COLORADO SPRINGS — If you want to buy booze, hand over your handbag.
Colorado’s Liquor Outlet issued a “no purse” policy, plastering signs in front of the store telling patrons to leave purses in their cars or at the door.
“If they try to shop, we won’t sell to them,” head cashier Laurae Langello said.
The purse ban was implemented three weeks ago to combat the increase of thefts this year at the store.
Shop owner Wayne Harris said inventory reports were showing a loss of $2,000 a week due to shoplifters. Big purses were a big part of the problem.
“We decided we had to do something to protect what is ours,” Harris said.
Harris said he filed a few shoplifting reports last year. “We used to handcuff them until the police showed up,” he said, but he got in trouble for doing that.
Now, he said, he almost never files reports because it takes too long to deal with the process — and cop cars in the parking lot are bad for business.
“It’s not worth the trouble and the effort. If we catch them, we let them go. We get our bottle back and tell them don’t ever come back in the store again.”
Man purses and backpacks also are not allowed.
So far, the purse ban has paid off for Harris. “I think we probably cut it (shoplifting) in half,” he said.
Read the rest of this story, including what customers are saying at .
