In old movies, bank robbers burst into a bank with firearms/weapons and demand money be passed to you over the till and then the assailants run to a car and vanish. That’s what the Estrella Arias family team did on 3 June 2024 at the Banco Popular Luperon branch in Santo Domingo.
Those who have watched many movies and played many video games would think it is a cinch to rob a bank. Actually, it is. Cashiers, customers and security will do what you say. They did at the Banco Popular.
What is very risky is getting away with it. It took the National Police just days to figure out who was behind the 3 June 2024 Banco Popular Luperon branch robbery. The-three-brothers-and-a-cousin affair supposedly planned on a Mother’s Day holiday resulted to be more than these could handle.
As reported, the first miscalculation was that they arrived late and the bank stash had already been removed. The vault was practically empty. RD$1.6 million was all they got. The Police investigation revealed they could have been intending to rob a different bank where they were parked before the Av. Luperon robbery.
Then in the case of the Banco Popular robbery, surveillance cameras worked and the assailants were identified. City streets in the capital city are outfitted with interconnected CCTVs. The Police was able to trail the assailants once they left the bank.
One brother, Richard Estrella Arias, was killed at gunshot by the Police when he was in a cabaña, sex motel, on the Autopista 30 de Mayo. Two others are under arrest as is a cousin. In a new development, Jorge Luis Estrella and his cousin Enmanuel Segura Arias say that Alberto Ezequiel Estrella Arias, detained for investigation regarding the Kia Sorento used in the robbery, was not involved and urge the Police to investigate the company that rented the vehicle.
Bank robberies are not the way to get rich, as the Estrella Arias family has learned the hard way. Cyber-crime and hacking, including credit and cash card and check fraud and theft, are the biggest banking security issues today.
Diario Libre’s executive editor Anibal de Castro stresses the Police is efficient [when it wants to be], but criticizes the killing of criminals that has the population giving them a pat on the back. He also observes how crimes that involve more millions than those stashed in a bank branch, are being heard in Dominican courts “faster than in the Wild West a gunman would kill a sheriff.” [In those cases, those willing to tell on their bosses are getting off with hefty discounts, and only have to return a few millions of what they are getting away with.]
Diario Libre’s managing editor Benjamin Morales also has his say on bank robbing. “Those two robberies [including a Santiago bank robbery last month], were not successful nor daring. They were exercises in stupidity or ignorance, by two groups of young people who thought bank robbing was as simple as it looks in the movies or videos.”
The good news is that it will be safer to go to the bank for the time being. The good news is that the show of the effectiveness of using the CCTVs will make criminals think twice before acting.
President Luis Abinader himself commented on the issue when speaking during his Monday, 10 June 2024 La Semanal press conference. President Luis Abinader remarked it “doesn’t go well” for criminals in the DR. He remarked his administration has curbed crime and many cases are resolved in just a few days. “The Police is working,” said the President when commenting on the record time in which cases are investigated and details made public. Of the four that were captured on video robbing the Banco Popular on 3 June, two were killed in clashes with the Police, and two are under arrest awaiting trial.
The Ministry of Interior and Police says it will be installing more than 1,700 new cameras. The Chamber of Deputies is moving on a bill to exempt surveillance cameras from import duties. From August 2020, 1,500 new surveillance cameras have been installed. The Ministry of Interior and Police says another 1,700 cameras will be installed by the 911 Emergency Service under Colonel Randolfo Rijo Gomez.
Read more in Spanish:
Diario Libre
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El Caribe
El Caribe
12 June 2024