Cop Dressed As Batman Stops Walmart Shoplifter With Copy Of ‘The LEGO Batman Movie’
In Texas, there’s a real-life cop who moonlights as a superhero. While off-duty, he dresses as characters including Batman, Iron Man, and the Incredible Hulk, and visits children in hospitals. While he was visiting a safety event at a Walmart store, though, he foiled a real-life crime.
It wasn’t a very big crime. A customer was accused of walking out the door carrying four DVDs.
“I showed up dressed as Batman and the alarm went off,” the officer recounted to the Houston Chronicle. “A door greeter tried to stop a gentleman but he exited without talking.”
Normal Walmart loss prevention procedures assume that neither an off-duty cop nor Batman is hanging around at the store’s front entrance, though, and the Caped Crusader followed the shoplifting suspect out into the parking lot.
He denied taking anything and wouldn’t re-enter the store, but eventually admitted to taking the discs. The titles included, appropriately enough, The LEGO Batman Movie.
He received a written citation for the relatively minor theft, and asked for a selfie with Batman. Of course.
The officer also uses superheroes while in his work uniform, with images of characters in his cruiser. The idea, he says, is to use familiar characters to help children not be afraid of police and other uniformed authority figures.
Batman, of course, is the ultimate uniformed authority figure, but this was his first time catching a criminal while dressed in one of his costumes.
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