It’s Christmas for criminals targeting cash vans

The silly season is upon us - and so are cash heist gangs.

Six cash-in-transit heist suspects were today scheduled to appear in the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court after they were arrested right after the robbery on Monday in Bloemfontein.

Tuesday morning, also in the Free State, three security guards were disarmed and money was taken after their vehicle was rammed by another vehicle at the corner of Mill and Vooruitsig streets.

Also on Tuesday morning, a security guard was wounded in a suspected cash-in-transit heist in Perseverance, Nelson Mandela Bay.

In Limpopo, a car accident led to the arrest of a 33-year-old cash-in-transit robbery suspect who had been on the run since an attack on a G4S Cash Solutions van at the Mvusuludzo Mall in Thohoyandou in March 2019. A security guard and three bystanders were wounded during a shoot-out with three robbers.

The gangs behind these crimes are highly trained and do not hesitate to shoot on sight. Militarising cash-in-transit operations more than they already are is thus bound to worsen these attacks.

It has long been stated that police are losing the war against cash heists. Similarly, police declaring war on these gangs annually, with little success, is not taking us anywhere.

The solution is to get the cash off road and explore other ways to move money between two points without using a vehicle.

The visits to yet another cash heist scene by Police Minister Bheki Cele, bullets flying across highways, innocent people kidnapped in getaway cars or caught in the crossfire and release of statistics with yet another promise to curb the crime amounts to doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Cash-in-transit companies should try and do something different this festive season.

Pretoria News