As customers enter Tower Records, most pass by the inconspicuous maroon door on the right-hand wall without thinking twice. If they do notice it, chances are they guess it is a break room, a storeroom or an employee restroom.

But in this little room, a man in a bright yellow Harvard sweatshirt sits and watches the closed-circuit monitor in front of him, which shows a teenage girl carefully peeling the security tags off two compact discs and slipping them into her friend's backpack.

The girls stroll around the store for a while, trying to evade suspicion with their artificial nonchalance, but to no avail. Just as they think they're home free, the man in the yellow sweatshirt saunters down the ramp to the front door and politely requests that they follow him back inside.

Busted.

The man in the yellow sweatshirt is Olyver W. Haynes, Tower Records' loss prevention agent. His job is to monitor the store's state-of-the-art security system.

Using controls that look remarkably like video game controls, Haynes can rotate each of the system's several cameras 360 degrees, so no area of the store is left unwatched.

The system also allows Haynes to zoom in. Saved in the system's memory is footage of the girl's fingers peeling off the security tags-from two different angles.

Security systems like this one have helped to bring the incidence of reported shoplifting in Harvard Square down 21 percent in the past year, a year in which the incidence of shoplifting in Cambridge as a whole only decreased one half of one percent.

But the decrease in the number of incidents recorded in the police blotter does not necessarily translate to a corresponding decrease in the total amount of theft.

Square proprietors and police agree that the decrease is not as encouraging as it may seem, because factors such as a decreasein the percentage of incidents reported or adecrease in the percentage of shoplifters who areapprehended are more likely to blame.

"It's very driven by the stores, by whetherthey have security systems," says a CambridgePolice officer, who asked not to be named.

So, rather than boding well for the city'sstores, the decrease means they are letting theshoplifters slip by.

"My feeling is that shoplifting is up," saysEve M. Turner, regional loss prevention managerfor CVS drugstores.

"And we have definitely seen an increase inprofessional shoplifting, as opposed to a studentcoming in and picking up a pen on his way toclass," she adds. "That's surprising because theeconomy is strong right now."

Even with its 21 percent decrease, HarvardSquare still claims two places on the policedepartment's most recent list of shoplifting "hotspots." The list, which is updated quarterly,includes 16 of the city's 870 census blocks.

People like Olyver Haynes and stores like TowerRecords are doing all they can to ensure that thedecrease in shoplifting recorded in the policelogs will translate to an actual decrease in theirstores.

Bucking the System

With some stores cracking down, shoplifters areturning to those that have less stringent securitysystems, either because of negligence or a lack offunds.

Grolier Poetry Bookshop on Plympton Street, forone, has not reaped any rewards from the 21percent decrease.

Grolier's owner, Louisa Solano, spends her dayswavering between making it clear to would-bethieves that they are under surveillance andkeeping her loyal customers from feeling shedistrusts them.

Solano is so concerned with customer servicethat, even when she sees a woman slip a book intoher handbag, Solano lets her walk right out thedoor.

Some may call her foolish, Solano says, but shedoesn't want a police visit to deter customersfrom browsing.

"I don't want to make a big fuss," she says asthe shoplifter exits the store.

Solano says her business's shopliftingsituation is somewhat unique. Her customers, shesays, are an intelligent and fiercely loyal group,so she shies away from alienating them even thoughthey make off with a book from time to time.

"I am blessed and cursed with one of the mostcreative customer bases in the area," Solano saidlast week. "Unfortunately, they do not have astrong sense of ethics."

Yet Solano does not take shopliftinglightly--nor should she. In 1998 alone her storelost $10,000 to shoplifting--the equivalent of twoto three books stolen each day.

Because of this, the store made only $1,200after paying rent, employee wages and inventorycosts. As Solano's only source of income, this$100 a month was hardly enough to live on.

Grolier was able to stay afloat thanks to afundraiser organized by a friend, but Solano saysif the shoplifting trend continues, her store mayclose its doors.

In Inman Square, another store already has.

The Sandy and Son toystore, which was locatedon Cambridge Street, bid its customers farewell onFeb. 1. In a short period of time, the store lostan amount of inventory that was "enough to fill asecond store," says Kathy Roberts, a close friendof owner Sandy Ruben.

Roberts, the co-founder of Cambridge'sDandelion School daycare center, says the storeprovided a wonderful resource not only for herschool--which bought its supplies at Sandy andSon--but for the whole community.

She says Ruben refused to carry toys thatpromoted violence in any way and often carriedbetter quality toys than those in other stores.

