As Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon, Al Pacino tells a newscaster, “I’m robbing a bank because they got money here. That’s why I’m robbing it.”
By that point in the movie, Wortzik has taken hostages. The bank is surrounded by police and federal agents trying to negotiate an end to what is becoming a day-long standoff. He has found that yes, banks generally have money, but sticking up a teller – especially after her drawer has been balanced for the day – is not a great way to get it.
Still, people try.
While not every robber has a back story as sensational as Wortzik’s (he needed $2,500 to finance his gay lover’s sex change operation), the experience is no less troubling for bank staff – or police in Boston, Worcester or any other city – than it was that hot day in Brooklyn.
Most recently, Worcester police said they suspect a number of robberies around the city may be the work of a serial bank robber. The armed, hooded suspect held up a People’s United Bank branch Dec. 30.
Worcester police said they believe the suspect also robbed local DCU Federal Credit Union, TD Bank and Millbury Credit Union branches in the previous two weeks.
Whether robbers are propelled to their misadventures by Wortzik-like pragmatism, desperation or something else, the holidays are usually accompanied by an increase in robberies and attempted robberies, Peter Alden, president and CEO of Bay State Savings Bank in Worcester, told Banker & Tradesman.
All a bank can do is be prepared.
Sensitive Subject
Being prepared means “almost continuous” training, sharing information with other banks and “keeping a heightened awareness,” Alden said.
At banks he’s led previously, Alden has even been part of mock robberies, which served as training not only for bank personnel but for local police departments, too.
The money is perhaps the least important factor in any bank robbery, Alden said.
“It’s a relatively small amount of money,” Alden said. “Drawer limits are part of this. The potential is not huge anymore.” Monetary losses from a robbery will generally be covered by insurance.
Rather, he said, “It’s all about the safety of your employees and the safety of your customers.”
The teller approached in the Worcester People’s United Bank last week couldn’t have felt safe. After asking the alleged robber to remove his hood and sunglasses, he rushed up to the counter, pulled a gun and demanded money, police said.
“Acts of violence” are only committed in about 4 percent of bank robberies, according to the FBI. Still, among those injured during robberies, bank employees are the most common.
Aware of just how badly things could go during a robbery, several bank and credit union executives refused to comment in detail for this story.
For example, executives at Cambridge Savings Bank would “rather not tip their hand at all on what type [or] how much of security measures they have in place,” said Spokesman Tom Halkin.
DCU, one of the institutions hit during the recent Worcester spree, decided to pass on commenting, “upon reflecting upon the sensitivity of the subject,” according to Spokesman John Lahair.
‘Hand It Over’
Massachusetts averages between 200 and 300 bank robberies each year, according to the FBI. And the Northeast is not a particular hot spot for bank robberies. There were 17 robberies in Massachusetts during the second quarter of last year, the latest period for which data is available, second only to Connecticut, where there were 18.
The FBI hasn’t yet released statistics on the second half of 2011, but Special Agent Greg Comcowich, a spokesman in the bureau’s Boston office, said, “as of the second week of December, they’re down for Massachusetts, below last year and below the last couple of years.”
In the first half of 2011, there were 2,088 bank robberies, 24 burglaries and three larcenies nationwide, according to FBI statistics. Those incidents took $15.3 million in cash, checks, securities and other property from banks. Of that, about $3.5 million has been recovered.
Nationwide in 2010, there were 5,546 bank robberies, 74 burglaries and eight larcenies that scored a total of $43 million in cash, checks, securities and other property, according to the FBI. About $8.2 million of that was eventually recovered.
Those totals represent a decrease from 2009, when the FBI reported 5,943 robberies, 100 burglaries and 19 larcenies that resulted in the loss of nearly $46 million in cash, checks, securities and other property. About $8 million was recovered.
Comcowich agreed that the relatively little money immediately at stake and banks’ ability to recover losses through insurance means safety should be the utmost concern.
“Absolutely, hand it over,” he offered to those tellers that find themselves in the uncomfortable and dangerous position of being confronted by a robber.
