Robbing cash delivery vans is widely seen as “ordinary, decent crime”, the 21st-century equivalent of sticking up a stagecoach.

The picture of Mark Nunes’s last raid, released after The Times won a court order over objections by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, should change that view.

The guard, Michael Player, was frozen to the spot, terrified, staring down the barrel of Nunes’s gun. He is now back at work but his wife still breaks down in tears at the thought of how close she came to losing him.

The number of raids on security vans has risen from 499 in 1998 to 1,059 last year. “We have had to get people away from this idea that it’s a victimless crime,” said David Dickinson, chief executive of the British Security Industry Association. “You have to meet the guy who’s been shot in the leg, the guard who’s been pistol-whipped, the families whose homes have been burgled for their car keys.”

Nunes’s team committed dozens of car-key burglaries across South London to steal the getaway cars for their raids. Other crimes associated with what the police term “cash-in-transit” robberies range from dangerous driving to murder and drug-dealing.

The proceeds from robberies (which totalled more than £18 million last year) are often used to finance a gang’s entry into the Class A drug trade.

Cash robbery is also used by lower-level street gangs as an initiation rite for younger members. In London police recently broke up two gangs that had Fagin figures who selected targets and sent schoolboys to carry out the robberies.

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