"He made space in his store for a lot ofcreative and aesthetically pleasing things,"Roberts says.

She says Ruben was generous with discounts forquantity buyers like her school, giving store giftcertificates worth 20 percent of each purchase.

Yet she says it was not Ruben's generosity thatwas his downfall.

She blames theft, but says the amount involvedin this case could not have occurred throughsimple everyday theft, even if it were as seriousas that at Grolier.

Roberts says she and many others, includingRuben himself, attribute the theft to someone whohad after-hours access to the store, possibly anemployee.

Ruben was unavailable for comment for thisstory.

Regardless of who is to blame for the problem,Cambridge stores are facing an ultimatum: shape upor ship out.

Taking a Bite out of Crime

Tower Records and the Coop are two stores thathave beefed up their security systems afternoticing the tremendous amounts of inventory lostto thieves each year.

The Harvard Coop suffered a three percent lossrate in 1998, which means losses made up threepercent of the store's gross sales. Thattranslates to a loss of $3.75 million.

Carl W. Pilgrim, a Coop loss prevention agentand store detective, says the store's percentageloss has been steadily decreasing since it hit ahigh of seven percent in the mid-80s.

Pilgrim credits the improvement to the store'srevamped loss-prevention system.

It is rare to find him in his office as he wason a recent Thursday evening, sitting amid thefile cabinets containing folders on every offendercaught at the Coop from 1992 on.

Instead, Pilgrim is usually out roving thestore in plainclothes, looking for thieves, bothyoung and old, who are trying to evade him.

Pilgrim says the store itself practically begsthieves to do their stuff. The perpetual crowds,multilevel layout and public restrooms offerrefuge, while the store's multiple exits andnearby public transportation provide for a quickgetaway.

Pilgrim estimates that "the Pit crowd," histerm for the group of people who loiter outsidethe Harvard Square T entrance, is responsible for60 percent of theft from the Coop. He attributesthis to the high incidence of drug use heperceives among this group. "There are a lot ofkids selling books for drug money," he says.

Pilgrim estimates that the store catches onlyabout five people a month, but it's not for lackof trying.

Even though the yearly loss at the Coop mayseem high, other stores report more worrisomenumbers.

One manager of the CVS store on JFK Streetestimates that the store catches an average of sixor seven shoplifters per day.

According to Eve Turner, the average shoplifterat a chain drugstore walks out with $22 in goodseach time. If these statistics are accurate, thenthe JFK Street CVS store prevents around $140 aday, or $50,000 a year, from being stolen. Turnerrefused to comment on the amount of actual losses.

Olyver Haynes says the Harvard Square TowerRecords store boasted a total of 341 detectedshoplifters in 1998. The number, which translatesto about 30 per month, includes a category Haynescalls "preventions"--that is, cases in which thewould-be perpetrator exhibits behavior such ashiding merchandise or removing security tags, butnever actually attempts to leave with themerchandise.

Even with their state-of-the-art securitysystem, the Harvard Square Tower Records remains apopular target. According to Haynes, the storelost $4.1 million in stolen goods last year.

But Harvard students, for the most part, aren'tthe ones pocketing the goods.

Though Harvard students comprise about 35percent of Harvard Square's Tower Recordscustomers, according to Record Sales ManagerMichael Casey, Haynes estimates that only three tofour percent of his perpetrators hail fromHarvard.

Pilgrim says that Harvard students make upabout ten percent of the Coop's shoplifters.That's out of about 15 to 20 percent of generalsales generated by Harvard students, according toAssistant General Manager Scott R. Montgomery.

Pilgrim says the figure is high simply becausethe Coop carries goods students need.

Behind Closed Doors

During one of their breaks, Pilgrim and fellowCoop store detective Justin M. Bristol make a tripto Tower Records to visit Haynes in the littlemaroon-doored room. The loss prevention agents, itseems, have their own little clique.

Haynes points to a man on his monitor. "Icaught him last week," he says. "He's beenstealing software from you guys too."

Pilgrim pounds the wall with his fist. "We needcameras like that!" he says as Haynes manipulatesthe controls to zero in on the offender.

Yet when it comes down to it, the otherdetectives don't envy Haynes's busy days. The Coopdetectives say that even considering Tower's moreadvanced technology, it would take a lot toconvince them to trade places with him.

"I'm glad I don't work over there," saysBristol.

"That'd be a long day," Pilgrim echoesemphatically.

But for now, it's time to get back to work.

"There's crime going on right now," Pilgrimsays. "I can smell it."

"Somebody's walking out the door right now.