On Sep. 18, an attorney in Edmond, Okla., robbed the local Barrett Drug Center wielding a .22-caliber semiautomatic handgun.
The former customer demanded oxycodone and Demerol (meperidine HCl, sanofi-aventis), then forced the owner, assistant, and
a customer into a backroom, before leaving.
On Sept. 4, two masked men robbed a CVS pharmacy in Pompano Beach, Fla., told the workers to get down on the floor, walked
the manager through the store at gunpoint to empty the registers, then fled.
On Nov. 20, 2006, a woman fatally shot a pharmacist in the head at the Shands Jacksonville, Fla., hospital pharmacy, reportedly
because the woman had been told to go to the back of the line.
Pharmacists from independent, chain, or outpatient pharmacy—in urban and rural areas—are increasingly at risk for their safety.
Violators may be addicted patients, professional criminals, or frustrated customers.
The scope of the problem
RxPATROL, a collaborative effort between Purdue Pharma and law enforcement that tracks thefts from pharmacies, has had 760
pharmacy robberies reported since its inception in 2003. The only national data available specifically for pharmacy robberies,
those voluntary reports offer but a glimpse into the problem. A Google search for local newspaper accounts of pharmacy robberies
yielded 584 results just over the past year—from Stollings, W.V., to Portland, Ore. In June, the National Drug Intelligence
Center reported that pharmacy robberies and burglaries in the Denver metropolitan area increased 50% in each of the past two
years.
The robbery problem in New York is such that many pharmacists there carry concealed weapons, according to Craig Burridge,
executive director, Pharmacists Society of the State of New York (PSSNY). "Very few groups in New York can get a permit for
a pistol, and pharmacists make up one of those groups," he said.
But it isn't only the armed robber who incites violence in the pharmacy workplace. "Road rage" and "going postal" are giving
way to "patient rage," as customers struggle to deal with Medicare and insurance complexities along with life's other challenges.
Burridge related the story of one N.Y. R.Ph. who had to tell a patient he could not fill a prescription because all three
of his Medicaid cards, from three different states, had been declined. "The guy waited for the pharmacist to close and stabbed
him to death."
Why the surge in pharmacy violence?
Capt. Richard Conklin, Stamford, Conn., Police Department, who manages RxPATROL, sees three recent developments behind the
trend in pharmacy theft, which he's watched spiral upward over the past five years:
Robbery—top 10 states
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1. Tightening of our borders and ports. While watching for terrorist activity, Homeland Security initiatives have seized a higher percentage of illicit incoming
drugs than ever before, he said. "Right now, there are reports of unprecedented shortages of cocaine in 16 major U.S. cities,
shortages we haven't seen in decades." Thus, he feels, some dealers are increasingly turning to pharmaceutical drugs to meet
their customers' demands. While more sophisticated dealers hit wholesaler warehouses and trucks, others are attacking the
more vulnerable drugstores.
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