CRANSTON, R.I. (WPRI) — It’s a different flavor of shoplifting, but it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth of Cranston Police.
The police department is asking people to help find a trio of shoplifting suspects accused of stealing top-shelf steaks, shrimp and more from a supermarket back in June. Officers dubbed them the “Surf and Turf Bandits.”
Surveillance photos posted to the department’s Facebook page show a man in a gray t-shirt and white baseball cap, a man in a contoured black newsboy’s cap and black V-neck t-shirt with a print, and a woman wearing a bandana. All three went into the Dave’s Marketplace on Pontiac Avenue and spread out to different sections of the store, police said.
The man in the white baseball cap loaded his carriage with four containers of shrimp from the seafood department, then ordered four porterhouse steaks from the meat department.
He turned the carriage over to the other man and the woman, and they added more items from store shelves. Then, the shrimp and steaks were removed from the carriage and put into a large bag the woman was holding, hidden from store employees. The crooks then left the store without paying.
Anyone with information on the thieves is asked to call Cranston Police at (401) 942-2211. Anonymous tips can also be submitted online through the online tip portal, TipSoft.
Porterhouse is one of the best cuts of steak you can buy and can cost in the realm of $20 a pound, depending on market prices and conditions; with a typical porterhouse steak weighing 24 ounces, the beef alone in the shopping cart likely totaled $120. Police gave no official estimate in their posting as to the value of the theft.
