Post office robberies

Press, 12 January 1987, Page 16

Post office robberies

The recent spate of post office hold-ups — three in Auckland in the last fortnight and two in Christchurch last week — does not signal any new phenomenon; post offices have been a favourite target of hold-up hoods for some years now, and Christchurch branches suffered a similar outbreak about three and a half years ago. Security measures were improved in post offices then. It seems they need another reappraisal now. However sophisticated the security systems, they can at best deter would-be robbers; the system has not been invented that can be guaranteed to prevent hold-up attempts. The most effective deterrent remains the likelihood of capture and the certainty of stiff punishment to follow. The police in New Zealand have a good record of catching up with Bonnie and Clyde copy-cats. Very few manage to evade arrest long enough to enjoy the fruits of their ill-gotten gains. For their part, the courts generally impose admonitory sentences on those convicted; robbery still seems to be a crime that the courts are prepared to penalise with the full force of the law. ; Few people could be under any misapprehension that holding up a bank or post office is a sure-fire way to riches; yet enough fools still try it to be a menace to post office and bank staff and a nuisance to everyone else' In the long run customers must pay for the increased security and greater inconvenience that is one result of trying to dissuade robbers. The taxpayer must

meet the cost of the manhunts that follow and of providing a fair trial, with legal aid, and also pay for the subsequent incarceration of robbers. Perhaps the time has come for an advertising campaign in which the more notable failures from the ranks of hold-up artists are themselves held up — to ridicule, by an accounting of their bumbling crime and how little they profited by it, together with an estimate of how many years will have passed before they next taste freedom. Whatever means is settled on to further dissuade people from trying their hand at holding up post offices and banks, little scope exists under present circumstances for reducing the temptation. As post offices become increasingly a network for disbursing welfare benefits and collecting indirect taxes, such as television licence fees, they also become depositories for large sums of money. Suppressing the actual sum stolen in a robbery, as a union official has suggested, will achieve nothing. Everyone knows that large sums are needed to pay all the benefits the welfare system supports, and most of the hold-up brigade are well aware of which days are benefit days. Steel grilles and bullet-proof glass might be unfriendly and intimidating, but they are better insurance against robbers than inviting them to try a lucky dip in which no-one is allowed to know the size of the prize.