My basketball team robbed a convenience store
The police asked me to identify each of them on CCTV footage
The principal at the charter high school where I worked came into my office. He looked like he was going to give me bad news.
“You can’t practice today,” he said. “Several of the boys don’t have up-to-date physicals. Until we get that resolved, they’ll have study halls instead.”
“Study halls?” I said, my eyebrows popping. “These kids can’t sit still. They need to run around and play hoop.”
“Out of my hands,” he said. “Not my call.”
As the boys anxiously gathered in the lobby after school, basketball shoes in hand, I cleared my throat and delivered them the bad news.
“Hell nah,” one of them said. “Can’t we go play in a park? Off campus?”
“I need this favor from you, guys,” I said. “I’ll get the physicals resolved, I promise. This will be the only practice we miss.”
I shepherded them into a classroom and put on a basketball video. They were temporarily happy. Ten minutes into the video, one of them asked me if he could go up the street to the convenience store to get a snack.
Before I could answer, another player asked if he could also go. Eventually, the whole team said they would go and come back within fifteen minutes. They promised they’d be back in time.
They kept their word. They came back with Mountain Dews, bags of chips and candy bars. And they sat back down in their seats to eat and watch the videos I played.
The next day, my principal called me into his office and closed the door.
“The police dropped this off this morning,” he said. He held a USB thumb drive in his hand.
“What’s on it?” I said.
He turned his head slightly, raised his eyebrows and popped the USB into his desktop computer. A window popped up on the screen and one single video thumbnail appeared. He double-clicked it.
The muted video was black and white, and it was from the vantage point of a ceiling camera inside the convenience store.
I watched one of my players walk into shot. He had a brief conversation with the man behind the counter and then left.
“Casing the joint,” my principal said. “He’s making sure no one is in there.”
Next, all of my players came in at once. The twelve of them ran around the store, causing commotion and grabbing items left and right. The man behind the counter waved his arms and pointed. I could see he was yelling.
In what seemed like an instant, the store was empty again. The three isles were in disarray. The man walked around the mess, shaking his head. My principal closed the video window.
The police came to the school later that day and asked me to identify each person in the video. Luckily, the principal knew each and every one of their faces, so I remained as quiet as possible, still in shock.
When and how the police executed the arrests, well, is a whole other story.
Hopefully they learn their lesson as they pay for the crime