City's robberies pass 1,000 for first time

RALEIGH -- Steven Peter Sylvester, the baby-faced teen charged with 11 counts of armed robbery, is lucky.

He could be dead.

Police think that one of the places Sylvester, 18, and another teen chose to rob during a two-month crime spree between Oct. 11 and Dec. 14 was Uncle Bill's Mini Mart on New Hope Road. But when two young men entered Uncle Bill's and pointed a rifle at owner Sam Ikhreishi, he pulled a pistol from under his counter and fired. The robbers dropped their weapon and fled.

For the first time in its history, the city crossed the 1,000 mark, with 1,022 robberies through Dec. 14. That's nearly a 25 percent increase from the previous year's total of 822 armed robberies.

The city's robbery surge mirrors an increase in the crime across the country, experts say. Robberies increased by over 12 percent nationwide over a 24-month period that began Jan. 1, 2005, according to a report by the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington, D.C.

Here in the Triangle, Durham police reported 835 robberies through the end of November. There were 713 reported during the same period in 2007.

Robberies increased 17 percent in the Bull City from January through November 2007 compared to the same period this past year, according to Kammie Michael, a Durham police spokeswoman.

Police say the 2008 robbery rate in North Carolina's capital city could have been even worse, were it not for a robbery suppression initiative the department started at the end of 2007. The initiative, police say, focuses on prevention, aggressive enforcement and education. It also stresses the importance of patrol officers doing random checks of vulnerable businesses.

Police think the initiative has been productive. As of Dec. 14, investigators had arrested 435 people on robbery charges. During the same period the previous year, 328 people were charged with the offense.

By late spring of 2008, police reported a 50 percent increase in robberies compared with the same time period in 2007. Moreover, by the first two months of 2008, convenience store robberies increased by more than 200 percent compared to the same time period in 2007.

'Need for money'

Tough economic times are certainly a factor, Raleigh Police Chief Harry Dolan said.

But Dolan also points to the great number of young men with little education from impoverished communities. They are at the forefront of the robberies and homicides that have engulfed parts of the city, he said, particularly Southeast Raleigh.

"With this economy, you can't overlook the reason why a lot of the robberies take place is the need for money," Dolan said. "But the biggest factor are individuals living in poverty. They have dropped out of school, there's no mentor, no family at home, but someone is always at home at the gang."

Gangs are growing more organized in Raleigh, and that leads to increased violence, said RPD Lt. Andy Nichol.

Police are seeing gang members as young as 16, whose first criminal offense is armed robbery, he said. The youngsters are steered toward the crime by older gang members.

"They tell them, 'You won't get a long sentence because it's your first offense, or you'll get probation," Nichol said.

An estimated 58 percent of those charged with robbery in 2008 used some type of weapon, typically a firearm. About 38 percent of those armed robberies were committed by youngsters between the ages of 16 and 20. Thirteen of the year's robberies ended in homicides.

So the two young men who tried to hold up Uncle Bill's were very lucky.

Sellam El-Gani, a cashier working at the store that evening, said there was a "50-50 chance" that someone -- the store owner or one of the robbers -- could have been killed.

"You might live, you might survive," El-Gani said.