Armourgedden: the story of a Maltese heist
Christmas has brought with it the usual spate of thieving, leaving the English-language media littered with the confused use of words like robbery and robber, burglary and burglar, theft and thief, but with never a mention of the word housebreaking, though that is one of the most common crimes over the holiday season.
The lack of a noun visibly related to the verb ‘to steal’ apparently causes a great deal of consternation, too, leading to the construction of some very interesting sentences, most of which feature the verb ‘to rob’ in relation to the objects stolen rather than to the premises or persons from which or whom they were taken (“He robbed a purse.”).
We even had bag-snatching described as ‘snatch and grab’, two words which mean the same thing and which doubtless come to us via smash-and grab, an expression used for an entirely different sort of theft.
People rob banks and burgle houses, but not in Malta, where they rob houses, steal banks (in one notorious case, literally so) and never burgle anything.
And now, to really rev things up, we have a genuine Maltese heist that’s straight out of a cheap B-movie, featuring a cash-laden armoured car, a bulldozer, a man on a motorbike and, in a white van (the name of Adrian Mole’s abortive screenplay because white vans are a crime cliché), some other men with guns, who waited until the point of action to discover, through direct experience, that bullet-proof glass does exactly what it says on the tin.
It’s bullet-proof.
Oh yes, and there was a pick-up truck, too. It was driven across the path of the armoured car to halt its progress, and then the bulldozer was rammed into the rear in an attempt at busting open the doors so that the sacks of cash could be got at.
There were no great criminal minds at work here – just a few criminals who had watched a couple of heist-films on DVD and overlooked the main factor that made for success: meticulous planning.
One assumes that when our heroes sat around planning the Great Armoured Car Robbery, there was no pedant to weigh in with a couple of lessons in basic physics.
Lesson 1: when a bulldozer rams from behind a very heavy armoured car in which there are people with hands that may be used to release the gears and free the wheels, the pick-up truck nestled up to the front of that armoured car will move under the combined force of the bulldozer hitting the armoured car.
Lesson 2: when doors open outwards, like those of an armoured car, the force required to bust them open must come from within and not from without, with few exceptions which involve weak locks or flimsy material. Because there isn’t the space necessary to exert force from within (unless by means of explosives, which would destroy the money), and because you can’t get into the armoured car anyway to plant those explosives (and once you are in it means you have got at the money anyway), it is reasonable to assume that busting open the rear doors of an armoured car is not an option.
All this is academic anyway, as the doors of an armoured car lock all the way round their perimeter and not just at a single point between the two doors, so busting them open is completely out of the question unless you use a bomb.
That is why, when armoured cars are held up, they are not forced open, but instead people are forced to open them. Of course, this latter option – the only option – is extremely difficult and requires much careful planning and insider cooperation, and not a bulldozer. So it seems they had to pass on that one.
Our bandits didn’t even bother to familiarise themselves with the construction and function of vehicles of the type they planned to rob.
They didn’t even know the obvious: that you can’t shoot through the windows of an armoured car or force its doors open (inwards) with a bulldozer because – hey, guess what – it’s armoured.
It looks like a white van, so to them, it was just another white van.
I’m guessing that this lot don’t have an O-level between them. On one of Malta’s busiest industrial thoroughfares at 9.30 in the morning, they thought they could stand around shooting at bullet-proof windows and watching bullets ricochet while their friend played Mating Tortoises round the back with a bulldozer, trying to reverse the laws of physics by getting doors which swing outwards to swing inwards instead.
They thought that while they messed around with their bulldozer and their guns for as long as it took to get at the money, nobody in the many surrounding offices, warehouses and passing cars would ring the police, who would block off the sole two escape routes and arrest them, which they did.
I stood in a shop yesterday and heard a man exclaim over the newspaper story: “Kemm kienet ippjanata tajba!” He meant it. The shopkeeper and I raised our eyebrows at each other: “Well, errrr, actually…..”
Honestly, you couldn’t make it up.
This article is published in The Malta Independent today.
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You’d almost have expected the Road Runner to stop by and do “Beep Beep”.
I assume on reading this that you are not privy to the latest Darwin Award Winner…
http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2009-09.html
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100107/local/armoured-cash-van-proves-its-worth
Writing on the English language, will many reporters please note that the use of the word “mull” on its own does not make sense? It should be “mull OVER”.
[Daphne – Thank you for that. It’s another one of those things that drive me nuts: “He mulled whether to go to the party.” Every time I read that sort of usage I’m sorely tempted to ring the sub-editor to point out that wine is mulled and that everything else is mulled over. Another one of my pet hates is the verb ‘don’ used instead of ‘wear’, as in “He went out donning a smart coat.” Lie down and weep.]
That is because those are phrasal verbs. The verb needs a preposition for it to make sense.
If you are going to be pedantic as regards grammar you should note that “I’m guessing that…” is not correct English. The use of the present progressive in that way is used by lower class English people or non native speakers who translate from other languages.
[Daphne – ‘I’m guessing that’ is colloquial English. On the contrary, it is used only by native speakers of the language. But you wouldn’t know that, I imagine.]
Many grammatical sins are committed because people use the excuse of ‘colloquial’ language.Would the queen speak like that? No. Someone from Manchester who buys clothes from Burberry which are made in a Chinese sweat shop would, though.
I just hate it when people… typically from Sliema or thereabouts use intonation instead of correct grammar to ask a question.
“You like pastizzi?” I can’t reproduce intonation here of course but you know what I mean. It makes my skin crawl because what they are doing is translating from Maltese showing that they are really thinking in Maltese and speaking in ‘English’.
