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minimarket was held up by a pistol-packing gang of thieves early Monday in the latest in a series of armed robberies in South Tangerang City, Banten.

One criminologist, Bambang Widodo Umar, attributed the recently founded city’s soaring crime rate to weakening social bonds and poor crime prevention programs.

“With South Tangerang serving as a buffer zone for Jakarta, many of its residents have become daily commuters, working long hours in offices in the capital city. This has weakened social ties in the area. Many residents in the area feel distant from one another,” Bambang told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

The situation was made worse by the quality of local law enforcement, which was less than that in Jakarta, he said.

“Jakarta has better police patrols and many residential areas and stores in the city can afford to employ security guards. This is not the case in the areas surrounding the capital.”

Both factors resulted in criminals perceiving South Tangerang City as an area as “safer than Jakarta to operate”.

In the most recent high-profile crime, Ciputat precinct chief Comr. Alif said that six men, one of whom brandished a pistol, robbed an Indomaret minimarket on Jl. R.E. Martadinata in Cipayung subdistrict at 4:10 a.m. on Monday.

The robbers ransacked the store, escaping with Rp 2 million (US$218) in cash, two PC monitors, the digital-video recording unit of the store’s CCTV system, eight boxes of milk and several cartons of cigarettes.

It was not the first minimarket robbery in Ciputat: Two Alfamart outlets in the district were robbed on consecutive days in December, with the perpetrators absconding with a total of Rp 22 million in cash, while an Alfamart outlet in nearby Pondok Aren was robbed of Rp 14 million in cash on Jan. 10.

Neither have robbers confined themselves to minimarkets: four jewelry stores in Ciputat market were robbed on Feb. 24, with the stolen jewelry allegedly fenced for Rp 1.8 billion, according to the police.

The crime wave has extended to residential areas. Senior TV reporter Djuli Elfano was killed in front of his house in Ciputat on the morning of March 17 as he resisted two unidentified men who were stealing his motorbike.

Six days later, the police stormed a Pondok Aren house used as a hideout by a gang of alleged armed robbers who assaulted two Bekasi Police officers earlier in the week.

Tangerang Police chief Sr. Comr. Bambang Priyo Andogo said that South Tangerang city had the third-highest crime rate of all the jurisdictions under the Jakarta Police in 2011, while South Tangerang City was the most crime-prone area of Tangerang regency.

The most frequently reported offense in the regency was automobile theft, centered in Pondok Aren and Serpong districts, he said.

South Tangerang City comes under the jurisdiction of different police forces: Ciputat, East Ciputat and Pamulang are under the South Jakarta Police, while Pondok Aren, Serpong, North Serpong and Setu districts are under the Tangerang Regency Police.

This will soon change as the South Tangerang City administration is planing to establish an autonomous police department, earmarking two hectares in Setu for the construction of a police headquarters.

The Tangerang Police received 4,800 criminal complaints last year, more than 20 percent of the 21,830 crimes reported throughout Greater Jakarta, which includes the regency, in the same period.

Only 2,204 of the criminal complaints in 2011 were solved, giving the regency police a clearance rate of 45.91 percent, lower than the 52.94 percent clearance rate recorded by police in Greater Jakarta.