...not with firearms, but still shows good guys taking out BGs with whatever skills they have.
http://www.woodtv.com/Global/story.asp?s=4390950
Why store cashiers and managers defend the register
By Patrick Center
(Grand Rapids, January 20, 2006, 7:53 p.m.) The surveillance video at a Grand Rapids grocery store, La Mexicana, shows a man standing behind a cashier demanding cash. With coins and bills dropping to the floor, this is a hold-up in the making.
When store owner, Miguel Perez, witnessed it live from one of his security monitors, he took matters into his own hands, leveling the would-be bandit with a carpenters' level.
"I just hit him in the back of the neck and he just fall down until the police arrived," explained Perez.
The suspect, Gerald Lamb, who was knocked unconscious, was charged Friday with felony charges.
But why would the store owner take the law into his own hands?
"These things can turn ugly in a hurry," said Terry Fisk, Director of Grand Valley State University's School of Criminal Justice.
Fisk warns most assailants carry weapons. "If they're angry enough, desperate enough, high enough, they're going to respond in kind to any kind of challenge to what they came in there to do."
Fisk tells 24 Hour News 8 most clerks know the odds. Yet, last weekend at the Party Line store on Plainfield Road, after being robbed twice in one week, the owner whacked a convenience store bandit silly with a heavy-duty shovel.
"We don't advocate that people take on people that are robbing their store. It's much safer for them to give the money up," advises Lieutenant Matt Janiskee of the Grand Rapids Police Department.
While that may be true, within the last month store clerks nationwide have been caught on tape defending their turf.
A Bethlehem, Pennsylvania gas station clerk defended his register by taking swings at a knife-wielding thief using a baseball bat.
A Modesto, California Quick Stop manager was also held-up at knifepoint. The manager, a black belt in six martial arts, went into attack stance, gave chase to the would-be robber, and with a few high kicks, the assailant tumbled out into the parking lot.
Why are these clerks taking the law into their own hands?
"There's a degree of frustration," explained Fisk. He told us in just about every one of these cases the clerks have been held-up multiple times. "I think it's just often a sense of enough-is-enough of this and I'm going to do something."
However, sometimes doing something that seems so right can turn out to be so wrong.
Fisk tells us there are a number of cases where assailants have sued store owners after being attacked.
