SOFT TARGETS

A surge of drug-induced, spur-of-the-moment armed robberies targeting
small businesses is making the midnight shift one of the most dangerous
jobs in Australia, as Adrian McGregor reports

THE youth, no attempt at disguise, approaches the shop counter, brandishes
a hypodermic syringe filled with sinister-looking red fluid and says: "I'm
a heroin addict, I need a hit, give me the money." HIV infection via
needle-stick is so fearfully on the public mind that the moment is as
life-threatening as if he were armed with a gun.

When Thuy Chau, 19, was thus confronted in the family's supermarket near
Ipswich, south-east Queensland, last July, she froze. She couldn't scream
or speak, or run. She saw the syringe's plunger was cocked, the needle
pointing at her. "Don't be frightened," the youth said urgently. "But hand
over the money or I'll hurt you,"

Thuy seemed hypnotised by the needle. "It went through my mind: What if he
scratched me?" says Thuy. "I couldn't miss it, right there in front of me.
When he leaned forward, I jumped back. Even as I was handing over the money
I was worried about putting my hand near the needle."

The youth escaped with $900. Thuy was unhurt. A reasonable trade, you might
think, in the circumstances.

Six weeks later, a similar scene was enacted with Joanne Hayhurst in her
newly opened gift shop near Nerang, in the Gold Coast hinterland. "Can I
help you?" she asked the young man. "Put your daughter out the back first,"
he commanded ominously.

Says Joanne, "I thought straight away: 'Uh oh, here we go.'" Instantly she
regretted she had not had time to install a security alarm in her new shop.
Nerves clamouring, she secured her four-year-old daughter in a back room
and returned to find the man holding a red fluid-filled syringe.

He demanded money, she refused. He advanced around the counter. She stepped
back. "How do you open the till?" he hissed. Eyes wide with fear, Joanne
still wouldn't tell him. "I'm going to count to five and then I'm going to
jab you with this," he said, pushing the needle for-ward. "One..."

This was the moment, the blade-thin edge between fear and courage. Joanne,
a Christian, believes in the protection of the Lord. "I'm covered by the
blood of Jesus," she suddenly screamed. "In the name of Jesus, get out!"
And, by the grace of God, he did.

An armed hold-up contains so many volatile dynamics that no two responses
are the same. But a rising tide of such hold-ups on soft targets is
bringing ordinary Australian shop staff face-to-face with crime in numbers
never experienced before.

People aren't normally confronted by burglars or car thieves; the crime
occurs in their absence. But shop owners and attendants in 24-hour service
stations, late-night chemists, Night Owl and 7-Eleven convenience stores
and bottle shops are in the front line, facing Australia's fastest growing
crime.

There were 9015 armed robberies in Australia last year. Be it handgun or
sawn-off shotgun, a barrel poking from under a piece of cloth, a knife,
syringe, machete, screwdriver or chisel, victims fear for their lives. All
experience a degree of shock.

Both Chau and Hayhurst were back in their shops the next day albeit with a
family member in support. But Brisbane Detective Sergeant Russell King
contrasts them with a bottle-shop attendant who was made to kneel with a
shotgun cocked at his temple during the robbery. "He co-operated
throughout," says King.

"But he thought he'd had it. He was severely shocked, crying
uncontrollably, and he never went back to his job."

The increase in frequency of hold-ups is startling. In NSW, robberies with
a firearm rose by 33.4 per cent between 1995 and 1997, and robberies with
some other weapon by a huge 76.8 per cent. In Victoria, total armed
robberies rose by 26 per cent between June 1997 and June 1998. Queensland
had a 23 per cent rise in 1996-97 compared with the previous year.

The incidence should be kept in perspective - victims of robbery
represented only 0.7 per cent of the NSW population last year. It is the
trend that is disturbing. As banks and TABs improve security and
taxi-drivers become cocooned, armed robbers are seeking alternative targets.

The director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics, Dr Don Weatherburn,
attributes the rise to steep increases in the number of heroin users
turning to robbery to fund their addiction.

For some time banks have had video cameras, hidden alarms, security patrols
and pop-up, bullet-proof screens. Now service stations are fighting back.
"We had two armed hold-ups in quick succession at Ebbw Vale, near Ipswich,"
says a BP spokesman. "We don't want to cut our staff off from the public,
but we lost patience and put in a counter-to-ceiling glass screen."

The huge increase in robberies with a weapon other than a firearm seems to
back the desperate-addict hypothesis. Drug addicts are not out to hurt, let
alone kill, it seems. As often as not the robberies are spontaneous and
drug-induced, as evidenced by the absence of any disguise.

In many instances, says King, guns are not loaded or don't work. "One youth
we arrested used a sawn-off shotgun in one hold-up and a .22 rifle in
another. All the ball bearings had been removed from the shotgun
cartridges. If he had pulled the trigger there would have been a big bang
and the plastic wad would have blown out the barrel. The 22 was never loaded."

