Crime & Safety

Cash Pickup Driver Pays Price for Failing to Lock Safe

Smash and grab made much easier by operator's oversight, costing vending company $1,875.

Doing your job amounts to, at the very least, covering the fundamentals. In human resources and personnel management, they call it "core competencies."

According to a police report, the driver of a route to collect money from vending machines might have failed to meet up to basic expectations.

The driver called the Wauwatosa Police Department last week to report that while on his 26th stop of the day to pick up revenues from his company's clients, someone broke into his truck and made off with 25 bags of cash from his previous stops.

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He was on a service call in the 2600 block of North Mayfair Road and entered a commercial building to collect the day's take from the vending machines. When he returned to his truck, which was described as a "heavy-duty box truck," he found the driver's side window broken out.

The driver checked the back of the truck and found the rear doors secure. Then he checked the safe inside the truck and found it empty of the 25 money bags he had secured that day.

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Security camera footage showed a man peering through the front doors of the building during the time the driver was inside, then quickly walking away in the direction of the truck, then returning to look in again and finally turning away toward the truck again. The truck was not visible on camera.

Police theorized that the unknown suspect had looked in to see whether anyone was in the lobby, then smashed the window of the truck, then looked again to make sure no one was watching, then entered the truck and taken the cash.

The driver described the working of the safe. It has a chute on its top into which he drops the bags of currency, a device to shut the chute and keep anyone from reaching into it to get to the money, and a heavy-duty padlock on its door to keep anyone from simply opening it to grab the money.

The lock was not cut or damaged, the police report said. The driver told investigating officers that he must have forgotten to lock it.

That oversight cost the company an estimated $1,875.

The driver did not say to police whether he feared his job might be in jeopardy.


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