The Purse Snatcher ~ Blog 32

If you had one of these straps, wouldn't you be just
as likely to forget your purse is around? I would.

Fridays are salad days. Literally. It's the day I stop at Shaw's for about 1.5 pounds of salad. Such was the case a few days ago, when I loaded my plastic carton with veggies and topped it with a little blue cheese dressing. Why ruin a good load of veggies with blue cheese? Because too much of a good thing is bland and tasteless. I also add bacon. Deal with it.

As I opened my car door, I noticed a purse-like bag was sitting in the top of the empty grocery cart I had parked next to. Curious, I closed the driver's door and picked up the black, foot-long bag. It was zipped shut but I wasn't sure exactly what it was. I unzipped and looked -- cash, a wallet and other lady-like items were inside. I zipped it back up and started walking toward the front door.

As I passed the Salvation Army bell-ringer, I asked her to keep an eye out for frantic women in the parking lot. "Let them know I found their purse and brought it to guest services," I told her.

On my way back out of the store, the lady stopped me.

"That was very nice of you," she said. "But it might have been a police thing."

"A police thing?"

"No, a police STING. They've been running sting operations around here."

For serious? (Sorry, the Minnesota in me comes out from time to time.)

That sounded far-fetched. I mentioned my story to Pablo when I got to work. Pablo is the local government watchdog. He likes to yell about the government and, frankly, his rants are often the most enjoyable part of my evening. I like my job; his rants are just that good.

Pablo informed me that we had, indeed, written some stories about Manchester, N.H., police doing stings in the area. About half a mile from Shaw's, they'd left a purse and a DVD player outside a GameStop. They'd also left a purse in a cart outside Walmart.

I'm not saying the purse I found was part of a sting. There is no follow-up when you do something nice like return a purse to a store. It's not even nice, really. That's just what you do. As Pablo spread my story around the newsroom (it took the place of one of his evening rants, though we still heard him complain loudly that gays should be seeking gay marriage, not marriage), a similar reaction took place:

Seriously?

Apparently, there is no hardened crime in Manchester and it is a place with few problems. There are no meth addicts; no children at local schools need to be told not to use drugs; nobody gets in drunken bar fights. There is no crime in Manchester, so they're down to doing purse stings.

You can argue that taking a purse or taking money from a purse isn't really a crime, it's entrapment. And the very fact that you can make that argument tells me it's not a serious crime. Still, a pair of men face felony charges in Manchester over the stings.

I like to think that, as I picked up the purse, there were videotapes whirring. Police officers — a half dozen of them, at least — felt their pulses quicken as I looked in the bag and saw the money. "He's taking the bait!!!" they all heard ringing through their heads. And I like to think that it ruined their day when I zipped the purse shut and walked back into the store. Because, for them, it was back to eating donuts and sipping their coffee. I was rewarded with the virtuous taste of blue cheese salad with bacon. I hope they saw me eating my victory salad and questioned what they were doing with their lives and maybe, just maybe, they cut the sting short that day and went out to catch a drug dealer. In another town, of course. Manchester doesn't have any crime.