Victory Wave of the Blue Blazer

"Control...we'll be making an arrest."

734 and 741 dash into the control room to do a little victory jig after hearing the latest on the under-24-hour backpack theft occurrence in CID. For those of you who were not visiting Harold during these hours, here's a little recap and shout out.

As I arrived yesterday for another exciting day of Westlandia and monotonous roves, I found out that a theft had occurred in our very own CID. I was asked to pull up the footage on the fairly-recently-opened-up view of CID from the hallway. I was excited to be part of the investigation, but my excitement was soon held in check when the inevitable Risk Management came requiring my irreplacable "ROVE" assistance. Luckily, I was only needed for about five minutes. By the time I came back, 729 had found a very informative section of the video that showed a man with a bag leaving and depositing it into the empty room also within view. He apparently had been in and out several times, playing the cellphone role as he did. We continued to look for more: the scene where the owner of the pack realizes his bag is missing and heads off frantically to look for it (when in reality it and the man who took it are probably not more than 7 feet away from where he left it); the scene where both owner and thief do what might be considered a Russian Roullette and probably even look each other in the eyes as they pass; the multiple scenes where the thief walks around on his cellphone; and finally the scene where the thief leaves with the backpack. Throughout the day more investigation went into the theft. Many employees believed they had seen him--perhaps even interacted with him. We didn't know then that the mystery would be solved only hours away.

Today, after accidently not checking that I had signed up for 708s shift, I arrived at work at about 7:45. Within minutes, I heard 740 explain to 12 that CID had called, they thought our man was back today, and the backpack had been returned to a cubicle 2 seats away from where it should have been. I was soon asked to search for the footage to confirm whether or not the suspect had a bag with him when he came in. Sure enough he did. Sure enough he was on his cell phone again. Sure enough he used the empty back room. The excitement butterflies were back.

12 had disappeared, we assumed to go talk with the man. After a while 734 and I looked at the footage of 12 heading back with another officer, and taking our man with him. We waited anxiously.

"Control, I just wanted to let you know, we'll be making an arrest so I won't be in the office for a while."

May the victory wave of the blue blazer be held high once more. Who says we just sit at the desks? Here's a shout out to all those who helped with another historical moment in Library Security. And 729...it just had to happen on your last day!