Today, December 21, Eugene Police Property Crimes Unit and Financial Crimes Unit teamed up with Fred Meyer and Home Depot to help their Asset Protection Agents curb holiday shoplifters During a six-hour special operation they contacted and cited or arrested six people:
- MacJoseph McKinlay, age 24, was arrested for UUV when he arrived in a stolen truck reported earlier this week
- Justin Cathey, age 29, was arrested and charged with Theft in the Third Degree, additionally he had multiple warrants for his arrest
- James Hunter, age 36, Theft in the Third Degree. He was also arrested for Theft III from a shoplifting that occurred in November. Additionally he had multiple outstanding warrants for his arrest.
- Peter Cornett, age 52, Theft in the Second Degree
- John Winters, age 24, Theft in the Second Degree
- Alex Laurian, age 26, Theft in the Third Degree
Over the course of the past several years we have been relying more and more on loss prevention in our community to provide video evidence and information on a multitude of cases. An EPD Property Crimes detective learned that some of the stores conduct what they call a Blitz, taking multiple loss prevention agents from the surrounding stores and spending a shift focusing on one specific store. These tend to be successful operations, however it does put a strain on EPD’s patrol resources to respond. And, often loss prevention ends up having to release some of the suspects due to extensive delays in getting a police officer response when there are other life-safety emergency calls first in line.
Today, the EPD detectives partnered with the stores so there was the ability to quickly respond to issue a citation or make an arrest, in the case of a suspect resisting or attempting to flee.