The Element of Surprise

Bandits of various stripes were playing it sneaky this week. After a year of successfully hitting nothing but banks, they turned their attentions elsewhere in the search for a quick and easy score, leaving dozens of victims thinking, "Well, that was unexpected."

Apparently using The Killing as a model, two armed crooks hit a daycare center in Brownsville back on Jan. 16, getting away with more than $13,000. The two men, apparently aware that the tuition money for People's Day Care was to be deposited in the bank later that day, slammed their way into the office at 10 a.m., pulled their guns, pushed a few women around, grabbed the money and split, all while the kids were playing just upstairs.

On Monday, Jan. 26, another armed bandit robbed a laundromat in Flatbush, netting a little over $400. We've never really understood the "laundry heist" ourselves. That $400 is a decent haul, sure, but it's all in quarters. Quarters are heavy. Wouldn't that slow down your getaway considerably?

Three men entered a one-room whorehouse in the Bronx around noon on Monday, drew guns and robbed all the johns who were there. Not getting much, they waited for other customers to show up and robbed them, too. Things were going just fine (they had about a dozen or so customers held at gunpoint) until the bordello's bouncer showed up for work. He was big, but no match for three creeps with guns. He was shot in the face and died later at the hospital. As of Friday, police had one man in custody and were searching for the other two.

As far as delightful nastiness is concerned, nothing tops the two guys in Franklin Square, Long Island, who certainly made the most of their snow day last week. While driving around, they spotted two boys with shovels walking down the street. They stopped the car, and one of the men asked the boys if they had any weed. Then he asked them for their home phone numbers. The pair drove away after that, but returned a few minutes later and stopped the boys again. This time, pretending to have a gun, they demanded that the boys turn over the $28 they'd just earned shoveling snow. Then the men drove away, hooting and cackling themselves silly.

That one had us laughing, but our favorite heist of the week has got to be the guy who held up the Comfort Inn in Queens. A little after 11:30 on Sunday night, a man approached the motel's front desk and demanded not only all the cash on hand, but all the motel's telephones. It's unclear whether the man wanted the wall units as well as the cell phones. Whatever the case, the clerk did what he could to oblige, handing over $400 and gathering together a pile of phones.

In the end, the Dadaist bandit took all the money but only one of the phones. Nobody's quite sure what that was all about.