Stick ‘Em Up Season : Crime: Colorfully named bank robbers already have set the county holdup record and December is usually the busiest month.

They’re out there, you can bank on that.

The Beer Belly Bandit. The Gentleman Robber. The Masked Man. The Grandma Robber. The Nike Bandit. The Fanny Pack Bandit. The Mute. And the Rockin’ Robber.

They pass demand notes and sometimes wear funny-looking masks. They often have drug problems. And high-living lifestyles that keep them coming back to the till for your hard-earned and, supposedly, safely secured savings.

They rob banks. And they’ve made 1990 the worst year for bank holdups in San Diego County history.

To date, they’ve struck 287 times, everywhere from Oceanside to San Ysidro. Already, that’s 37 more times than in all of 1988, the next-highest year for bank robberies countywide, authorities say.

Those numbers don’t sit well with Jack Kelly, special agent in charge of bank robbery investigations for the San Diego office of the FBI. He’s the guy who’s nicknamed the four dozen serial bank robbers responsible for most of the holdups in the area.

These days, there are so many of these characters at work in San Diego County--pulling anywhere from a handful to two-dozen robberies apiece--that investigators need a way to keep them all straight, he says.

December, the Big Daddy of them all when it comes to bank-robbery months, is just around the corner.

“The season is upon us,” Kelly said. “Decembers are one of the biggest months. In 1988, we had 40 bank robberies in December alone. That’s more than one holdup a day.”

Last year, Southern California accounted for 30% of the 7,000 bank robberies that occurred nationwide. In recent years, the Los Angeles area has earned the dubious distinction as the world’s bank robbery capital, according to bank and law enforcement officials.

Just down the road, however, San Diego County has been having its own headaches with the sometimes colorful heists.

Authorities attribute the rising number of robberies to several factors, including the growing number of bank branch offices and a freeway culture that allows for swift, anonymous getaways.

“The growth of the San Diego area has much to do with it,” Kelly said. “There’s just more people out there. And more ex-holdup artists are getting out of prison. Many go back to robbing banks.”

The last few months have seen a rash of bank robberies across suburban North County, a fact investigators are hard-pressed to explain.

“It could be a trickle-down factor from the Los Angeles area--Orange and Riverside counties,” said Kelly, 47, who has investigated bank holdups for seven years. “Some of these guys rob banks right in their own neighborhoods. Others get on the freeway to do it.”

Law enforcement officials aren’t the only ones entering December with a sense of foreboding. So are bankers.

“The holiday season is just a tough time for us,” said Peter Davis, chief executive officer of Commerce Bank in San Diego. “Last year, it got so bad in the downtown area that we had to bring in an armed guard just for a show of support for the staff.

“We had three robberies in 45 days. And they were just getting scared, jumpy. That’s no way to work.”

Davis has a few theories about the rise of area bank holdups.

“There’s just a lot of small branch offices, opened by banks who are trying to appeal to people by opening offices in their neighborhoods,” he said.

“In trying to appear friendly, these bank offices also appear less secure,” Davis said. “There’s no double bolt at the door. The tellers aren’t encased in plexiglass. Subsequently, the robbers feel like they can just get in and out.”

Kathleen Shilkret, a spokesman for Wells Fargo Bank in Los Angeles, said that, while the priorities of many banks have remained the same--protecting their employees and customers--their approach to security has changed.

These days, most banks--especially those in the suburbs--forgo the imposing presence of armed guards in favor of bulletproof plexiglass booths known as bandit barriers.

“In most banks, robberies are not an everyday occurrence,” she said. “With armed guards, there’s always the potential of gunplay inside the bank, which most of us would like to avoid.”

Instead, banks have opted for sophisticated camera equipment and devices such as dye packs--bundles of money designed to explode after the robber leaves the bank, coating him and the cash with a telltale layer of ink.

The newest technique involves an electronic transmitter--concealed in the loot handed over to a robber--which, once activated, leads investigators to the device, the cash and the robber.

As a result, authorities say, an estimated 85% of bank robbers are eventually caught. So far this year, agents have arrested 44 suspects who are thought to be responsible for 191 county holdups.

This week, authorities collared a suspect they believe is the Stay Calm Bandit, who robbed nine banks in North County. In each case, the bandit passed a robbery note to tellers as he told them to remain calm.

Michael Steven Briley, 41, was arrested Sunday at the El Cajon home of a friend. He has been charged with one count of robbery, Kelly said.

That may leave 96 of the county’s 287 robberies unsolved and a suspected 15 or so holdup artists still at large, Kelly said.

Meanwhile, the number of holdups continues to rise.

This month, the topic of robberies became the subject at a regular meeting of the California Bankers Assn. In April, the organization purchased a full-page ad in The Times, running mug shots of bank robbers still at large.

The group is considering a similar campaign for after the holidays, said Larry Kurmel, executive director of the San Francisco-based group.

“We’re hoping that, by getting their faces out in public, we’ll start getting some tips as to their whereabouts,” he said. “Last time we ran 16 pictures, resulting in seven arrests and information about two others.”

Both Kurmel and investigators like Jack Kelly have spent a lot of time pondering the question: Why do people rob banks?

After all, there would seem to be easier, less risky criminal endeavors than such a visible crime that carries stiff federal penalties. The average take of a holdup is about $1,200, authorities say.

“The guy who would attempt a crime like this isn’t exactly in the Einstein category,” Kurmel said. “Let’s face it, they’re dumb. The smarter crooks are into more sophisticated crimes, like securities fraud.”

FBI Agent Kelly said recent films have portrayed bank robbers as likable characters who are too-often successful. One movie, “Quick Change,” stars Bill Murray as a clown-attired robber who strikes a New York bank with two accomplices and then tries to flee Manhattan.

