the gas station had graciously walked 50 meters to where the thief was with the loot, they could have detained him, recovered the goods and handed them over to the company. If a patrol had come, it might also have been possible to apprehend the thief.
He adds:
These are expensive products that can easily be resold later for half price, either at a market or to random people. He also points out that, given the thief’s life circumstances, the company will never recover the money it lost.
He also adds:
I ask myself and wonder what tax money is spent on. (…) The thief has been casually roaming the city of Bolesławiec and its stores for several months, stealing on a massive scale, while the services are unable to deal with him.
We spoke with one of the employees who took part in the incident—the one who wrestled with the thief. The woman told us that the robber also routinely steals from other stores in the area. He does not even particularly try to hide it, entering the premises with complete confidence.
What is more, he steals various things, by the cartonful. He presumably sells them afterward. When our source once wrestled with the suspect, she heard him say: “Leave me alone, I have someone to give this to!”
Moreover, rumors are circulating that the man has already been punished for his actions.
Fortunately, none of the employees of the store in question was injured as a result of such interventions. Our interviewee said that the serial thief told her he would never hit a woman. That rule does not apply to men, however. At one point, the robber allegedly knocked over a security guard at another store.
We asked the police about the case. Staff Aspirant Anna Kublik-Rościszewska, press officer of the Bolesławiec County Police Headquarters:
I cannot respond to (...) the inquiry because we have no report from 112 on the stated date concerning a shoplifting incident, and no notification of the commission of the offense described in the inquiry was submitted to this unit.
We did not receive an answer to the question about the police patrol’s failure to react despite being at the scene.
The Intermarché store, in turn, sent us photographs of the phone from which the emergency call was made. The photographs show that 112 was called on July 23 at 3:41 p.m., and the conversation lasted 1 minute and 14 seconds.
