Thief's cell is ready: Police

The robber's face is clearly captured in the security images. Photo / Supplied

Police are confident they will arrest a man who casually robbed the National Bank in Manukau, even though they had not received a single phone call on the case by last night.

The undisguised robber walked calmly into the bank at the Westfield shopping centre and, using the threat of a firearm, allegedly stole a "large" sum of cash from a businessman who was depositing his week's takings on Monday.

The robbery went unnoticed by at least 13 people in the bank - witnessed only by the businessman and the teller - before the robber walked free with the cash.

Despite widespread publicity on the case, including security footage featured on television and on the front page of yesterday's Herald, no one had called police with clues to the man's identity by 6pm last night.

Detective Inspector Jim Gallagher said it was "amazing"

no one had identified the man because he appeared "extremely identifiable" in the security footage images.

"We've got an empty cell waiting for him," he said yesterday.

"But we haven't caught him yet. We're very hopeful that someone will be doing the decent thing and advising us as to the identity of that offender."

The officer in charge of the case, Detective Sergeant Faa Vaaelua of Manurewa CIB, told the Herald he was not disappointed with the lack of public response on the case because it was very early on in the inquiry.

"I think the confidence in catching him outweighs any disappointment," he said. "I'm pretty confident that he'll be held accountable. He'll be arrested."

Mr Vaaelua said he was "convinced" people would see the images and recognise the man.

Police had arrested people using much less identifiable images, he said.

"You look at that photo and you know who that is."

There was a range of reasons that people did not ring police to identify people.

Some people did not want to "nark" on criminals and others might have assumed that someone else would have already called police to report the man's identity, he said.

Other people might be waiting for a reward to be posted so they could financially gain from helping police, but Mr Vaaelua said a reward was unlikely in this case because the amount stolen was not great enough.

Anyone with information on the man's identity is asked to call (09) 261-1300.