By Prensa Latina,
Panama : The 1989 US military occupation of Panama is blamed for the emergence of a new form of violence in Panama: bank robbery.
El Siglo daily says that after the US invasion in 1989, Panama was devastated, giving birth to today”s criminal monsters who are improving their tactics.
The toppling of the military regime and low morale of the newly born National Police that replaced the Defense Forces, along the huge arsenal in the hands of the criminals, encouraged bank robbery.
A private investigator and ex member of the National Investigations Department reminds that the police had a low morale and missing laws to enforce created a legal gap.
In the early 1990, some ex militaries ganged up with other felons and tried luck with bank robbery, taking advantage of law enforcement weakness at the time.
By then, banks lacked sophisticated security devices but today they have surveillance cameras, armored doors or vaults with time clocks, so a bank hit was a tender, juicy stake.
The paper says there have been several bank robberies this year, the later an office of Banco Nacional de Panama, from where the felons took $145,000.