Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin sus­pects that the fail­ure of ban­dits to get in­come from oth­er il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties may be prompt­ing them to tar­get larg­er busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing restau­rants and fast-food fran­chis­es.

On Mon­day night, the Star­bucks out­let at Brent­wood Mall, Ch­agua­nas, was robbed as two ban­dits, one of whom had a re­volver, walked in­to the store and an­nounced a rob­bery. The ban­dits stole $255 be­fore es­cap­ing in a white Nis­san Ti­i­da.

On Sun­day night two gun­men robbed the Eller­slie Plaza branch of Haa­gen Dazs, steal­ing $15,791.

A cus­tomer who was in the store at the time was al­so robbed of her bag, which con­tained a cell­phone and bank cards.

On March 26, two ban­dits walked in­to Pal­ki In­di­an Restau­rant, on Long Cir­cu­lar Road, St James, where they hand­ed a note to a wait­ress an­nounc­ing a rob­bery.

The ban­dits stole $1,000 from the cash reg­is­ter, two cell­phones and an Ap­ple iPad be­fore es­cap­ing.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on Tues­day, Ben­jamin said while the da­ta avail­able to po­lice sug­gest­ed there was a re­duc­tion in rob­beries, he was aware of the trend where ban­dits seemed to be tar­get­ing larg­er busi­ness­es. He said crim­i­nals may be hop­ing to get more mon­ey from these stores but not­ed the po­lice were us­ing mul­ti­ple av­enues to fol­low up on these en­quiries.

“These leads come from fin­ger­prints and in­tel­li­gence ar­eas, in­clud­ing fol­low­ing the CCTV footage to guide us, so we are look­ing at the trends, so we recog­nise the big busi­ness­es is where they’re go­ing af­ter now, so we’re go­ing af­ter it.”

Ben­jamin al­so urged man­agers and busi­ness own­ers to take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions against crim­i­nals by be­ing more ob­ser­vant of who was en­ter­ing the store and pay­ing close at­ten­tion to cus­tomers.