THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 14, 1997 TAG: 9701140001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 75 lines
Police have yet to arrest and charge anyone with the robberies of five Norfolk 7-Eleven convenience stores in the weeks before Christmas. Two unidentified men - described as black, in their teens or early 20s - are suspected of perpetrating the robberies. In the robbery of the 7-Eleven in the 1700 block of Colley Avenue in Norfolk's Ghent, one of the robbers shot a 62-year-old clerk in a leg.
Too many convenience stores are needlessly easy marks for street criminals. So frequent are convenience-store robberies that the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports years ago created a category for them (the other categories are street or highway, commercial house, gas station, residence, bank).
Convenience-store robberies in Virginia fluctuate from year to year, ranging from about 400 to about 700. In 1981, Virginia counted 607; 1991, 723; 1992,713; 1993, 675; 1994, 439; 1995, 408.
Any decrease in such robberies is welcome - and in large part attributable to voluntary, effective policies that protect convenience-store personnel. But while some store operators go out of their way to shield their clerks from violence, others do far less. Until all of the companies strengthen security as much as they could and should, especially for clerks who work late-night and early-morning hours, thousands will be terrorized by robbers' guns, knives and other weapons. Many hundreds more will be murdered, maimed or raped.
Data contained in a mid-1995 report to members of the National Association of Convenience Stores recorded 28,000 robberies in 1994 - about 288 robberies per 1,000 stores. The 1994 robbery total, when convenience stores numbered 93,200, was roughly the same as the 1976 total, when there were 32,000 stores. So in percentage terms, store robberies were fewer. But thousands of clerks still are traumatized by robberies and more than a 100 a year are murdered on the job.
Gainesville, Fla., has demonstrated for years now how simple it is to forestall convenience-store violence. Gainesville City Council mandated a slew of security measures, including surveillance cameras and money-drop safes, which are components of the usual convenience-store anti-robbery package. Gainesville also directed stores to adopt one of several policies to protect clerks between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. (which is when most robberies are committed):
Maintain two clerks on duty.
Maintain a security guard on duty.
Place clerks in bullet-resistant enclosures, from which they conduct sales transactions through push-pull steel drawers.
Gainesville experienced 61 convenience-store robberies in 1986, the year before its ordinance took effect (despite lobbying and litigation by the industry to overturn it) - and far fewer since. Robberies dropped to 23 in 1987 and have been in the teens and single digits ever since. In 1990, when Gainesville counted seven convenience-store robberies, Tallahassee, a city with a demographic profile similar to Gainesville's, reported 104.
Since then, Florida has followed Gainesville's lead, despite intensive, extensive, expensive industry lobbying. Convenience-store crime is falling fast in Florida, benefiting clerks and taxpayers. As Del. George W. Grayson of Williamsburg pointed out in 1994, when he proposed (futilely) that the Virginia General Assembly emulate Florida's convenience-store-safety legislation, the commonwealth spends about $14 million a year pursuing, arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating criminals who rob convenience stores.
Grayson was motivated by the murder of a convenience-store clerk, a grandfather, working the graveyard shift alone in a 7-Eleven near Williamsburg. His killer was a 17-year-old male. There is no push for convenience-store safety regulation in the General Assembly now in session.
Yet, in the absence of government mandated safety precautions, the casualties continue. So do costs to taxpayers for crimes that could be prevented.
Now the Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposes to publish guidelines for protecting convenience-store clerks. The guidelines incorporate the demonstrably effective policies that Gainesville and Florida mandate. The industry, predictably, objects. Its objections should not prevail.
KEYWORDS: ROBBERY CONVENIENCE STORE