"All I want are my chips! Just give me my chips!"

So, I had a woman with some very obvious "tweaker features" stealing stuff, and after a while she got into line and payed for some chips but failed to pay for the stripped merchandise in her jacket pocket.

After paying for her chips she proceeded outside where I stopped her and gave her my usual schpeal. She cooperated and came back inside with me and I took to the back of the store where our office was. Once back there I asked her if she had any guns, knives, needles, etc. on her and she hesitated.

Hesitation in this situation is not a good thing, so because I didn't want her to go digging around for whatever she had, just in case it was a weapon, and because of the difference in our sexes and I could not, by policy, touch her to pat her down, I asked he to turn around and put her hands behind her back so that I could put her into handcuffs until the police showed up. She said, "OK, but let me have some of my chips first". I informed her that, because of liability issues, I could not allow her to ingest anything while she was in my custody and so she would have to wait until the police arrived.

Apparently this was some sort of a trigger for her because she lunged for the chips and said, "all I want are my chips! Just give me some chips!"

She didn't quite make it to the chips as I took her down and immediately tried to put her into handcuffs. She didn't like this idea and began to struggle against me.

Never underestimate the ability of a 5'3'', 100 lb. tweaker woman to put up a struggle when all she wants is her chips!

She began to yell and scream like a banshee, repeating her demand for her chips as loudly as she could as well as including, "Help! He's trying to rape me!" over and over again.

This really pissed me off and so I began to work her onto her stomach and tried to get her arms behind her back so that I could get her into handcuffs, generally ignoring her complaints of pain (being put into, and wearing, handcuffs is not suppose to be comfortable, and I was not going to go out of my way to make this experience as painless for her as I could when she was trying to gain sympathy from passersby by accusing me of rape).

I have not before or since seen a person who was as flexible as this woman was. She was F 'n Gumby! I would move her one way in order to immobilize her and she would just "flexible" out of it. I wrestled around with this woman for 15 min. before the police showed up and helped me get her into handcuffs. It finally took three of us to do so.

To top it all of there was no reason for her initial hesitation. She had thought that she had some Meth on her, but as it turned out, she had used it just previous to coming into the store and had forgotten about it.

At least, after all that, I had the satisfaction of knowing that she was going to jail for some outstanding warrants and she couldn't take her chips with her.