ROBBERY AND THEFT
COUNT 5
Section 8 Theft Act 1968
A person is guilty of robbery if he steals, and immediately before or at the time of doing so, and in order to do so, he uses force on any person or puts or seeks to put any person in fear of being then and there subjected to force.
A person guilty of robbery, or of an assault with intent to rob, shall on conviction on indictment be liable to imprisonment for life.
Section 1 Theft Act 1968
A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly.
A person guilty of theft shall on conviction on indictment be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years.
When I was working on CID at Romford I became quite envious of a more senior colleague who had recently been transferred in from the Stoke Newington area of London, on another Metropolitan Police Division. This is a very popular residential area with members of the Jewish faith, particularly Orthodox. In those days, the males signified their reverence and precise religion by wearing dark or black homburg or trilby hats over their skull caps, grey, very dark or black overcoats or raincoats, white, tieless shirts done up at the collar, and sometimes highly decorated waistcoats, black trousers and shoes, wore very full-beards and very prominent ‘ringlets’ at the sideboards level. The men often had pocket watches and chains with fobs attached to their clothing. Even young males wore the skull caps and ‘ringlets.’ They were obviously very devout people, whose weekends, I believe, began on Friday nights and from then on, right through their Saturday ‘Sabbaths’, they must not carry out any work, not even the effort of switching-on a light, I believe.
At that time, they almost all drove around in massive Volvo estate cars, and Volvo motor dealers must have ‘cleaned-up’ in that area for many years. I mention this because for the local criminal ‘hoods,’ it became very fashionable to rob these people in the street. The word ‘mugging’ was not then in use. They were seen as an ‘easytouch’ as they were a very peace-loving, law-abiding race, minded their own business and very much kept themselves to themselves in close-family units, with close-community ties. It was plain and simple robbery or assault with intent to rob, maximum penalty, as I mentioned earlier, Life Imprisonment.
In the Stoke Newington area, I recall the pavements were very wide and therefore the ‘robbing-ground’ was very spacious, with loads of room for all. There came a time when crime figures analysis revealed that it was time for specific, direct action to be taken against the low-life criminals who crawled out from under their damp stones, normally when the daylight began to fade, as dusk and darkness creates artificial courage for cowards. In those days their brains were not addled by cannabis, heroin and crack cocaine, and frontal lobotomy NHS operations, had even longer waiting lists than in
today’s climate. My Romford colleague ‘Mick’, pre-transfer to outer K division, and his police buddies, approached the Orthodox Jewish community and succeeded in obtaining some relevant garments etc and presented themselves, in pairs of course, as ‘easy, soft targets’ on those wide Stoke Newington pavements. Can you imagine the sheer shock, surprise, horror and possible immediate-change-of-pants required when our intrepid,
innocent-looking ‘Orthodox Jew’ colleagues swiftly turned the tables on the low life and felt their collars, for a very rapid frog-march or ‘Hurry-Up’ wagon trip to Stoke Newington police station? Wouldn’t you have just loved to have been standing in a shop doorway or at a bus stop nearby, to witness such a happy event? Some of the first offenders arrested during this quite short police operation ‘put their hands up’ to some of the earlier crimes of that nature, improving the all-important robberies ‘clear-up’ rate.
However the main benefit to local police AND the Orthodox Jewish community, was that the word soon got round that serious liberty-loss was looming on the Stoke Newington horizon, and the attacks swiftly petered-out. Personally, at the time I would have just loved to have been part of that exciting police operation. To ‘take out’ the ‘no-hopers’, put them where they deserved to be, thus making the streets much safer for all, and adding to the adrenalin-run ‘buzz’, that made up for the losses when you were too unfit through smoking to be able to run fast enough to catch the little darlings, on which your
intended rapid rise to Commissioner of the Metropolis so much depended.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was once engaged on Operation Boston, a joint Security Express bullion/cash-in-transit/Flying Squad surveillance operation. Security Express had been plagued by what its Insurers appeared to feel was too high volume in robberies from both bullion and cash-in-transit vans, as well as attacks on crew members whilst pedestrianised for ‘across the
pavement’ deliveries & collections. For several months, Security Express vehicles based at a certain depot, were the subject of the surveillance operation described above. Each
individual delivery vehicle, whether carrying bullion or cash-in-transit, was shadowed from its depot by a motor car and motorcycle team.
At each stop for deliveries or collections, the surveillance team would keep close watch from a discreet distance, following crews on foot if necessary, ready to call for urgent Police assistance and, using telephoto lensed cameras, record the ongoing action in the event of an attempted raid on the vans or walking crew members. Whilst in ‘convoy’ following these vehicles at a discreet tactical distance around London and the Home Counties, as they delivered and collected their cash consignments, we were in radio contact with the van crew and with base. We also kept the crews on foot under close surveillance, as they made the pedestrian journeys during which they were at their most vulnerable to attack.