King doubts the syringes are filled with infected human blood. Probably
animal blood or dark red dye.

Despite police advice that shop attendants are wiser to hand over the cash,
the drug addict's resolve often does not survive a spirited defence.

"Nobody blames you if you give them the money, there's not much you can do
about it," says Matthew Buckler, 26, a service station attendant at
Alexandra Hills in Brisbane. He was on the graveyard shift in July, tending
his isolated island of light in the dark, when a customer walked in. It was
about 4.30am.

"He walked towards me with a large kitchen knife," Buckler says. The man
wore no disguise and Buckler recognised him from a police description as
the robber who had held up the service station 10 days earlier.

The man advanced around the counter and said: "I want the money." Buckler's
indignant response was to grab a metre-long stick and strike the robber
twice, hard. The robber took two steps backwards. "I'm not going to stab
you, I just want the money," he exclaimed in an aggrieved tone. Then:
"Okay, I'm leaving."

Stuart Hannah was behind the till in his Ipswich takeaway at 6.30pm when a
youth appeared, his T-shirt pulled amateurishly over his head. Nothing
amateur about the jagged-edged camping knife he produced, thrusting a
canvas school bag at Hannah. demanding: "Open the till and empty it into
the bag."

Hannah replied angrily: "No way, you're not having it." The youth seemed
perplexed and angrily stabbed the plastic back panel of the till before
running off. "He was about 17 and looked nervous," says Hannah. "I don't
think he was a drug addict, unless you call cigarettes a drug, I suppose.
He wasn't going to get nothing out of me. It would have been a different
story if he'd had a gun. I would have said, 'Yeah, here, take it.'"

US statistics show people wounded with knives have a three times better
chance of surviving than if they're shot with a firearm.

On Brisbane's south side, Steve Lawrence, 29, manages a late-night grocery
franchise that has been robbed half a dozen times. He has been held up
twice, first with a knife and then last August with a gun. The store policy
is clear: give them the cash - it's insured - don't speak, don't argue, do
as they say, get them out of the shop as fast as you can.

"You're not aware of them when they walk in," says Lawrence. "He [the
gunman] wasn't agitated, didn't look suspicious, just walked right up to
the counter. 'What can I get you?' I said. And he pulled out a gun."

The threat sent Lawrence into momentary shock. "You just freeze," says
Lawrence. "You don't really think for the first 20-30 seconds. I said,
'Don't shoot.' That's the only thing I said.

Did the gun look real? "I didn't want to test it," says Lawrence. "I pulled
the notes out of the till. It's ridiculous how little they get. The first
bloke got around $100, the second bloke $200. It's all over pretty quick.
Under a minute, in and out. You think, 'Is that it?' You walk out on the
street and by then, amazingly, the police are there."

Lawrence is all praise for the cops. "They're fantastic," he says. "So
supportive. Make sure you're all right. Which way'd he go? The catch rate
is 100 per cent from our shop. Because of the security cameras, I guess."

Lawrence found it took a little while for the shock to wear off. "I took a
couple of days off, had a few beers," he says. "But the bloke's face is
etched in your brain for a couple of weeks." This is the comment
shopkeepers frequently make to police: "I'll never forget those eyes."

Police or shop proprietors refer hold-up staff to the Retail Traders
Association, which has a list of psychologists to counsel victims. Darryl
Crook, a Brisbane consultant psychologist, says a common aftermath is for
victims to become hyper-vigilant. "They look over their shoulder a lot, or
startle if someone knocks at the door, or taps them on the shoulder," he says.

Lawrence identifies with that. "Afterwards you're a bit wary. You don't
trust anyone, you look at everyone who comes in and think, 'It could be
you, scumbag. But my motto is: don't let them beat you. don't let them get
you down."

Another symptom is for people to over-traumatise themselves. Says Crook:
"If they say, 'I could have died, he could have killed me, he could have
stabbed me', it can add a lot of time to the healing process."

Thuy Chau confirms she had these thoughts. "I didn't have counselling, it's
not something I'm letting take over my life," she says. "Because when it
all boils down, nothing bad happened to me."

Detective King says robbers have little idea of the stress they cause in
hold-ups. "They only think about why they need the money and what they're
putting themselves through to get it. They wouldn't even remember who was
serving in the store they robbed."

Chain convenience stores have security systems, but family owned businesses
are slower to act. Thuy's family had surveillance cameras and a monitor to
watch for shoplifters, but no recording equipment to capture hold-up
images. Now they have. Hannah went straight down to the Tandy store in
Ipswich and bought a camera, monitor, video and three four-hour tapes for
$495.

Security responses are not always perfect. In one incident, the attendant
hit the store alarm linked to the local police and it didn't work. In
another, the alarm worked but police rang to confirm the alarm was genuine.
"Yes," shrilled the female attendant. "He's just leaving now!"

Checked-by: Pat Dolan