Salvation Army struggling to deal with theft

By Cleve Wiese

Published: June 11, 2008

The Salvation Army Thrift Store in Waynesboro has been losing an increasing number of donations in recent months to late-night thieves.
In some cases, the culprits leave unwanted donations of their own – beer cans, pizza boxes, grass clippings, broken televisions.
“It has been an ongoing problem, but lately we’ve gotten more and more people letting us know they’ve seen people taking things,” said Maj. Linda Sloan, director of the Waynesboro facility, located on Arch Avenue. “And all the trash – it’s like people taking it right out of their kitchen and bringing it to us.”
The process of properly packaging the garbage, transporting it to the landfill and paying disposal fees is time consuming and expensive, Sloan said.  The loss of valuable donations such as clothes and functioning electronic devices takes a heavy financial toll as well, she said.
Security cameras were installed about a year ago outside all area Goodwill thrift stores in response to similar problems, said Jerry Kite, vice-president of stores for Goodwill of the Valleys. Thefts have dropped off considerably since then, he said, but people continue to periodically dump worthless items such as broken televisions, mattresses and large appliances outside stores.
“You go through sprees,” Kite said. “There are months when you don’t have anything and all of a sudden you’ll have one night when you have a lot of stuff.”
Goodwill’s recently instituted recycling program offsets some of the disposal costs and diverts much of that junk from landfills, he said.
Sloan said much of the dumping at the Waynesboro Salvation Army takes place over the weekends. When workers arrived at the store Monday, the situation was so dire they contacted the Waynesboro Police Department. 
In response to the problem, officers will be stepping up patrols around the facility and arresting people caught illegally dumping or trespassing, according to a media release. All donations must be left during business hours, Sloan said.
“We don’t want to discourage people in the community from donating to us,” Sloan said. “They can call and we’ll gladly schedule a pickup or they can drop things off during business hours. That will discourage people from coming in the middle of the night and stealing from us.”