Many Happy returns for the robbers

Robbery is becoming a way of life in Ireland with over £8 million stolen last year and the armed robbery proceeds showing a major boost this year.
The robbers' Santa Claus has been busy in Ireland these last few years. Last year he paid 817 visits, leaving Ireeland's thriving thieves a bonanza of over £8 million in cash and property, and this year he promises to do even better.

For the Ali Babbas of Ireland are cleaning up with impunity as robbery is, becoming the super-boom trade with a sixteen fold increase in turnover in just a decade. A modest slice of their loot would go a long way towards meeting the Garda pay demands but therein lies a crux. For the boom time robbers rely greatly on disaffection within the Garda force, as well as its archaic structures and equipment - an efficient well paid Gardai might put the country's swinging stealers out of business.

But, as yet, they have nc need to panic.

There are indications however that this year may see a drop in the total number of robberies. In a statement in the Dail on October 12 last, the Minister for Justice, Gerry Collins, said there had been only 430 robberies from the beginnning of the year until then. Thus even allowing for an anticipated surge of acctivity in the pre-Christmas period, it seems likely that last year's record of 817 robberies will not be attained.

But just as the Fianna Fail election promises on unemployment are open to different interpretations, so too are the robbery figures, for although there seems to have been a drop in the nummber of robberies, the amount stolen in armed robberies has reached an all time high.

Collins also told the Dail that the 1978 haul for armed robbery had come to an astonishing £1.6 million, almost £700,000 higher than the total for last year. Thus by the end of 1978 the armed robbery bonanza may be twice that 0 f last year, itself a record year.

Gardai, lawyers and, politicians are unanimous in blaming the phenomenal increase in the robbery rate on the escalation of the Northern troubles and certainly there does seem to be a corrrelation: the largest increase in armed and ordinary robberies occurred during the worst years of Northern violence, 1971 and 1972. But there is another possible factor.

In the decade from 1967 to 1977 durring which the robbery rate increased 16 times, the unemployment rate doubled. In 1967, there were just over 50,000 people out of work. nowadays There are over 100,000. One Dublin criminal lawyer described the causes slightly differently: "the increasing opulence of society, wedded to the efficiency of the Provos, has shown that armed robbery is like taking candy off a baby".

Another lawyer with experience with professional robbers says, "the majority of the non-political robbers here are merely jumped-up housebreakers, who have been introduced to armed robberries by the example of the Northern para-militaries" .

Most of those close to the tradevvi.e. Gardai, lawyers and criminals themmselves - say that about 30 per cent of the armed robberies are political, the rest are entirely criminal. And while there is reason to believe this is so, it distorts the picture significantly. This is because it seems that almost all of the major robberies, such as the Kildare mail train in 1976 (£150,000), the Newcastlewest security van in 1978 (£500,000) and the Donegal security van in 1978 (£225,005») - were "political". But the vast .amount of burglaries and larcenies are in the non-political category. In 1977 just under £1 million was stolen in the armed robberies, with £3 million in larcenies (mainly cars) and £4 million worth of property in burglaries and unnarmed robberies.

Statistical breakdowns of the amount of property and cash stolen each year are crude - another symptom of the unnsophisticated Garda response to the prooblem - thus it is difficult to estimate.

While only one-eighth of the total robbery haul comes by way of armed rob bery , it remains the most lucrative source of enrichment. There are literrally thousands of people involved in petty burglaries and, while the value of the property stolen is considerable, the return to the burglar is slight because of mark-down discounts in the stolen prooperty world.

Estimates vary on the number of non-political armed robbers in the country, but Gardai and lawyers agree that the figures lie between 50 and 100, with about 10 to 15 gangs operating in the Dublin area, from where most of the non-political armed robberies emanate.

Our researches indicate that, conntrary to popular belief, nobody is making a huge fortune out of the racket, for even in boom time 1978 only about £1 Y2 million is likely to be divided between the non-political proofessionals, giving an average income of about £6,600 per year - that is, allowwing for a division of the loot. by 75 - a comfortable but not extravagant income from a hazardous and uncertain profession.

The man regarded by police as one of the country's major criminals looks considerably younger than his 40 odd years, possibly becaue he dyes his hair and spends, he says, up to six hours a day in the local health club. He dresses well but casually and according to a senior police officer "could mix in any type of society". In fact he mixed in the best political circles just a few years ago.

Rumours whirl around this man and. his family. According to some of the tales, he has a Swiss bank account, has money tucked away in other people's names in building societies, has a hand in the drug business, runs some women in the discos, and has an interest in massage parlours, the protection business and ownership of the odd couple of flats thrown in.

The mention of his name brings allmost the flicker of a smile to one detecctive's normally melancholy face. "He's pulled some of the best birds in town," the detective says wistfully.

