The Big Shoplift

Originally Aired: October 11, 1951 Dragnet #122, "The Big Shoplift," Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Ben Romero are called to Anthony's store for women to investigate a wave of shoplifting that has escalated to the theft of an expensive silver blue mink stole. General manager Mr. Elliott explains that the store has been hemorrhaging merchandise for weeks, but this latest theft is the most brazen yet. The stole vanished from a locked display cabinet during the busy pre-winter fur showing, despite store detectives and sales staff being present. Elliott points Friday and Romero toward a suspicious pattern involving former employee Dorothy Kirkman, a seemingly model worker whose departments consistently suffered the heaviest losses before she abruptly quit. As Friday and Romero dig deeper, they discover that Kirkman was transferred from the upstairs suite shop to cosmetics after the first wave of thefts, only to have the stealing follow her to the new location. When they attempt to question her, they learn she has already moved on to a new position at the House of Raymond, an exclusive cosmetics shop just three blocks away on the same Wilshire Boulevard strip where the shoplifting epidemic continues to spread. The detectives must determine whether Kirkman is their thief or simply an unfortunate coincidence.