Posted on 07/12/2002 7:41:43 AM PDT by Stat-boy
Tragedy plaguing convenience stores By THOM MARSHALL Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle ANOTHER TRAGIC SHOOTING in our town, where the convenience-store death rate over the past 2 1/2 years averages one every six or seven weeks.
A fellow with a gun went in at 8:45 a.m. to rob the place. He apparently didn't know the owner, Ngoc Thanh Le, had shot and killed another robber back in September, or he might have picked another store.
Houston has about 3,000 of them, and a greater concentration than this you will not find. According to the National Association of Convenience Stores, there are about 120,000 across the United States. Texas contains more than any other state, about 10 percent of the total, or 12,000. So about 25 percent of all the convenience stores in Texas are located in our town.
It was Monday that Le and the robber shot and killed each other. When I went out on Wednesday afternoon to the corner of Westpark and Tanglewilde, the store's padlocked door bore a couple of bunches of flowers and a hand-lettered sign that said, sorry, we're closed.
The 'Wild, Wild West' Just a few steps away in the strip center, Phyllis Roberts sat outside Letso's Hair and Nails Studio, where she works. She said she popped over to the store as many as 10 times a day for sodas, chips, candy, sandwiches ... and a real nice thing was if she didn't have enough money, Le would let her pay next time.
"It was a classic neighborhood corner store," she said. "He's going to be dearly missed."
Letso's closes on Mondays. If the shootout had been another day, Roberts could have been in danger.
"I tell people we're going back to the Wild, Wild West," Roberts said.
She has a point. At another convenience store a couple of blocks away, I pulled up just as a couple of cops returned to their patrol car with sodas and snacks. One said he had more than 20 years on the force and so I asked him, based on all that experience, what he thought could be done to make convenience stores safer.
"Citizens need to arm themselves," he said. "We can't be everywhere."
Citizens need to arm themselves? City Councilman Gordon Quan said that is not the city's official Police Department policy. Guns, he said, are not recommended for use in convenience stores.
"I know my own father did not want to arm himself," Quan said.
The councilman's interest in trying to make Houston's convenience stores safer stems from the fact that he grew up and went through law school while working in the family store "on the East End."
The first 20 years his father owned it, there were no robberies, Quan said.
"Back then you knew everybody who came in," he said. "But when drugs came into the neighborhood, things changed dramatically." After the store was robbed four times in two years, the Quans sold it.
Tips to prevent robberies In 2000, following a large number of convenience-store robberies and about eight killings of owners or employees in the first five months of that year, Quan worked with the South Asian Chamber of Commerce and the police to develop a store safety kit. It includes a videotape and printed information to help businesses prevent or survive robberies.
It seems like a worthy plan, but implementation lags. Only about 100 of the kits have thus far been distributed. Meanwhile, Quan's office said 13 more deaths have occurred in convenience stores in the past two years.
Funding has been acquired to produce 2,000 kits in four languages. A spokeswoman in Quan's office said these should be ready in three months. Additional funding will be needed to complete Quan's plan to get kits to all 3,000 area convenience stores.
The kit recommends store windows should be kept clean and unblocked. (There were a great many signs on the windows of Le's store, making it difficult to see inside.) The kit also advises that store personnel should not display weapons or do anything to make a robber nervous.
That says it all.
And this will discourage robberies how?
Wrong. Store personnel should display a weapon, use it, and make the robber dead.
Yep! A few years ago my wife called the po-lice due to two teenagers knocking at the door claiming to be looking for a "lost ball".....our gate was locked, and they had to have climbed over; likely casing the house......the responding officer asked if we owned a weapon....wifey said, "Oh, no! Of course not!" (grin).....but then the cop told her to get at least one and learn how to use it.
HorseSh$t!!!!!!! Show the bastard his criminal career is finished.......Permanently!
tragedy : n Anything really, really bad that happens to people.-- The Hack's Pocket Dictionary.
No one wants to engage in shootouts either. It looks like the Quans had the luxury of getting out when they could.
And yes, they are all "brothers" doin' the deeds.
What the heck is a claymore, for those of us uninformed ??
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.