“Robbing the bank,” the film’s advertising proclaimed, “was the easy part.”

Kelly prefers the 1975 film “Dog Day Afternoon,” which relates the true story of an inept pair of crooks caught in the middle of a bank heist and forced to deal with authorities who have surrounded them.

“To this day, the most famous line about bank robbery came from a bank robber,” Kelly said. “When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton replied, ‘Because that’s where the money is.’

“And that’s the rationale that many bank robbers use today. The drug trade is one big reason this crime continues to be a problem. It’s an act of desperation. Addicts need money for drugs. And, unfortunately for the banks, they know where the money is.”

In San Diego County, more than 85% of bank holdups are committed by serial robbers--men and women who strike again and again. And 90% of the crimes are drug related, Kelly said.

Bank robbery folklore includes numerous high-profile cases in which armed thieves forced employees and customers to lie on the floor or kidnaped a bank president, forcing him to let them inside the vault before bank hours.

But these days, authorities say, most of the crimes are committed by single operators, some of whom wait patiently in line before they slip a demand note to the teller. Often, the teller and the robber are the only ones who know the holdup is taking place.

While techniques are often similar, authorities say, the style and character of most local bank robbers past and present couldn’t be more different.

The Beer Belly Bandit, for example, is a man in his 40s, known for his receding hairline and his estimated 230- to 270-pound frame. He’s responsible for four robberies in Poway, Vista and Lawrence Welk Village.

“He’s a big slug,” Kelly said. “People remember him for his belly.”

There’s also the small matter of the black semiautomatic handgun he wields that gets their attention.

Then there’s the Masked Man, who wore a clear Halloween-style mask to conceal his identity during four robberies in San Diego, Pacific Beach and Rancho Bernardo.

He’s the Jason of bank robbers, a white male in his mid-30s who has developed the brazen habit of pushing other customers aside on his way to the teller cages--where he points a gun at bank employees and demands cash.

There are also note-passers like the Nike Bandit. He’s a black male in his mid-20s, usually dressed in a baseball cap and denim pants and jacket, who authorities say has been responsible for half a dozen robberies countywide, the most recent in Imperial Beach. In each case, the Nike bandit handed the teller a demand note, along with a line made famous by the Nike sports apparel manufacturer: “Just do it.”

There’s also the Fanny Pack Bandit, suspected of five downtown area robberies, who is known for the waist pack in which he stores his loot as he walks from the bank; the Grandma Robber, a woman in her 70s who has knocked off one downtown bank, and the Mute, the suspected culprit in three East San Diego holdups, who never says a word as he slips the teller a note.

And then there’s the Rockin’ Robber. Suspected of two robberies in the Clairemont and University Towne Centre areas, he wears a scraggly heavy-metal-type wig and usually shoots a few bullets into the ceiling to get his point across.

“We were going to call him the Tina Turner Bandit, but we thought we might get complaints from the real Tina Turner,” Kelly said. “We try not to use names of famous people who are still alive.

“But there’s got to be a way to keep track of 300 robberies committed by 50 different people, many of whom look alike.”

In the past, FBI agents in San Diego County have grappled with the likes of Grizzly Adams, a bank robber who resembled the burly television character; the Ben Hogan Bandit, who wore a snap-on cap of the kind made famous by the golfer; the Kangaroo Bandit, who stored his loot in a strange-looking stomach pouch, and the Ninja Brothers, a duo who dressed in black hoods and other garb.

The Tellers’ School Bandit always warned tellers not to include any dye packs with his loot. “I know the game,” he would often say. “I’ve been to tellers’ school.”

Agents are still on the lookout for at least two bandits who have escaped from custody after their arrest.

One is the Gentleman Bandit, a handsome man in a neatly pressed sport coat, known for his polite manner and the way he said, “Excuse me, ma’am, but this is a robbery.”

Patrick Hal Brame was arrested in San Diego in 1988 and later transported to Florida to face bank robbery charges there when he escaped federal custody, Kelly said.

The other is a member of the Stop Watch Gang, known in San Diego County and throughout several Western states for their use of a watch to gauge the time they spent inside each bank.

Patrick Mitchell was recently placed on the FBI’s national “10 Most Wanted” list. He and his gang are the suspects in three robberies in San Diego in the early 1980s, including a Pacific Beach heist in which they took more than $300,000 from a Bank of America branch, Kelly said.

Mitchell was arrested in Arizona several years ago and also escaped federal custody in Florida while facing additional charges there.

But bank robbers aren’t always so cagey. At times, investigators say, they provide antics rivaling the Keystone Cops.

Kelly recalled an incident earlier this year in which a group of teens became suspicious of a man inside a Kearny Mesa bank and hid his bicycle.

“When the robber came out, he was surprised that his getaway car, so to speak, was gone,” Kelly said. “He ran away but was cornered at a warehouse a short distance away. The kids got a reward for their actions.”

Bank Manager Michael Becker remembers another unlucky robber.

Becker, who manages the Wells Fargo branch at 33rd Street and El Cajon Boulevard, recalls the day last March when he felt as though he had had it up to here with bank robberies.

When he saw a secret security light flash, Becker immediately knew what was taking place: the branch’s third robbery in as many weeks, and the second in two days.

His staff was already on edge. And a few employees had recently quit in fear of the robberies. So when Becker saw a suspicious character making his way for the door, the 32-year-old manager and a security guard grabbed the guy.

They struggled. Becker wedged his foot onto the robber’s ankle to hold his leg down. That’s when the robber’s leg came off.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I looked down and saw all the money on the floor, lying next to the guy’s prosthesis.”