As regards the use of the ‘…ing’ you are wrong. Listen to people who are intelligent and so on but are not native English speakers and you will hear them using the ‘…ing’ form with loads of verbs when they should not be doing so. I have heard several European ambassadors in Malta doing this. So you are in good company, don’t worry.
U ajma, much ado about mull u mull over…
Have a look at The Times of 04/01/2010 page two, bottom right, Qrendi accident report – the last sentence reads:
“There was no one else in the car which is a right off”
I like to mull my wine.
enader wan tudej…
CONFECTIONARY issa saret.
I used to urge my colleagues at work to read The Times biex jitghallmu naqa Ingliz sura… imma nahseb ghalhekk ghadhom jghaffgu.
Kinda “Keystone robbers”, I reckon…
And here is my twopenny’s worth. They DID plan. And for our Maltee standards, quite meticulously. They dealt with the CCTV cameras. They blocked the roads. Some of gang members were “crowd control”, that is, they warned off the people around. But they thought a Bobcat was enough to burst through an armoured car. It’s not. So in the end it is as you say: amateurish, DVD-inspired idiocy.
Now, what I would have done is pointed a sabot-tipped gun at the windows and fired at one, just to prove my point. The sabot is not a bullet, but it’s guaranteed to go through armoured glass, or plate, like a hot knife through butter. The crew will soon be convinced that I mean business, and open up the back, for my hypothetical gang to gather all that lovely loot. We did have a well planned heist in Malta, when they stole a pallet of euros from Balzan HSBC. No one was found out on that one. That’s because, I’ll bet my bottom dollar, that the thieves were from oltremare……
Tarantino would have been proud to film this heist, for its sheer idiocy. But heists like this are worrying, because it seems we do have a harsh criminal element in Malta, that’s getting harsher. The shot at the guards in the van was meant to kill, not just star the glass.
And what about the gold ingots which were stolen from the airport cargo section? The best-organised robbery was that of the HM Dockyard wages in the 1950s.
If they used a bulldozer they would have stood a better chance of opening the van, and it wasn’t even a Bobcat. Bobcats have short bucket arms. From what I saw on TV it was a farm tractor with a ‘bucket’ which is used to collect manure. I heard that it was stolen from some some pig farm in the limits of Mgarr and fitted with some metal ‘forks’.
Hilarious. A time worn refrain: ‘Only in Malta’. Love it here. Guaranteed a laugh a day. Should be used in tourist brochures. These guys have to be the result of inbreeding.
Hi Daphne
I am frequently baffled re use of correct English even in the UK major papers… take this bit for example
“Under manager Harry Redknapp, Portsmouth won the FA Cup in 2008. However, since Mr Redknapp left for Tottenham Hotspur, the club’s fortunes have been in decline.
It has sold many of its cup-winning team, some of which have moved to Spurs to rejoin Mr Redknapp.”
The word “which” at the end I find a bit jarring (even though it refers to the collective noun team) wouldn’t “whom” fit better since the team is made up of human individuals?
Incidentally a car was described as a “total right off” in our own Times yesterday…..
The recent spike in crimes is all thanks to your sweet perfect never at fault Gonzi Daphne. You should be proud of him. Crimes are becoming more daring than ever.
A well-known and successful heist did take place around the 1950s when they held up the van that was carrying the money to pay dockyard workers. I don’t know the details very well as I must have been a toddler, I suppose…I don’t know whether the culprits were ever caught.
How thoughtful of Mario Debono to give ideas to prospective van-robbers (I guess robbers is the word since one talks of the “great train robbery”).
You’d be hard pressed to obtain a sabot firing gun in Malta. These are used on tanks. I don’t think our army ever envisages fighting tanks.
I frequently enjoy your column, but being British married to a Maltese, I fail to understand ‘punch lines’ when they are in Maltese. Is there any chance of English translations, following these usually short phrases in Maltese? That way I will not have to wait for my husband to help me fully enjoy your work. Thank you for your quality of writing and your sense of humour.
For all those of you who think it was hilarious, please think again. The scum that did this may be ignorant but they are vicious scum all the same and I for one find nothing to laugh about in what they did. They used lethal weapons in a very public place not giving a damn if they killed or wounded anyone – whether a security guard or a passerby.
When someone sets fire to your door it’s attempted murder (even though with stone being the major building component in Malta house fires are rarely lethal) but shooting in a busy public place is risible. Not like you to be inconsistent, Daphne.
[Daphne – Stone is not the major building component where I live. Glass is. When you stack five large tyres, each one packed with bottles of petrol, all topped with a jerry-can of petrol, up against a glass door behind which lie carpets, sofas and wooden furniture, it is not an attempt to set fire to the door (which is glass), but an attempt to set fire to the house – at 3am with everyone asleep on the same floor as the fire.]
They’re callous, arrogant, lazy, reprehensible, ignorant scum who don’t give a pig’s burp about the rest of us. I hope they rot in gaol for a long time, but with Malta’s soft-hearted judiciary it’s unlikely.
Re: “They’re callous, arrogant, lazy, reprehensible, ignorant scum who don’t give a pig’s burp about the rest of us. I hope they rot in gaol for a long time, but with Malta’s soft-hearted judiciary it’s unlikely”
Hopefully they were smoking a joint, that way they get 20 years or something… in that case they will also smoke pot in gaol, since it seems to be the safest place to do drugs without getting caught.
The risk was greater than the gain…dividing 2.8 million euros between 10 or more…that makes it a stupid plan.