A crew of city garbage collectors is garnering some rotten attention after repeatedly robbing a local convenience store owner of snacks and soda during their regular rounds to pick up trash.
Apparently, the crew operates by sending in one guy to grab the grub— without paying— while the others wait in the truck. When their man returns with the goods, the other two will load up the shop owner’s trash. If the owner puts up a stink, the collectors leave his trash to rot for another week.
Recently, the whole escapade was caught on camera, and the owner has taken the matter to city officials. The city says disiplinary action has already been taken, but punishment’s still forthcoming.
Here’s the surveillance footage and full report from 19 Action News’ Ed Gallek.
19 Action News|Cleveland, OH|News, Weather, Sports
This article appears in Dec 18-24, 2013.
…maybe an angle is to check out all the documents they filled out in a search for who they knew to notch the city jobs.
Fire them. It’s that simple.
Disciplinary action?? Why have they not been arrested for theft?
What’s that? We have clear-cut video evidence of the crime, and there is no doubt who is responsible? Well then, I’m sure after a six month investigation and another six month planning period, these employees will be suspended for two hours total as punishment.
even the crooks get away with being crooked it is ashame you even live in fear of the trash collectors.
There are some people who I trust just because of their job, and trash collectors have always been one such. This is a damaging crime not just to the victim, but to the community as well. In my view, it’s not just theft; it’s extortion (let us have free stuff or we will leave rotting garbage in front of your store) as well as a civil rights violation.
These guys should already be under arrest, and the city should have at least placed them on unpaid leave.
They’re in the Union so they MIGHT get a week’s suspension. In the Union you can murder someone and chances are you probably keep your job.
In support of our garbage men, we are one of the hardest working divisions in the city. Throughout all the years, many store owners have been too cheap to pay for their dumpsters to get dumped for $150 a week. Therefore, owners have always given garbage men snacks to dump their dumpsters, which adds up to about $5 dollars in snacks instead of paying $150 a week. In addition, its been said that this specific owner had it out for the garbage man. I believe it was a setup for the store owner to gain publicity for his store. What people don’t know is that this same store owner has given snacks to garbage men for picking up his dumpster trash. So what changed on this given day? It’s sad that misleading information is always reported to the public in order to get people to favor one side. All of the facts should have been reported so that people could hear the entire story instead of painting the picture of garabe men being theives. What the video doesn’t show is the understanding between garbage man and store owner. He didn’t steal anything. Unfortunately, the store owner didn’t update the garbage man about the changes taken place and he went to get his snacks as he normally did. That information was left out which made it look like the garbage man was stealing.
Wait….what? A fee of $150 a week is avoided by bribing garbagemen with $5 worth of snacks? If this is true, the situation really is different, and perhaps I was too harsh. But it’s still a crime — why isn’t the city enforcing this fee (which seems outrageously high to me)?