A safe sitting beneath bright electric lights and plainly visible from the street might seem like an obvious target for thieves.
In Philadelphia in December 1920, however, police officials believed it should have been equally obvious to the patrolmen assigned to watch the neighborhood.
After burglars hauled away a safe from a Lancaster Avenue five-and-ten-cent store and escaped with about $900, two officers suddenly found themselves facing charges of neglect of duty.
Police Must Explain
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania. — Following the robbery Saturday night or Sunday morning of a five-and-ten-cent store on Lancaster Avenue, Superintendent Mills ordered two patrolmen who cover that beat to appear before the civil service trial board on charges of neglect of duty. The men are George Arment and Albert Stokes.
Superintendent Mills learned that every evening at closing time the manager of the store, Albert Palmer, rolled the safe to the front of the place and left it under bright electric lights within 20 feet of the show window where it could easily be seen from the street.
Mills asserts that one of the two patrolmen should have seen that the safe had been taken away because it was a part of their duty to try the front door and look into the store whenever they passed.
The robbers moved the safe, opened it, and stole about $900.
Source: Evening Public Ledger. Philadelphia, Pa. December 7, 1920.
