Sometimes, it’s just a man with a note.
He’ll hand it to a pharmacist, who will open it and read that the man demands OxyContin or other painkillers such as Opana or fentanyl. Sometimes the note will indicate the man is armed or imply that if he gets the drugs with no hassle, nobody will get hurt.
Other times, it’s men with covered faces showing the pharmacist guns.
These scenarios and variations of them have played out in recent years at area drugstores and pharmacies. Nationally, drugstores and pharamcies have increasingly been the targets of robbers looking to score prescription drugs to either feed a habit or sell on the street.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, armed robberies at pharmacies rose 81 percent between 2006 and 2010, jumping from 380 to 686, with the number of stolen pills rising from 706,000 to 1.3 million.
News of such robberies have been thrust into the limelight with the robbery of a pharmacy in New York’s Staten Island that left a pharmacist, teenage store clerk and two customers dead from gunshot wounds.
Locally, some members in area law enforcement say such robberies go in spurts and cycles and are usually the acts of one or two people with heavy addictions to prescription drugs.
“You may have a couple of folks floating out there at the same time, but you don’t have 15 people going to knock off the local CVS,” Lt. Troy Hershberger of the Allen County Sheriff’s Department said.
Hershberger could think of only one pharmacy robbery his department has investigated this year, and he said it has similarities with robberies in Fort Wayne.
He said things became quiet in the county with the arrest last August of two brothers – Josiah and Jonathan Davis – who were accused of robbing a pair of pharmacies in the county by displaying guns and claiming to have a bomb in the stores.
Both brothers eventually pleaded guilty in federal court to charges related to the robberies. Indiana as a whole, though, has been a hotbed for pharmacy robberies, according to statistics compiled by Rx Patrol, a clearinghouse for data related to pharmacy robberies, burglaries and thefts, created by the private company Purdue Pharma L.P.
Since 2002, the program has tracked 1,980 robberies throughout the country. Indiana is second on the list of states with the most robberies with 79, right behind Maine with 100, according to the Rx Patrol website.
Law enforcement officials in Warsaw, in the heart of Kosciusko County, have noticed an upward trend of pharmacy robberies and burglaries as methamphetamine and pill use continues to rise.
“We don’t have many, but it is increasing more than we’ve had for the last couple years,” said Lt. Steve Adang, the detective division supervisor for the Warsaw Police Department. “We’ve had issues with Percocet, Oxycodone and other pills.”
“In Warsaw proper, we probably have 6 to 10 robberies or burglaries of the pharmacies a year. In years prior, we probably had about half that,” Adang continued.
Adang also said that pharmacies open 24 hours provide a prime target for potential robbers, who can take advantage of night and the likelihood of fewer witnesses inside the stores.
Late last month, police arrested a man who used a gun to rob a 24-hour Walgreens in Warsaw. Philip Oest, 23, of Syracuse is accused of going to the Walgreens store at 2400 E. Center St. shortly after 5:30 a.m. with his face covered and pointing a handgun at the pharmacist. Police said Oest jumped over the pharmacy counter and demanded drugs.
Police later pulled him over in a car and arrested him.
The next day in Fort Wayne, a man walked into the Walgreens at 6201 Stellhorn Road with a note demanding the painkillers Opana and fentanyl. Investigators believe the man, who asked for his note back and left the scene in a black BMW 500 series station wagon, is responsible for two other robberies at local Walgreens pharmacies, according to Officer Michael Joyner, a police spokesman.
Each of those robberies took place on the 28th day of the month – April 28, May 28 and June 28.
The next day, June 29, Fort Wayne police thwarted a similar robbery attempt.
A man wearing a ball cap and sunglasses walked into the Walgreens at 2410 Coliseum Blvd. N. but was apprehended by officers before he could get to the pharmacy counter.
He had a plastic gun in his waistband and a note in his pocket.
“Give me all your Hydromorphone 4mg & 8mg,” the note said, according to Allen Superior Court documents.
The man, identified as Gregory Wayne Jones, 39, was arrested and charged with attempted robbery but has not been implicated in any other pharmacy robberies in the area. He’s being held in Allen County Jail.
According to The Associated Press, the Walgreens pharmacy chain is experimenting with medicine safes that delay several minutes before opening, while some pharmacies are considering installing bullet-proof windows like those found in some banks.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