One day, this man in the ‘puffer’ jacket at London Bridge station, apparently closely watched the Security Express crew arrive and park at the bus stand,whilst they serviced automatic teller machines, deep inside the station. He then followed them along a deserted platform until they entered a ‘staff-only’ area, where he dare not follow them. On their return, he followed them again, laden with their large (now empty) cash boxes, back to their van. We then moved as a convoy to the next pickup/dropping-off point approximately one mile away near Elephant and Castle. As I parked our car in a side street ready to observe the crew’s actions at a nearby bank on the main road, amazingly the puffer jacket man reappeared in the same street, and approached our car, walking along the pavement from behind us.
As I had been unable to obtain a clear, full-frontal photo of this man in good daylight, at London Bridge station, it was essential that I took this opportunity to do so. Whilst still facing my front,so as not to attract this ‘suspect’s’ attention, I took the shot by aiming my telephoto lens at the driver’s offside door mirror of my parked car as I still sat in the driving seat. He was oblivious to my actions. Whilst acting suspiciously at London Bridge station, as he followed the Security Express crew on foot with their laden money boxes, he had been totally unaware that my colleagues and I had been keeping him under surveillance, as he apparently watched, and certainly followed the crew. This type of camera ‘mirror’ shot, can also be taken by aiming the camera at the car interior mirror to capture on film a suspect approaching from behind. However it is essential to have a pristine clean and condensationfree rear window for this to be successful. Security Express was subsequently taken over by Securitas, a Scandinavian company.
To my knowledge, neither the puffer-jacketed robbery ‘suspect’, nor any of the other photographed suspects pictured here, were ever caught in a robbery - However it was very necessary to photograph them at the time, in case they were engaged in reconnaissance and/or planning for future
attacks at or near the venues shown.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you are intending to withdraw cash in the very early hours of the morning, beware of the tractor-crew or JCB-crew waiting nearby with a strong chain and hook as if about to
rescue a broken-down car and tow it away. In fact as soon as you turn your
back, they will hitch-up to the cash point machine and drag it out of the wall
and cart it off to a quiet location, before cutting it open etc. Therefore I suggest you stand clear, concealed in the shadows and at least write down or try to remember the vehicle number. If you don’t have a pen, use your lipstick or mascara brush, useful ready-use emergency kit these days, you too Gents, if you use the stuff! You never know, the bank may reward you for your trouble if you were instrumental in bringing the offenders to justice. 
HSBC, GORING, BOARDED UP AFTER ATM MACHINE STOLEN BY JCB (Author's own photos)
(Collateral damage was also effected on the Florist Shop next door, early morning on Mother's Day)
AFTERMATH OF A JCB THEFT OF HSBC ATM FROM GORING HIGH STREET ( Author's own photos )
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Turning now to the bank that gives you ‘XTRA’, meaning the Halifax. Customers queued all night at a Halifax machine at Urmston, Manchester, after discovering that a £20 ‘bonus’ was being delivered with each withdrawal transaction. It was the third time in a week that bank cash machines had been plundered. Alert Halifax staff arriving for work next morning, saw the unusually-long early morning queue at the machine, plus the porta-potties, blankets, thermos flasks, camping stoves and 400 transaction slips blowing about on the pavement, and quickly realised something was wrong, especially as the massive queue was there one minute and gone the next!
Apparently the best racket, if you had a £250 per day limit, was to make ten withdrawals of £10 and you could make £500 profit on the spot. However Halifax staff, after tea and bacon butties, knuckled down and swiftly calculated that only £65,000 had been taken overnight. Halifax refused to say whether or not it would try to reclaim the cash. I’d love to watch the re-run of the inbuilt security camera film showing all of the greedy and guilty customers licking their lips with delight at their new-found change of fortune, it would do well on a candid camera TV prog.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cunning choc-a-holic criminals have used a new type of deception to part long-distance lorry drivers from their high-value loads. Whilst the driver is enjoying his Sun newspaper and his ‘second-mug-of-tea-free’ in ‘The Greasy Spoon’ transport café or motorway service area, they unscrew and remove his lorry rear number plate. They then tail him off until a quiet stretch of road is reached, whereupon they drive beside him holding up his ‘lost’ number plate. Naturally he is very grateful at its recovery by Good Samaritans and pulls over to re-attach it to the vehicle. Whilst he is doing so, a ‘samaritan’ jumps into the cab and drives off with 25 pallet-loads of Cadbury chocolates, value £55,000 destined to be sold by the bar miles away later that day, at half-retail-price, to grateful but unsuspecting, panting and sweating starving ‘weight-watcher’ clients, leaving the Hackney Town Hall after a ‘marathon’ punishment session, with the risk of the extra hazard of being mugged on the way home.