The Lifting at Bally's Gym

While lifting free weights at the gym, a crook lifted my valuables from my gym locker. I thought my veins swell and pop while weightlifting but it was nothing compared to the varicose variety when I discovered my ransacked locker. My body raged with endorphins but I had nobody’s neck to wrap a barbell around. The crook hit seven lockers in broad daylight at high noon then vanished without a face. He used bolt cutters to snip through our combination locks. He stole wallets, cell phones, pagers, and car keys. To add comedic value, he decided to steal everyone’s pants in the caper. Imagine seven guys in dress shirts and little else standing around the gym lobby waiting for the police. Some people waited hours for a family member to bring duplicate car keys.

The police officer arrived and escorted me to my locker to check out the scene of the crime. He took my name and phone number and jotted down what was stolen. I sensed that the police office was starting to wrap things up. I just so happened to be cooperating with the local police department and the Prosecutor’s office on a case at work so I started to throw names around. I got lively conversation from the patrolman but no further action.

“That does it from here.” The patrolman concluded after my name dropping stalled.

“A few of us have cell phones with global positioning. Can you call the phone carriers to see where exactly in the world these phones are at?”

“It can take a month to get a court order.”

“What is the sense in having GPS if you can’t use it when you need it?” The familiar phrase ‘Can you hear me now?’ echoed in my inner ear.

The officer made some polite closing statements then was gone faster than you can say Adam 1 Adam 12. I pulled the operations manager of the gym aside.

“For a member who loses his key or forgets their combination you use bolt cutters to get into their locker, right?”

“Yes.”

There were only two people who were in the locker room when I undressed. Where are your bolt cutters right now?”

“Relax. They remain under my desk.” He replied. “They haven’t left my side all day.”

“I had to ask you.” I admitted. “I wasn’t pointing the finger at your staff. The crook could have used your bolt cutters. I have been a member of this gym for twenty years. How about a peek into your computer to show me the male members who came into the gym today? The crook needed a gym membership to get in here. You can print them out and the names can be scrutinized by the detective when he gets on the case. I could almost eliminate half the names on the list because I have known these guys for years.”

“Joe, I did the Bally’s incident reporting. You filed a police report. I just want to turn it over to the authorities.”

I could not argue with his approach but including the word ‘just’ didn’t go over well with me. An hour after a second shift housekeeping staff reported to work, I asked him if he had heard what happened. He had not heard of the looting. In my mind, this oversight exposed the operations manager who wanted to ‘just’ let the authorities handle it and not use his own authority to make his gym safer. There was no inservicing staff coming on shift about the robbery and no increased patrols of the locker room by housekeeping staff. No additional signs were hung in the locker room. No announcement on the intercom and the first sureveillance camera by an entry door remained a ghostly technological advance. It was business and theft as usual. More could have been done to make members ‘just’ feel safe.

Another patrolman meandered into the gym to make a police report on victims # 6 and 7. I thought it was odd that the first patrolman left without asking the staff on duty any questions. When the second patrolman headed towards the exit doors without taking action, I questioned the protocol.

“Wouldn’t it be a good idea to ask the front desk staff what they remember? Here me out. I arrived at the gym at 12:15pm and the last victim arrived at 1:00pm. It is a slow day at the gym. There can’t be more than 10 members who came through the front door in that time frame. Can’t you pull the computer records and see what you got?”

The officer was polite and straightforward. “Sir, that’s not how it works. I come out and take the information for the police report. I go back to the office and finish the report later. Said report gets submitted for typing. It will eventually find its way over to a detective’s desk who will come out and conduct an investigation. This is not my investigation.”

“By that time in the distant future, the front desk staff will have forgotten the information that is in their short term memory now.”

“I’m sorry. It is not my investigation.” he reiterated.

Like the last puppy to hear a dog whistle, I finally got it. It is not an investigation yet. It is only a crime. Unless I had made a citizens arrest by capturing the crook myself with the wrap around barbell, this case was going stone cold. The fact gathering I had done to this point was for naught. The second officer left the scene with impeccable timing. I came to the gym to workout but became worked up after crime and this exercise of futility.

Borrowing a cell phone, I walked out to my parked car. I pressed my ear to the trunk and dialed my cell phone number to see if I could hear it ring. My phone ringer sounded to the tune of the X-Files theme. I was confident that my trunk had not been popped and my wallet, cell phone, and jewelry were safe. I returned to my air conditioned perch in the gym slightly relieved. I continued waiting for a family member to deliver a second set of keys to the gym.

About an hour later, the young girl working the front desk fumbled around with the legal tender in the cash register. She turned to us, the disgruntled group of victims for help.

“Do any of you guys have change for a twenty dollar bill?”

“What are you freaking kidding me?” I piped. “We aren’t just standing around here in our loins for nothing. Don’t you remember, we had everything stolen from us? If you think you got nothing in your drawers, ours have been totally cleaned out?”

The manager came out of his office hideaway to quell my outpouring of emotion. I am not a hot head but she sure pissed me off.

“I think you guys have waited long enough to earn a free soda. What can I get you fellas?” the manager offered.

I know the manager meant well but I found the free soda pop insulting and representative of the only observable action the gym was willing to take. I declined on the token carbonated freebie. So I wound up waiting a total of four hours with my face peeled to the front bay window worrying whether some hooded heroin addict was coming to steal my car.

Free weights have never cost me so much but the moral of the story is apparent. A crook with a gym membership does all of his lifting inside the locker room.