Oregon authorities are seeking a would-be thief who was armed with a hatchet when he tried to rob a convenience store, only to flee when the clerk drew a gun and called 911.
However, the clerk’s quick thinking cost him his job, with the president of Plaid Pantry in Oak Grove explaining to local station KOIN-TV that the chain has a zero-tolerance policy for weapons.
He said employees are trained to de-escalate robbery situations to avoid injury, according to the station.
You may think I am picky, but the clerk did de-escalated the situation. He displayed his sidearm and the thief go pretty peaceful and even surrendered his hatchet. Nobody got hurt!
Hat Tip to Blogson
Pity the guy list his job, though
Peace Through Superior Firepower(TM)
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I hope another business hires the man. Notice how he stayed calm and cool. He didn’t start blazing away, he picked up the phone and called for help. He deserves a better job.
To paraphrase Dirty Harry, I don’t think a guy walking into a convenience store, wearing a hoodie and a face mask, and carrying a hatchet is collecting for the red cross. Absent a weapon I don’t see how you’re going to de-escalate the situation. I suppose give him the money, and hope he doesn’t kill you anyway, but that seems like poor tactics. The clerk may have lost his job, he’ll get another. He has his life and future.
Every one of those policies assumes that the bad guy won’t kill the clerk to eliminate a witness, or just for fun. You can’t assume the guy willing to threaten a clerk with a weapon will decide not to use it when he gets what he wants.
The clerk fulfilled his duties keeping the store safe, de-escelating, nobody got hurt, and he was fired anyway. If I were a lawyer, I would smell a wrongful termination suit. The shop would rather he died.
If there were a Plaid Pantry around here I’d have to boycott it now, but I’ve never heard of them. Perhaps it’s a chain of 2, found only in far left places?
If the clerk lost his life de-escalating the robbery per policy, I’m sure Plaid Pantry would re-escalate it per policy.
“Deescalate the robbery”…
That didn’t go very well for 2 clerks at my hometown grocery/gas place this weekend. I doubt high school age girls were doing very much to escalate when sumdood decided to shoot them.
Thankfully both are stable so far.