Tiger kidnappings - Time to put kidnap thugs out of action

SO-CALLED “tiger kidnapping” is the current buzz-word in news coverage of the activities of violent thugs in Ireland’s flourishing underworld of crime.

The graphic term relates to the tiger-like stalking which criminals carry out on specially selected staff at banks, financial institutions, and post offices.

Usually, this form of undercover surveillance ends with the abduction of targeted victims along with the holding hostage of close relatives while large-scale cash robberies are perpetrated.

With their families under dire threat, staff are forced to hand over cash from their place of work. The traumatic psychological affect of such crimes on the victims is unimaginable.

With Christmas approaching, the danger is that copy-cat robberies will now increase. In the latest incident, four armed and masked men broke into a house in the Glasnevin area of Dublin early of yesterday morning and tied up the family members: a husband, his wife and their son.

At dawn, in a pattern which has become familiar in such atrocities, the wife was held hostage in the house while the husband and son were driven away in a van. Fortunately, the vehicle broke down on the M50 motorway and had to be abandoned by the gang who took to the open country.

In the event, the victims, who had succeeded in untying their bonds, failed to stop several motorists but were eventually rescued by gardaí.

Thankfully the woman held hostage, who works at a local post office where she is believed to be key-holder for a time-lock security safe, was found unharmed at the family home.

This is a relatively new but extremely worrying phenomenon. In the past few days alone, there have been three kidnap attempts in the Dublin area.

Earlier this week, an abducted post office worker managed to escape from an underground car park when her captor lit a cannabis joint and fell asleep. Seemingly, amateurs were involved in that heist, compared to the professionals behind the latest botched bid.

Luckily, the criminals involved in the third incident, yet another attempted kidnapping of a female postal worker, left the scene when they were confronted by on the stairs her six sons.

The inescapable implication of this spate of violent incidents is that post office staff are viewed by criminal elements as soft targets compared with their counterparts in banks and other financial institutions where security arrangements have been greatly improved in recent times.

It is not surprising that management and unions at An Post are deeply worried about this sinister trend of focusing on staff and their families. With hundreds of post offices scattered across the country, including some in relatively remote rural areas, it is imperative that tighter precautions be put in place to protect not only the people who work in An Post but also to afford a greater degree of security for their relatives.

The stark reality is that key post office staff are seen as vulnerable targets by criminals who will stop at nothing to get their hands on substantial sums of money. Unless the current rash of “tiger kidnapping” is brought to a halt, there is a grave risk that victims will be badly injured or even killed.

The Government must provide whatever resources are deemed necessary by the gardaí to root out the vicious criminals behind the sudden explosion of this potentially deadly trend.

Unless the level of security surrounding post office staff is strengthened, and the thugs are put out of action, postal workers and their families will continue to be in the firing line.

That grim scenario is utterly unacceptable.