Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer has a message for would-be thieves coming into DelCo, “You will be prosecuted.”
He specifically singled out theft rings from Philadelphia: “If they think they can steal and only get a citation from the District Attorney’s office, we don’t do that in Delaware County. If you steal from our retailers, if you steal from anybody who sells products here in Delaware County, you will be caught and prosecuted. You will not be given just a citation. You’ll be fingerprinted and charged. We take retail theft very seriously.”
Stollsteimer, speaking with a group of reporters outside of Wegmans in Concord Township, added that some thieves from Philly who get caught in the county are surprised that they get more than a slap on the wrist, that they’re prosecuted. The DA added that even for low-level cases that don’t go to the Court of Common Pleas, there’s a separate program in the county that happens on the municipal level to make sure the suspects are “taking courses and paying the price for what they’ve done, including a course on how retail theft affects our communities.”
He mentioned incidents in other parts of the country where retail thefts are increasing. “There have been horrendous theft rings happening in some of the larger cities. The people are organized going into stores and stealing thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise. That does not happen in Delaware County, and we want to make sure it continues not to happen in Delaware County.”
With the district attorney was Chief County Detective Jim Nolan, the former chief of police in Chester. Stollsteimer credits Nolan for reducing homicide rates in Chester by more than 6o percent.
“From a law enforcement perspective,” Nolan said, “if persons think that retail theft is not a crime that we would investigate, they’re absolutely wrong. We do go into this wholeheartedly, as we do any other crime. However, we have increased our computer forensics capabilities, including surveillance methods.”
That amounts to being able to catch thieves after the fact even if the theft can’t be prevented, Nolan said.
After the brief press conference, Stollsteimer and Nolan went into a private meeting with Wegmans management team.
According to Stollsteimer, the meeting was a partnership between the National District Attorneys Association and the National Retailers Association.
“We’re here visiting stores to make sure that we are familiar with their security procedures and they’re familiar with our law enforcement people. We want to stop retail theft,” the district attorney said.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
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