Opinion | Columnists
Right, wrong and the blurred in-between
Loss has its own way of wising one up. Despite being down by several hundred dollars, Patel put his hand deep inside those business pockets of his and splashed out a few more hundred on a reliable security system for the store
- Kevin Martin, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:04 June 19, 2008
Every so often an item on the news will stir feelings deep within me because something about it doesn't appear quite correct.
The details touch a chord that resonates a sense of disquiet, leaving me wondering what exactly is wrong, what is right and where lies the blurred no man's land that divides the two?
A young migrant businessman with the surname Patel suddenly finds himself on the national news hour here, and not for the reasons he would have been anticipating.
Patel and his wife own and run a small store that sells a variety of stuff that, in the main, attracts a lot of teenagers who come buzzing through.
Goggle-eyed, desirous, tempted, eventually light-fingered. Patel has lost a lot to sleight handed shoplifters who, with accomplices, managed to perfect the art of diversion while they lifted a coveted article and then left the store, innocence writ in upper case all over the face.
Loss has its own way of wising one up. Despite being down by several hundred dollars, Patel put his hand deep inside those business pockets of his and splashed out a few more hundred on a reliable security system for the store, cameras located in unseen niches above, covering all angles.
Then, like Mr Spider in the children's poem, having spun his web, he sat back, all content, willing to forget the losses of the past while he awaited the arrival of the unsuspecting flies.
Disappointed he certainly was not, for before too long the light-fingered ones tiptoed in and, one by one, were caught. Patel's mind, which had planted the idea of the camera in the first instance, now produced a verdant offshoot.
He decided to clear a section of the wall in one corner of the store and put up pictures of the offenders, convinced that a "name and shame" method would be just the deterrence.
Those who featured in this glossy gallery of uncontrolled impetuosity and wanted their pictures taken down were advised to pay $100 not to the store but to a charity. None of the offenders complained about that although it is not known if any of them actually forked up the $100.
Sheer effrontery
Then suddenly one day a local council member walked in. Someone had informed the council that such and such was taking place at the Patel's store - not the shoplifting, but the burgeoning gallery.
It apparently shocked the council - not the shoplifting so much as the sheer effrontery of Patel to "take the law into his own hands". And so the council member arrived to investigate. He left satisfied with what he saw, satisfied that the reports were, indeed, accurate.
There was, as he was told, a series of pictures all depicting very clearly people in the act of lifting an item and even secreting it on their person, under a jumper, into a waistband.
Not too long after this investigation the council got in touch and informed Patel that he was being fined a hefty sum. Further, the act of soliciting $100 (even if it was not going into Patel's own pocket) was regarded as a separate, even more serious offence.
When we, the public, heard about the story on television, we only caught a nanosecond's glimpse of the Rogues Gallery but it was Patel who was on camera for all to see, vigorously defending himself as he told his story of loss and, at the end, not much profit even from what at first appeared a wonderful idea to thwart young offenders.
My area of disquiet lies in this: In making Patel the scapegoat on national television what message is being put out to the shoplifter in general? I'm not sure if what Patel did was entirely correct. I'm more than convinced that the council's reaction isn't correct either.
These are, as I said, my 'blurred boundaries'.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
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