RP banks must employ a new tack against robbers

A Philippine congressman has revealed that a total of 22 local banks were robbed in 2005, losing no less than P90 million in the process. The losses are, of course, peanuts, given the nature of the crime.

What is more alarming, however, is the number of banks robbed. It is alarming because we are not talking here of convenience stores or ordinary people getting mugged. We are talking here of banks.

Banks are supposed to be secure places. That is precisely the reason why people choose to put their money in them instead of keeping their cash under their pillows or burying them in a hole under the house.

Of course, being a depository of large amounts of money makes banks the natural targets of robbers. But that is not the point. The point is that, as a consequence, banks should in turn be a step ahead of the robbers.

To be sure, there must be hundreds of banks in the country and that the 22 banks must be a pretty measly fraction of the whole congregation. But again that is not the point. If it can be helped, banks should not be robbed at all.

Yet, instead of not getting robbed at all, a total of 22 banks were no match for robbers. Twenty-two may be a small number. But if one considers that that is almost two banks every month, then we really have a very unstable security condition in our hands.

One of the reasons why the Philippines is not performing as well as it should and is now thus lagging behind many of its neighbors is that the great majority of the citizenry has lost confidence in institutions of trust.

Some of the institutions that have fallen or are in grave danger of falling as far as public confidence is concerned are government revenue-generating and peace-keeping institutions, law-making institutions, religious institutions, etc.

Among those that are still standing are the judicial and banking institutions. But both of these are under assault and it would be a very sad day for the country and its people if these two would also go the way of the rest.

As we said earlier, banks should be a step ahead of the robbers. What that means is not simply employing more firepower than the robbers. The use of firepower suggests a robbery is already ongoing or is about to happen.

What we have in mind is the employment of intelligence, of using the vast resources of banks to thwart robberies, not in a huge display of fireworks but in the employment of a sweeping but subtle blanket cover of advance information.

The only chance banks have against robbers, given the prevailing Philippine condition, is to be amply forewarned in order to be able to upset any known plans by criminal elements to stage a heist.

Banks should learn by now that the broad daylight under which bank robberies are being pulled and the congested streets into which robbers still manage to escape all point to one thing and one thing only.

And that is that law enforcement has fallen way way short of expectations. And this has given robbers ample encouragement to pull jobs with impunity. And we are not even talking of actual instances when certain law enforcers are themselves involved in these criminal acts.

With law enforcement almost a dead avenue to follow, and firepower being too easy to match or overwhelm, the only realistic chance for banks to guard themselves is by way of good intelligence.