Thanks everyone for your input. If anyone will be around the Omni tonight, I think it might be helpful to brainstorm strategies in person. Say 5:00 to 6:30? I'll rely anything that comes up back to the list.
thanks Null (whoever that is) for bringing this up and suggesting good pointers on how we should deal with such situations.
I agree with Patrik that it's important for someone to take a picture, when someone makes enough of a problem that it takes multiple people to deal with them, a photograph is essential for two reasons:
1. it allows us to share with each other the knowledge about a problem person in case they come back (expecting no one will remember them)
2. it lets them know that we will not forget who they are, and that they should forget about us and never come back.
I must stress that #2 is the most important aspect of this, because ultimately our goal should be for problem people to go away and never come back. Ideally they will tell their friends "don't bother, those people are not the victims we believed them to be" or a paraphrase of that.
in particular, read the story of "Thief" from the noisebridge 86 wiki:
https://noisebridge.net/wiki/86
"This guy went into the back classroom and took Rayc's wallet out of his
backpack. Rayc saw him with the wallet in his hand and the guy tried to
say it was his. He then started running towards the door and was tackled
by Jake. We made him show us that nothing was in his pockets, and he kept
avoiding the big pocket in the front of his jacket. This pocket turned
out to have Sasha's smart phone. During the search his crack pipe fell
onto the floor and broke into many pieces. We let him go and told him
not to come back."
It took several people holding onto him to keep him from exiting down the stairwell with people's property. He really wanted to leave but he did not hit or strike anyone at any time, which is why we let him go after searching him and getting the stolen items back.
When there is no photograph, it's basically impossible to prevent a person from coming back whenever they want unless there is a person there who will recognize them. We can't be playing cat and mouse with people who want to take advantage of us.
-jake
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