Without wanting to add myself to the suspects list...I confess to having some insight into the business of armed robbery.
In fact, in the last 20 years I have got to know three armed robbers quite well.
The last one I met was a guy called Razor Smith who I interviewed when researching a book that I was working on last year. Razor was a career criminal. He grew up in a rough part of London, got involved in crime when just a child and carved out a career and fearsome reputation as an armed robber - mainly bank jobs.
Razor was rewarded with 58 criminal convictions (including a life-sentence) and whilst inside educated himself, starting writing about his life and has to date published four books. They provide a fascinating insight into the criminal mind, life in prison and the keys to reducing re-offending.
When I met Razor he very kindly took the time to explain to me how best to go about the business of doing an armed robbery. I stress that this is not career development advice I asked for but I was perversely fascinated to listen to him describing a skill that he had honed over a life-time and at great personal cost to himself and others.
One key point Razor made was that a successful armed robbery is all about fear. Razor's 'winning formula' was to approach each robbery with as much aggression as possible - to paralyse the victims with fear and make them compliant to his demands. The approach was all about achieving this - preventing the victims from thinking of raising an alarm or even considering if the armed robber before them would think twice about shooting them.
And herein lies the key weakness in armed robbery - it's essentially about bluff. As Razor explained, he was never prepared to shoot his victims to achieve his financial aims. So he had to confront his victims with a vision of a mad, demented, weapon totting lunatic to achieve compliance.
It's time for a top tip for would-be armed robbers:
Always, always fire the gun! You can shout and scream and pull crazy faces but if you really want to scare the living daylights out of someone instantly then fire the gun. But be careful - just don't, whatever you do, look careful! Fire it at a side wall so that if the bullet goes through it will fly off harmlessly into the air. Don't fire it at the ceiling. You might hit someone or even, god forbid, get really unlucky and kill someone. The police will expend vastly more time and effort finding a murderer than a robber - so make sure you don't physically hurt anyone! - that would be just silly.
Razor would no doubt laugh at the ineptitude displayed in the armed robbery in Windlesham. On the face of it, it looks like the effort of a complete amateur. I guess he would immediately question if there was much cash there at 9.40am on a Wednesday morning. Did the time of the robbery coincide with a regular cash delivery or was the timing just random? If it was random then it indicates a probable first-timer.
He would also question the choice of weapon. How much fear can you create with a handgun? The sawn-off shotgun is the weapon of choice for your Pro-armed-robber not because of it's finely balancing handling profile or its high performance ballistics but because it will, sometimes quite literally, scare the shit out of anyone when pulled out of a trench coat, waggled around threateningly and then fired at a wall.
The only drawback to the weapon is that when fired at close quarters the sound is so deafening it can make communication a little difficult. One particular robbery was very nearly thwarted when an old lady working in a small bank branch, became quite disorientated, deafened and confused when confronted with an armed robber who fired his sawn-off. 'Oh dear. I don't think I even know your mother' she said in bewildering response to the demand 'where's the money'.
So, I doubt that Razor would have any admiration for the armed-robber who struck in Windlesham yesterday. But he would probably, like me, would have a considerable amount of admiration for the victims.
Why?
Because even if the robber was waving a hand gun around and didn't deliver a full theatrical aggressive armed-robber performance it takes real guts to be confronted with a gun and then, rather than cowering with fear, hit a panic alarm. It is a seriously brave judgement call to make.
It took Razor a long time to realise the true impact that his acts were having on others. He had been brutalised as a child and by his early life of crime. As a result it was only in later life when he had children and started to experience the sensitivities and emotions that others feel every day that he started to empathise with other people's feelings and realise what he was doing.
The incident in Windlesham yesterday was a success. It was as successful as an armed robbery can be - no one was physically hurt and no money was taken.
But the psychological impact may have been huge. Such incidents can deeply affect people - turn normal people into quiet recluses who cannot overcome the trauma they have suffered. Their sense of well-being, their relationships - everything can be destroyed by unexpected violent crime.
I hope that local people, politicians and press will take the time to support the victims, congratulate them and herald their bravery - In other words help them to take the positive from a very bad situation. They might need it.
1 comments:
You could have written this without even meeting Razor Smith, just by reading his first book. His gun was always loaded, so he would have been prepared to use it. He also used loaded handguns, so the idea was not simply to scare with the blast of a shotgun into a wall. I also doubt the extent of his true remorse for his actions.
Post a Comment