Device to Track Bank Robbers Challenged : Crime: Gadget hidden in loot given bandit sends out electronic signals that can lead officers to the suspect.

Police departments in Orange County and other major metropolitan areas have begun using a sophisticated electronic system to track suspected bank robbers and other felony suspects as they try to make their escape.

Since the system was installed in the county last fall, the FBI and local authorities have used it to apprehend at least five suspected bank robbers, including the so-called “Tijuana bandit” who is alleged to have robbed seven local banks. It was also used to help arrest a team of three suspected jewel thieves.

The system, now in use in several large cities in the West, involves an electronic transmitter that is concealed in the loot handed over to a robber. Once activated, the transmitter emits electronic signals to guide police to the location of the device and the loot.

The system, latest in a series of security devices such as bank cameras and silent alarms, is made by Electronic Tracking Systems Inc. of Plano, Tex., also known as ETS, and has won praise from federal and local law enforcement officials as a highly effective new tool to catch bank robbers. But they are reluctant to discuss it publicly for fear of alerting criminals to ways of neutralizing the device.

FBI officials in Southern California, who are helping to coordinate the system, declined to make any public comment. “As a practice, we do not discuss investigative techniques or investigative procedures and that certainly would apply in this case,” said Thomas R. Parker, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI office in Los Angeles.

Questions about its reliability, however, have been raised by the federal public defender’s office in Santa Ana, which is handling four recent bank robbery cases that involve its use.

H. Dean Steward, who heads the defender’s office in Santa Ana, said that in an era of signal-emitting devices such as cellular phones, electronic garage-door openers and mobile fax machines, he fears that the tracking device could pick up the wrong signal and involve an innocent person. “You could be talking on your cellular telephone and be arrested,” he suggested.

If the system proves to be unreliable, a constitutional issue could be raised as to the right of police to stop someone on the basis of a radio signal, it is felt. “Virtually anyone would be subject to search and seizure,” Steward said.

But a Florida security expert said the system works well. “It is very reliable. I would say 90% reliability,” said John Demeter, president of Spy Shops International Inc. in Miami.

ETS officials declined comment on the system and they have urged local officials to do likewise. However, ETS’ parent company, ProNet Inc. of Richardson, Tex., touts the system’s accomplishments and potential uses in its press releases and reports to stockholders.

“Applications for ETS exist across a broad spectrum of high-risk robbery targets, such as retailers, auto dealers, banks and museums,” ProNet’s 1989 annual report says. “Experience where ETS is in use shows a dramatic reduction in robberies. Loot recovery, swift ‘red-handed’ capture and easier convictions are lowering taxpayer costs to other critical areas of public safety.”

The public defender’s office began its challenge of the device at a court hearing Monday in Santa Ana. In a case involving an accused bank robber, Deputy Federal Public Defender Joan Freeman asked U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts to order the government to provide details of how the system works, its use and its reliability.

Wants Information

“Our biggest concern is that we don’t know anything about it,” Freeman told the judge in a brief hearing. “Until we have information about the device, we can’t answer the question of reliability.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Edward R. McGah Jr., however, argued that the defense had showed no reason why the tracking device should be challenged and suggested that use of such equipment has been found acceptable in past court cases.

Letts turned down Freeman’s request, saying she had not shown that the reliability of the device was relevant to the case against her client, Glenn Alexander Montgomery of Chino Hills. The issue of the tracking device will be raised again next week, Freeman said, as part of a hearing on her motion to suppress all evidence seized after the tracking device led police to the suspect.

Montgomery has pleaded innocent to charges that on Dec. 22 he robbed a Bank of America branch in Fullerton of $3,864. His trial is set for March 13. Court documents in the case outline how the device was used in three cities by police helicopter and patrol units to track the suspect across North Orange County for 40 minutes.

The officers in both the helicopter and the patrol car lost the signal at times during a 40-minute search, documents said. But when the Fullerton officer reached an intersection in the adjoining city of Brea, he said the signal was so strong that he surmised it was coming from a vehicle close ahead, the documents said. After passing several vehicles, the officer said he picked up a very strong reading from a vehicle in front of him and believed that was the getaway vehicle.

The officer pulled in front of and ultimately blocked the vehicle. After looking at the driver, the police said, the officer believed that he matched the description of the suspect. He said he pointed a gun toward the vehicle and awaited backup units. In a search of Montgomery’s car, officers recovered a shaving kit filled with money and what was described as a grenade beneath the passenger seat.

In ProNet’s annual report, the company explains the system this way: “The ETS system consists of transmitter ‘tags’ small enough to go unnoticed in almost any valuable item, a remote tracking system linked directly to local police and mobile trackers that pick up tag signals.

“The instant a robbery occurs, the tag transmits its general location on the police dispatcher’s computer map and to remote trackers in patrol cars or carried by foot patrolmen. ETS is good news for the community . . . bad news for felons!”

Federal Public Defender Steward said that his office has handled three other bank robbery cases in which the electronic tracking system was used to trail suspects. The robberies took places in Irvine, Anaheim and Huntington Beach in December.

Steward added that police officials have been so secretive about the tracking system that in one city, they said in a police report that a “confidential informant” led them to a suspect. An FBI affidavit, however, revealed that the “informant” was, in fact, the tracking system, Steward said.

However, federal public defenders say they believe that public knowledge about the system might deter robberies. “If everyone knows it is in the bank, they will be less likely to rob it,” Steward added.

The system was first installed in San Francisco in 1981. Since then, bank robberies have declined in the Bay Area city by nearly 80%, according to ProNet’s annual report. The company said its systems were being used in eight cities nationwide but did not say which ones. Law enforcement and banking officials, however, confirmed that there are electronic tracking systems in Dallas, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Reno and Sacramento.

On Oct. 20, the company also announced its new Orange County system in a press release. “The ETS operations, acquired in July, 1988, continue to expand with the opening of the Long Beach and Orange County systems in the third quarter of 1989.”

A banking-security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the tracking systems are being used as an alternative to exploding dye packs--devices disguised as a stack of bills that are designed to explode and coat a suspect and his loot with brightly colored, hard-to-remove dye a few minutes after leaving a bank.

“It’s too new in Southern California to evaluate yet,” Barry Himmel, a member of the California Banking Assn.’s security committee, said of the tracking systems.

One drawback of the system is that it is has to be in place in every bank and in many police cars in order to be effective, said Philip G. Sprick, a New Orleans banker who is on the security committee of the American Bankers Assn. With dozens of bank branches and hundreds of teller windows in large cities, that can be very costly, Sprick noted.