Last update - 00:00 03/03/2008
Police figures show rise in drug-motivated gas station robberies
By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent
The security cameras at the Dor Alon gasoline state at the Gilon Junction, in the North, captured every detail of the robbery: At about 2 A.M. last Tuesday, two men in ski masks carrying clubs walked toward the station. The sole attendant on duty saw them and attempted to escape, but one of them caught up to him and hit him on the head. He passed out from the blow, which caused a skull fracture. The robbers entered the convenience store at the station and one of them cleaned out the cash register while the other filled a large bag with bottled drinks. They left a few minutes later.
Two men - both 19 and both from Beit Jann - were arrested the same day by the Carmiel police, based on the images from the security camera.
It was not the only such robbery during the week. According to Israel Police figures, last week five gas stations were robbed in similar circumstances. Two of the cases were solved.
During his meetings with representatives of local fuel companies in the past several weeks, MK Yohanan Plesner (Kadima) has collected data pointing to a significant rise in gas-station robberies over the last four months.
"The figures describe dozens of robberies, break-ins and assaults from last year, and several incidents in the past few months. The numbers from last November through January point to a worrying, growing trend," Plesner wrote last week in a letter to the national police chief. "If this trend continues, there may be over 80 robberies in Paz stations alone, compared to 39 incidents in all of 2007."
The Israel Police Investigations and Intelligence Division is well aware of the trend and is working to combat it. In the past three years the overall incidence of robberies has declined sharply; since the start of 2008 there have been a total of about 500 robberies across the country, compared to 620 incidents in the equivalent period of 2007. That downward trend, however, does not apply to gas-station robberies.
"There is an increase in robberies at gasoline stations," confirms Brig. Gen. Meni Yitzhaki, head of the division's intelligence department. "There are hours when gas stations are very quiet. The robbers exploit that to make a fast entry. The station owners often employ a single, sleepy attendant at those times."
The police believe that most of these crimes are carried out by drug addicts or alcoholics, who know they will only get a few thousand shekels for their efforts and who use a knife rather than a gun to threaten the attendant.
"Addicts don't think very much," Yitzhaki says. "In contrast to robbing a gas station, robbing a safe, for example, requires planning and information. The latter is a complicated project involving significant sums of money. But gas stations are always fast money. Gas-station robberies are always motivated by a need for drugs and quick money."
The gas-station robber profile compiled by Plesner is a little different. "There are more cases where the robbery is carried out by several partners, and some stations have even been approached by criminal organizations demanding protection money accompanied by threats. Recently a station manager was shot in both legs after he tried to resist a robbery carried out by two men whose faces were concealed; in another incident, an employee was hospitalized after a violent robbery," he says.
The police have instructed station owners not to leave one attendant only on the job at night, to install alarm buttons and closed-circuit cameras, and not to leave large amounts of cash in the register at night.
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