Police arrest teenagers for wave of crime

Palma police appear to be winning their crackdown on the juvenile crime wave which is on the verge of gripping the city. Yesterday the National Police arrested two brothers, aged 16 and 18, in connection with a spate of “ram-raiding” incidents, the last of which involved a stolen Opel Corsa car being reversed into the front of a Palma bank and the Cancer collection box being stolen. According to the police, the two teenagers have been wreaking havoc since the start of the year and they suspect the pair of being responsible for a wave of muggings and car thefts. The majority of the cars allegedly stolen by the brothers are Opel Corsas and no less than four have been used in a number of “ram-raids”, a fad which swept the United Kingdom at the end of the nineties. The two targeted old model Corsas because they had found a quick and easy way of jump-starting the vehicles. Police said yesterday that the pair both have criminal records and, between the two, have been arrested 58 times for muggings over the past two months. Of late the brothers have dedicated themselves to stealing cars, normally in the early hours of the morning, and have ram-raided a bank, a shop, a restaurant and other properties, all of which had large glass fronts. From one of the bars they ram-raided, the teenagers stole money from the one-arm-bandits and the cash till.