THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 30, 1996 TAG: 9601300001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
At least a half-dozen convenience-store clerks have been murdered in Virginia in the 12 months since Del. George W. Grayson, D-Williamsburg, proposed that the General Assembly mandate rules to protect clerks in ``at-risk'' chain convenience and grocery stores from robbers, rapists and murderers. ``At-risk'' stores are those open to the public between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.
Delegate Grayson introduced his bill shortly after a teenage robber shot and killed a male clerk working alone in a James City County 7-Eleven at night. The clerk would not have been murdered if he had served after-hours customers from behind bulletproof glass through a push/pull drawer, or a security guard had been on duty with him, or two clerks had been working.
Thousands of convenience-store clerks have been crime victims over the years. Clerking in a convenience store alone at night is the most dangerous occupational activity in America. The rates of homicide among clerks are higher than those among police. The Federal Bureau of Investigation years ago added a convenience-store-robbery category to its crime-reporting system.
The Grayson bill got nowhere in the General Assembly last year. So Delegate Grayson is trying again. Success is not assured. The convenience-store lobby easily rebuffs most efforts by states to compel them to adopt crime-prevention strategies that really work. That's shameful, because the convenience-store industry knows what really works. Some convenience stores are designed to cut to virtually zero clerks' odds of being threatened, much less harmed.
Convenience stores in isolated locations especially should be built to thwart predators. Arresting, imprisoning and executing convenience-store clerks' murderers, abductors and rapists clearly doesn't diminish the criminal danger to lone clerks. Dimwitted desperados just don't get the message. Only last week, Richard Townes Jr. was executed for the murder of a convenience-store clerk in Virginia Beach in 1985.
Thus, the toll exacted by attacks on clerks mounts - all the more cruelly because unnecessarily. The victims pay. Their families pay. And the taxpayers pay. All because crimes that could be prevented aren't.
A number of ordinary men and women are scheduled to be be in Richmond to plead with a House of Delegates' General Laws subcommittee at a hearing now scheduled for 9 a.m. Tue. Feb. 6 on Delegate Grayson's House Bill 711. The bill would require all at-risk stores to adopt an array of precautions: clear windows, cash registers visible to passersby, posted notices stating that no more than $50 is in the cash register, drop safes, height markers at doors, security cameras, bright exterior lighting, two or more employees on duty between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., robbery-deterrence and safety training of employees.
Any at-risk store at which a murder, criminal sexual assault or abduction occurs - or that experiences two robberies within two years - would be required to close between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. or install a silent-alarm system monitored at a central-alarm facility or local law-enforcement agency, install bullet-resistant material or bring in a security guard.
The mournful record of convenience-store crimes in Virginia fully justifies passage of these sensible rules. Refusal to pass them would be unreasonable and unconscionable. by CNB