Banks these days don’t feel like particularly locked-down places. Retail-like open spaces, friendly niceties such as candy dishes – the atmosphere is meant to be inviting.
It wasn’t always that way. Banks were more bunker-like in decades past, experts say, with bulletproof glass between tellers and customers, as well as more barriers to the exit. Bank branches want to be inviting to customers, but they would do well to be less inviting to robbers, says Robert McCrie, professor of security management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
The emphasis on friendly open spaces is perhaps a reflection that bank robberies are a somewhat diminished threat to financial institutions. They still have a hold on public imagination: Old-time bank robbers like John Dillinger get blockbuster movies made about them, and thefts such as Massachusetts’ recent U30 robbers – who knocked over seven Boston-area banks this spring – grab headlines.
That’s even though computer-based theft and other types of fraud are far costlier than an individual who will physically walk out of a bank with maybe a few thousand dollars.
“There is something more real and fascinating about these losers who commit bank robberies than there is about somebody who does a distributed denial of service attack,” McCrie said.
No Link To Recession
Although the economy is troubled, robberies were actually down as of the first quarter of 2009, according to the FBI’s most recent data. While some argue that robberies definitely go up as the economy goes down, many experts say there’s no clear link.
“The numbers don’t necessarily support that,” said Gail Marcinkiewicz, Boston-based FBI public affairs coordinator. The first quarter of 2008 saw 98 bank robberies in Massachusetts; this year, even with higher unemployment figures, that number was 29.
Nationally, it’s the same story: 2008 saw 1,604 robberies, while this year had roughly a hundred fewer. The amount of cash stolen in robberies, burglaries and larcenies for the first quarter was $11.4 million; last year at that time, it was nearly $16 million. Most of the loot was not recovered, as criminologists say the bank robbers usually spend it quickly.
The motivations behind bank robbery are too varied and complicated to be pinned solely to economic trends, McCrie says. As Marcinkiewicz put it, “We’ve never seen any [bank robber] saying, ‘I can’t pay my bills.’”
But Bill Thompson, Ohio-based consultant and former head of security for Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati, says he’s certainly seen “a new type of robber” emerge in the past year.
“You’re getting people who never before in their life committed a crime – they lost their job, their house got foreclosed on,” he said, and cited the case of 68-year-old former bank teller Barbara Joly, who robbed several banks to support her grown son in late 2008.
Meanwhile, certain regions do appear to be getting nailed: New York City had a much-publicized 57 percent increase in robberies last year, and is now considering requiring barriers to be installed between tellers and customers.
The ABA also points to some numbers between hard times and high robbery rates. The annual number of robberies jumped up in the early 1990s and 2001, up to around roughly 8,000-9,000 robberies nationally from the usual 5,000-6,000.
Violence in these instances is rare – usually the robber makes the demand by note and the teller is instructed to comply – and the take isn’t too large. But banks know it’s in their best interest to stay vigilant and take noticeable measures to protect themselves, said Margot Mohsberg, ABA spokeswoman.
“You can’t have a bank if you don’t have employees who feel comfortable running it and customers who feel comfortable using it,” she said.
Technology’s Still Tops
But fancy devices aside, Tom Duxbury of the National Association of Bank Security, a Florida-based business that sells security products, empathizes use of some familiar gadgets, such as exploding ink packets that make the money impossible to use, tracking devices, or even just a well-placed, quality camera system.
Too many banks – both small and large – just put in a closed-circuit, analog camera at some unhelpful corner of the bank and forget about it, McCrie said.
“We do have some banks that are really behind the times in not adopting technology and not adopting procedures that would keep their employees safe.”
But more rarified technologies exist: consultants such as Chicago-based Talaris sell “cash recycler” vault machines that sit near the bank counters. Tellers can’t access the cash unless they have a valid account number to punch in, said Talaris spokesman Joe Gnorski, and that can deter the typical bank robber.
If need be – or if a bank prefers that the teller comply with the robber’s demands – a particular key sequence can tell the machine to spit out a large number of one-dollar bills. It usually takes upwards of 30 seconds to dispense $100; the robber will get nervous and leave long before the machine has time to hand out anything more than a nominal amount.
Gnorski said Talaris has been making the machines since 1985, but they spiked in popularity starting in 2000. About 30,000 such machines are in use from Talaris alone.
McCrie says game-changing technology does exist, but bankers often don’t do the simple things that could prevent the typical robbery.
“The reality is, banks are not putting the attention to physical security that they might have,” he said.
