More filling up tanks, driving away

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, April 24, 2002

[04/24/02]Thefts of gasoline appear to be on the rise in Warren County, and station managers do not expect a decrease any time soon.

Called gas “drive-offs,” they are happening at a rate of about three a day, up from roughly two a day the previous three months.

The thefts typically rise with the price of gas, which is about $1.33 per gallon, said Benno Van Ryswyk, retail administration manager of Vicksburg’s Hill City Oil Company Inc., a gasoline supplier for about 11 local outlets. The pump price is up about 40 percent since Christmas, a fact attributed to fighting in the Mideast.

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Drive-offs also tend to be more common at stations where customers are more transient, like the ones along Interstate 20. “Most of our customers are regular,” a clerk at an in-town convenience store said, “but some stores don’t know their customers. When traffic is coming off the interstate, you can’t get familiar with too many of those people.”

Patrolman Bobby Jones of the Vicksburg Police Department agreed that drive-offs were especially common at gas stations with easy access to the interstate, like the ones around the Indiana Avenue exit.

Thefts of gas have been a problem “since self-service came along,” the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America’s Tom Osborne said.

Deputy Vicksburg Police Chief Richard O’Bannon pointed out that the crime is preventable.

“People are allowed to pump gas (by operators who) think they will come in and pay for it,” O’Bannon said. “It’s an honor system.”

Station owners could eliminate the crime by using only pumps that accept bank cards or by requiring people to pay before they pump, O’Bannon said.

But owners hesitate to require payment beforehand because it makes it harder on their customers, Mississippi Petroleum Marketers Association executive director Jerry Wilkerson said.

“We’re convenience stores,” he said. “What we try to do is provide a service as convenient to customers as we can. We have found that if we require them to pay in advance … it does cause loss of business.”

Too, when customers must guess how much gas they need in order to avoid an extra trip inside after filling up, they tend to underestimate the capacity of their tanks and buy less, Van Ryswyk said.

The decision to allow customers to pump before they pay places much of the enforcement responsibility on station clerks. At Hill City’s stores, for example, clerks can lose their jobs if they allow too many drive-offs.

“We hold our cashiers responsible,” Van Ryswyk said. “Part of the job description is to watch the island. They have to be aware of what goes on.”

Some inside theft also inevitably occurs in the system. The in-town clerk said she always reports drive-offs to police to avoid suspicion. “Some places may think friends are coming up here to fill up,” she said, adding that making the report is “just to cover me.”

“They’re brave about it,” the clerk said of some gas thieves, adding that some have driven off while in plain view. Others will go into the store, buy something and not tell the cashier they pumped gas, she said.

Good suspect descriptions, license-plate numbers and direction of travel improve chances of catching gas thieves, and the public can help too, Jones said.

“If you see somebody taking off with gas, get their tag number,” Jones said. “We’ve got to help ourselves.”

Stickers on many pumps now provide warnings. People caught stealing gas in Mississippi can have their driver’s licenses suspended for 60 days, Wilkerson said. Mississippi was the third state to pass a law providing for suspension in such cases, and 17 other states have similar laws, Wilkerson said.

“What we’ve found is that the new law has helped in some areas and in some it hasn’t,” Wilkerson said. “Some police departments aggressively pursue these things and some don’t.”

Statistics on local court action on cases involving gasoline thefts, a misdemeanor crime, were not available from the Vicksburg Police Department.

Van Ryswyk said he was happy with the law and the Vicksburg Police’s enforcement of it.

“The city police do an excellent job of helping us,” Van Ryswyk said. “We catch a bunch of (gas thieves). And who wants to lose his license over $10 to $15?”