On August 15, I walked into the Walmart in East Peoria looking for church shoes for the boys. I found a man playing cop instead.
Just inside the front doors stood a young guy in olive drab pants, uniform boots, and a black T-shirt. Strapped to his thigh was a large GLOCK in an open rig. No badge. No “SECURITY” on the shirt. No name tape. No spare mags. No handcuffs, radio or other typical LEO accoutrements.
He didn’t give off a cop vibe. He gave off the vibe of a man who liked the costume. As if the big gun made him a bigger man.
I asked the obvious question. “Nice rig you got there. You a cop?”
This was in Illinois, of course. Openly carrying firearms is strictly regulated. And seeing it in your neighborhood Walmart from a guy in plain clothes with no indicia is…not normal.
“Yeah, I’m a cop,” he said. Then: “Who are you?”
Wrong answer. When a stranger is carrying a duty pistol on his thigh in an Illinois grocery store, the public doesn’t owe him an autobiography. When asked, he owes the public an identification. That’s just the way it is in Illinois.
If we were in Indiana, this wouldn’t have been an issue. But people don’t just open carry in Illinois. It’s against the law for the most part.
“May I see your badge? Or at least what agency do you work for?” I asked.
“I don’t have to show you a badge. Why you want to know? What’s it to you?”
That’s when the conversation stopped being casual. A man with a gun who refuses to say who pays him isn’t “security.” He’s a problem. I told him so. When I see someone dressed like that, toting a gun like that with no badge, I think I’m looking at someone playing cop.
He didn’t back down. I offered to have the real police come sort it out. He told me to go ahead and call. So I did. 911 is easy to remember.
He was, apparently, real police. That made it worse, not better.
After I bought the shoes I came for, I talked to Walmart management. Their line was remarkable even by corporate standards. Store policy, they said, was that cops working armed security should not display a badge because they weren’t working in their official capacity as police.
I get that. So put them in something that says ‘security,’ I said.
The highest-ranking person I could get—loss prevention—told me that was against store policy, too. Policy against a badge. Policy against looking like security. Policy, apparently, in favor of a silent man with a GLOCK and a combative attitude.
What could possibly go wrong?
While I waited for the manager, the same armed fellow came back. “They” wanted me out, he said. I smiled. “YOU ain’t got the horsepower to trespass me if I’m not shoplifting. You ready to show me that badge yet?”
He muttered something and walked off. That’s what happens when a man is used to winning arguments with a holstered gun instead of a sentence.
I didn’t stay in the parking lot and stew. I used a phone the next day.
Tazewell County’s public information officer listened, then laughed out loud. “He’s not one of ours.” He suggested FOIAing the call info to find out Mr. Thigh Rig’s info if it was in a report.
East Peoria’s PIO, a sergeant, was equally decent and just as jovial. Not one of theirs either, but he didn’t blow me off. The deputy chief of East Peoria saw the 911 call, may have listened to it, and called Walmart’s security people himself.
The conversation, the PIO later said, was “spirited.”
In the end, the deputy chief made the rule simple to avoid future 911 calls about an armed man refusing to identify himself at Walmart: anyone working armed security at that East Peoria Walmart will wear a badge or wear security attire, Walmart policy be damned. The deputy chief put that in writing in an email to his entire department. “I just saw that email this morning,” he said. “So you’re the guy who called?”
We had a great chat and I invited him to have the chief or assistant chief come to one of our Guns Save Life meetings across the river in Peoria.
I still don’t know the gun-toting man’s name or his agency. The store wouldn’t give me either even when I stopped in a few days later to inquire. That part is unfinished business. The part that matters has already changed.
This is the lesson, and it’s not complicated. Bullies come in all walks of life. Some wear a uniform. Some of them even have a shield. Others may have a corporate handbook in the classic verbal judo technique known as “referring to a higher authority.”
At least one of them wears a thigh rig and a chip on his shoulder.
Meeting any of them with violence is how you become the story instead of the citizen who fixed the problem. A phone call works. A calm question works. A follow-up to the people who actually have rank works.
Polite objection isn’t weakness. It’s the adult version of force. You document. You ask. You escalate to the next grownup. You don’t let a bully with a gun on his leg train you to look at the floor.
An average person can get results. Don’t let a police impersonator—or a real cop with no people skills—intimidate you from asking reasonable questions.
We can think of multiple incidences of armed security shooting people who didn’t need shooting (1 2 3 4) in Chicago. Or felons pretending to be police while working security. Seeing someone dressed like that in Central Illinois who’s unable or unwilling to produce a badge isn’t the norm. Nor should it be. Not until we all can do that if we so choose on any given day.