Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Securitas depot robbery/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Hog Farm via FACBot (talk) 18 October 2022 [1].

Securitas depot robbery edit

Nominator(s): Mujinga (talk) 10:08, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

During the COVID lockdown, I pursued an interest in the history of heists which resulted in a featured list amongst other things. A loose end was always the page for the Securitas depot robbery since I wanted to improve this account of one of the world's largest cash robberies: of the almost £53 million stolen banknotes, around £32 million has never been recovered. The history of the gang which did the heist is unique, taking in crashed sports cars, mixed martial arts and various locations in Kent, UK. I took it to Good article in June 2022 and I then put it to peer review where unfortunately it did not receive comments. This is my second FA nomination (after Olive Morris) and I hope the discussion will be as fruitful as first time round. Thanks for all constructive comments. Mujinga (talk) 10:08, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Images are appropriately licensed. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:59, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that Nikkimaria! Mujinga (talk) 13:06, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support. It is well-written, seems comprehensive and well sourced. John (talk) 14:49, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Harry edit

Your interest in heists overlaps with my interest in policing and police use of firearms!

Personally, I dislike long lists of locations in prose like "Tonbridge, Kent, England" and I don't think the county is especially helpful to readers unfamiliar with English geography. I would go with "Tonbridge, Kent, in south-eastern England" but that's mostly personal preference.
I feel we could do with the year in the opening sentence just for context. The reader has to read a little bit before they find out when the event occurred.
"turned queen's evidence" strikes me as informal and not necessarily clear to an international audience; "testified" or "gave evidence" might be better.
who he realised were criminals impersonating police officers I believe that should be whom though I won't press the point but ... it took him that long? The timeline here could do with some copy editing. I'd suggest either spelling out at the beginning that the unmarked police car was the robbers and omitting the "realisation", or omitting the description of "hostage-taking car".
meticulously planned by organised crime → by *an* organised crime *group*?

I made a few tweaks as I went through but it looks in good shape. Can't see anything that would rule out promotion. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:08, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Tonbridge, Kent, England" does seem unnecessary with UK in the same sentence, so removed England
Moved up 2006 as suggested.
In the lead, agreed it isn't very clear so changed
Yes I see what you mean, I've rephrased
Organised crime reads ok to me, or is it an americanism?
Thanks for the tweaks, I've re-added the inside job link in the text as that seems important. For an international audience I do think some of the legal terms you de-linked should be linked, such as conspiracy, handling stolen goods, life sentences and acquitted (plus HM Prison Belmarsh as well actually). But happy to see what other editors think on that.
Much obliged for the comments! Mujinga (talk) 11:39, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would say those terms are mostly self-explanatory and, although the terminology varies by jurisdiction, the concepts will be familiar to most people. And Belmarsh was linked twice. But none of those are hills I'm willing to die on and if that's the worst I can say about an FA candidate, it must be about there. Happy to support. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:53, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh I didn't realise Belmarsh was a duplink, that makes sense then - switched to first mention. Cheers for the support! As an aside, I managed to obtain a copy of Ripe for the Picking: The Inside Story of the Northern Bank Robbery which (as we discussed at the GA review) will help beef up that article. Mujinga (talk) 13:14, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Glad you haven't lost interest in that one; I remember the GA review. I've often thought about expanding an attempted heist, the Millennium Dome raid, to GA/FA level. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:23, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yes you should! The article could definitely do with some attention. Mujinga (talk) 20:15, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ian edit

I know nothing of this incident but the nom seems to be languishing a bit and after all who doesn't like a good heist story, so recusing coord duties to review...

Copyedited per my usual practice but let me know if you feel I've misunderstood something. Queries:
- Dixon ... realised the two men were criminals impersonating police officers: Perhaps I'm ignorant but do we know just how he determined this given they were uniformed and fooled him initially?
- The entire heist was filmed on CCTV and Kent Police called the gang member dressed as a police officer "Policeman": Sorry, this seems to pop out of nowhere... I assume this means that CCTV recorded the heist and subsequently Kent Police referred to one of the bad guys as "Policeman", but the way it is here it's almost like Kent Police were monitoring the CCTV at the very moment of the robbery and yelled out "Policeman"...!
- Other gang members ... known as "Stopwatch" ... "Shorty", "Hoodie" and "Mr Average": Same again, I think we could recast both these bits to make clear these were nicknames bestowed on the perps after the event when police had reviewed the CCTV footage.
- They asked a worker to drive the power lifter but he kept deliberately crashing it: Full marks to the worker for trying to disrupt the robbery, anything on how the perps reacted to this?
Structure seems logical and I can't complain about comprehensiveness -- seems to explain all one needs to know without going into unnecessary detail.
I'll take Nikki's image review as read, so leaning support subject to resolution of the above prose queries and a clean source review. All up, nice work.

Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 19:22, 9 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Dixon ... realised the two men were criminals impersonating police officers: The most comprehensive report is in Sounes' book. He says Dixon still thought they were police when he got into the car and they play-acted taking him to Maidstone police station, next telling him they were going to Tonbridge to explain a change in direction. The driver then told Dixon "You will have guessed we are not policemen. Don't do anything silly and you won't get hurt". So Dixon must have started to wonder what was going on and then they told him. I've tried to make it a bit clearer in the article.
The entire heist was filmed on CCTV and Kent Police called the gang member dressed as a police officer "Policeman": Yes I see what you mean! I've added a bit to show that the police were reviewing the CCTV footage and nicknamed the gang members at a later stage.
Other gang members ... known as "Stopwatch" ... "Shorty", "Hoodie" and "Mr Average": Agreed as per previous point, added something about nicknames.
They asked a worker to drive the power lifter but he kept deliberately crashing it: Yes it must have been awful for the driver. The gang members were enraged but presumably more focused on getting cash into the van than reprisals, although Dixon did get a gun pointed at his head. Again, Sounes has the best account, and I've added some more details.
- Okay, but we can't say something about the gang's rage, no threats from them? I just find it pretty amazing that this worker was so determined to make life difficult for the robbers and kept getting away with it -- I'm assuming of course they realised he was deliberately sabotaging things... Also was there any official recognition for the worker's ballsy efforts afterwards? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 17:29, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the copyedit and the comments, hopefully I have answered them fully. Mujinga (talk) 17:01, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Generally yes, thanks -- the tweaks, especially re. the CCTV/nicknames, are succinct and effective; there's just my remaining reservation and supplementary query immediately above... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 17:29, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  Yes you are right that the brutality of the gang needed to be emphasised more. I think I shied away from that to avoid being too sensationalist, hopefully now the balance is better. It's unclear to me from Sounes' account whether the worker's sabotage was seen as such by the gang or not - it must have been a chaotic situation and they were unable to drive the power lifter themselves (I added that detail in as well). I wouldn't be surprised if the worker did get an award, but there's no reference for that - all I could find was that his actions were mentioned in court. Mujinga (talk) 18:43, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  Thanks Mujinga, happy with the changes and ready to support subject to source review (which I might have a go at myself if no-one else does but let's see...) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 20:06, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  Happy to support following clean source review. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 17:26, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Source review edit

You use cite news with work= for every news cite except one: the Kent and Sussex Courier, for which you use publisher instead -- it should be consistent.
- Source removed, see below Mujinga (talk) 11:12, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't something that would prevent the source review passing, but there's no need to give retrieval dates for sources that have well-defined dates, such as newspaper issues.
- The main reason the retrieval dates are there is simply because the bot adds them, but I would say it could conceivably be useful for future researchers to see when the article was retrieved in a case where say both the newspaper's archive and archive.org are down. Perhaps that is unlikely to happen though! Mujinga (talk) 11:12, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Suggest adding the url-access-level parameter to the Kent Online and FT sources to show subscription is required.
- Done Mujinga (talk) 11:12, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
FN 25 is a dead link. Does it cite anything you cannot get from the other sources used for that sentence? -- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:55, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- I've never had access to that source it was added early on in the article's history, so I made sure everything was referenced from Sounes. Seems best just to remove it then. Mujinga (talk) 11:12, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Mike Christie thanks for picking up the source review, I hope I've answered the queries to your satisfaction. Mujinga (talk) 11:12, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Pass. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:54, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinator query edit

@WP:FAC coordinators: the article has three supports, an image review pass and a source review pass, so is it now at the point where it can be approved? Thanks Mujinga (talk) 12:57, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try to take a look once I get off work, unless one of the other coordinators beats me to it. Hog Farm _Talk 13:15, 17 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Hog Farm _Talk 00:40, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.