More shocks from the book

Crime emergency

In 2014 there were 180 cash-in-transit incidents; in 2017, there were 370 . . . It is, without a doubt, a national crime emergency.

Explosives in arsenal

A virulent new strain of vehicle-on-road attacks has emerged. Gangs attacking cash vans have added commercial explosives to the already lethal arsenal of ramming vehicles and highpowered automatic firearms. More and more cash vehicles are being blown up to access the money in the onboard vaults.

Pavement shoot-outs

Cross-pavement robberies increased by 48% from 2016 to 2017. Once mainly concentrated in the cities, this deadly plague has now spread to every corner of South Africa: small towns, roadside garages and suburban malls. A situation where armed guards are pitted against armed robbers in close combat is a recipe for bloodshed. Once again, the statistics paint a grim picture. Fatalities in cash-in-transit robberies increased by 70% in 2017, with most of these related to cross-pavement incidents.

Harder to anticipate

Classic vehicle-on-road heists are executed by a relatively small number of experienced and organised criminal gangs. Through good intelligence, police often have advance warning of big robberies and can be proactive . . . Crosspavement attacks, however, are far harder to anticipate and are increasingly opportunistic. “You don’t have the same level of planning and expertise going into these attacks,” says Dr Alice Maree, a criminologist formerly attached to the South African Banking Risk Information Centre and now an independent consultant. “More and more criminals are resorting to robbing guards as they move with cash to ATMs, bank branches or retail outlets that they are servicing.” — Excerpts from Heist! South Africa’s Cash-in-Transit Epidemic Uncovered, by Anneliese Burgess