Shean Brown was working behind the counter at the Walgreens pharmacy near Norcross last October when a man handed him a note.
It read: “Give me all the Percocet, oxycodone and Lortab out of your safe. Don’t [expletive] around.”
“He kind of reminded me of Chandler on ‘Friends’ with a beard. He wasn’t intimidating at all,” recalled Brown, a pharmacist. “But he said he had a gun, and that put a whole new spin on things.”
The robber took off with a bag of about 1,650 oxycodone pills worth $2,500.
The heist is part of a national uptick in pharmacy robberies and burglaries that police say is feeding a voracious black market for prescription drugs. Especially popular among thieves are powerful painkillers, such as oxycodone, and anti-anxiety drugs, such as Xanax, which have a street value of more than twice what they cost at a pharmacy.
“They’re no longer robbing the stores for cash,” Brown said. “They want the drugs.”
By the time police caught up to the Walgreens robbery suspect a few hours later at a Walmart in Lilburn, the man and a suspected conspirator were accused of robbing two other pharmacies in Lilburn and Sandy Springs that day.
In Georgia, officials say reports of robberies and burglaries at pharmacies are sporadic but growing.
The number of reported night break-ins and robberies climbed significantly between 2008 and 2009, from 11 to 60, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Last year, there were at least 28 thefts, probably more. Some robbery and burglary reports that pharmacies submitted on paper still have not been added into the database, according to Barbara Heath, the diversion program manager for the DEA office in Atlanta.
The Georgia Drugs and Narcotics Agency, which also tracks pharmacy thefts, recorded 36 burglaries and five armed robberies last year.
The robbery of any establishment with a DEA registration number is a federal offense. That includes all pharmacies that dispense controlled substances that have a potential for abuse, such as painkillers and antidepressants.
Independently owned pharmacies have been hard hit by the phenomenon, because thieves know that the larger chains have invested more in loss prevention measures, said Rick Allen, executive director of the Georgia Drugs and Narcotics Agency. Four of the six burglaries reported to the his agency so far this year occurred at independently owned pharmacies.
Crooks are using various methods to get their hands on prescription drugs — unscrupulous online pharmacies, illicit pain clinics, doctor-shopping, and identity fraud among them. Holding up drugstores might be a last resort, but it has a certain twisted logic.
“You leave some kind of record or paper trail when you’re going through a dodge to make your addiction look like you are treating an illness,” said Jack Killorin, director of a federal anti-drug task force in Atlanta established by the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “If I stick a gun in your face and say, ‘Give me all your hydrocodone,’ I am not leaving a trail.”
Allen said pharmacy robberies were virtually nonexistent a few years ago, but lately he has heard about more heists. Typically, they are being committed by young men who are selling the drugs or feeding a personal addiction, or both.
On Thursday, the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office alerted area pharmacies about three burglaries that had occurred at drugstores over the previous week and a half. Authorities said as many as three thieves were targeting independently owned pharmacies and stealing hydrocodone, Percocet, blood pressure medication and antibiotics.
The alert advised pharmacists to spread out their stocks of painkillers to different areas on different shelves and — if they hadn’t already — invest in a good security camera system.
In Athens, a 41-year-old man apparently overdosed and drowned in a motel Jacuzzi on Jan. 10, two hours after boosting four bottles of oxycodone from a pharmacy. The man was found face-down in the water after he gulped an entire bottle of the painkillers.
In Buckhead, two men wearing bandannas over their faces held up a CVS store on Oct. 21. They took about six 10- to 12-ounce bottles of a codeine-like syrup used to make “purple drank,” a recreational elixir popularized in rap and hip-hop songs. A pint of the drink can fetch $400.
Dawn Sasine, whose family owns Tuxedo Pharmacy, said their store in Buckhead has been broken into overnight twice since December. The bandit made a beeline for the painkillers and antidepressants and left nearly everything else untouched.
“Obviously this is a nationwide epidemic, but we’re feeling it here,” Sasine said. “We’re talking to other pharmacies, and they’re all having, in varying degrees, similar incidents.”
The National Community Pharmacists Association, which has 23,000 members across the country, started a program in 2008 to provide pharmacists tips on preventing theft. Suggestions include putting height stickers to help witnesses remember the height of robbery suspects, wiping down counters and glass surfaces often so that fingerprints can be more easily traced, and installing high-quality video cameras outdoors as well as inside the store.
Most stores are insured for inventory losses, but they still pay for security upgrades and some repairs. Sasine said the burglaries at Tuxedo Pharmacy cost her family around $2,000.
Aside from the bottom line, the more important toll is a personal one, said Valerie Briggs, spokeswoman for the National Community Pharmacists Association. Pharmacists, staffers and customers are concerned that robbers pose a threat to their safety.
“The most important tip is to comply with whatever they are asking,” said Briggs. “While the products we have are valuable, they are not important enough to risk a life.”
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