On the other side of the coin he drinks in one of the roughest pubs in town; he drives a smart enough car but he says he doesn't have the £300 necesssary to pay the insurance.

A short time ago he was due to pay a £100 fine for an assault charge and was forced to spend the whole of the morning before chasing round Dublin touching up his friends for money. Some criminals hold him in self-confessed awe, while others regard him as a spoofer, a conman, although they ackknowledge he is sufficiently astute as to have pulled off a number of major jobs.

By his own account he makes his monev bv gambling, he says he won £1,000 on the Ali-Spinks fight and he has interests in the catering and decoraating business. He claims continual police harrassment and that he and his family are under continual surveillance by police. His brothers claim interests in several businesses. One admits to ownning a Jaguar but then says its a fairly old model, worth about £600.

The man has come up the hard way, via an industrial school, via a spell in a coal pit in Britain, time on deep sea trawlers, and a period in a Brighton boxing booth.

On the day of the Northern Ireland game he was standing with two friends on the comer outside a squat Victorian style pub in a working class section of Dublin.

In keeping with his reputation there were two carloads of plain clothes detectives watching him, to the left a red P & T style Renault van and to the right a blue Escort. As he lacks the innsurance for his car, he decided it was safer to walk to his brother's house to watch the game.

While the three of them were strollling slowly back, the red P & T style van was drawing slowly up beside. It looked right for a further police check. The van drew alongside, the detective in the passenger side leaned out of the window and, beckoning him over, offered him a tip on a horse. "It's dead cert, it can't lose". A nod and a wink and the van drew on.

The man regarded as Dublin's leadding criminal then legged it round the comer to the nearest bookies as quick as he could and put £20 on for a win. The horse came in third.

Heading back toward the house, he mumbled something about "getting the bastard back with a bum steer at the dogs next week" and all through the game he complains bitterly of the police the criminals and the police to be little going on by the way of protection rackets. Senior detectives refer to the odd bouncer on the door taking a rake off but they see nothing organised.

Only in the drug squad is there eviidence of any organisation but then senior detectives say that the problem is sufficiently small and they are more concerned with the number of people drinking cheap wine and cider.

However, Inspector Mullins, head of the Drug Squad, says that one group is in charge of approximately 75 per cent of the drugs. They are dealing in what he calls synthetic opiates, either palfium or diconal which they get from breakkins at chemists shops. According to police, any freelance people operating on a similar basis are expected to bring the goods to this major group. If they don't they face physical assault.

Inspector Jack Marriman of the Garda Representative Association considers That the Gardai showed that they were capable of getting on top of the prooblem when at the end of 1977 detecctives were assigned, as he put it, "to sit on the known robbers" and that as a consequence the number of armed robbberies declined dramatically. However, harrassment he has to suffer. Such is the enigma of the Dublin underworld.

Neither lawyers, police nor villains see any mastermind or particular groups making more than the others, though there is one man, now serving a jail term who police do regard as being a touch ahead. A post office robber, he is thought by those in the criminal world to have between £30,000 and £60,000 salted away in investments and jewellery.

But for the average armed robber his profession does not hold any great riches, and the majority of them live the corporation flat life existence in Dublin's poorer areas. Seventy five of all armed robberies in 1975 were for under £5,000, which was then likely to be diivided four or five ways. And even on a £20,000 plus job, a man is doing well if he comes out of it with £2,000 to £3,000, one criminal says.

Among the lawyers and the criminals there is an antagonism toward the popuular press for what they consider the sennsational handling of the rise in the robbbery rate. The evening papers are singled out and the Independent is referred to in the underworld as the Police Gazette.

Those likely to know, consider proostitution largely to be freelance, though one lawyer says that some of the groups have it as a sideline. There is also said by he says when the overtime bill came in they had to be called off.

"We need more men, more technoloogical aids, we need to be able to feed all the modus operandi of a crime into a computer," he says.

He also adds that the Gardai are in need of a change in the evidence proocedures. He says that he considers the present systems under which the crimiinal doesn't have to produce his alibi until the book of evidence is produced prejudicial to the case. He says that in England the later the alibi is produced the less credence is given to it in court, where here he says it holds the same credence whenever given.

Inspector Marriman also has some tough words for the banks and the commpanies and the unions that oppose the payment of wages by cheque rather than cash. He hits out at the banks for not installing photo surveillance systems and pay grids.

This growth in the armed robbery rate and the apparent inability of the Gardai to counteract it would appear to have forced the Gardai to take other action. Every criminal involved in robbbing has his tale to tell of getting a beatting from the Gardai at one time or annother. This has resulted in a ferocious enmity between the Gardai and the underworld.