REGIONAL REPORT : Soaring Bank Holdup Rate May Set Record

Bank robberies soared in Southern California in 1990, and with 58 robberies committed so far this year, area law enforcement officials predict that a record year may be in store for the region that has been dubbed the bank robbery capital of the world.

After a brief drop in the mid-1980s, bank robberies are making a dramatic, expensive and sometimes violent comeback throughout the Southland, where each year up to 25% of the nation’s bank robberies occur, authorities say.

Bank robbers struck 1,667 times in 1990 throughout the seven-county area monitored by the Los Angeles office of the FBI. That figure ranks second only to the 1983 high of 1,854 holdups in the area, which extends from San Luis Obispo County to Orange County.

San Diego and Imperial counties, which are counted together, already have beaten their previous record with 322 bank robberies in 1990.

“Think about it--one out of every four bank holdups that occur across the nation each year takes place right here in our own back yard,” said Ed Pistey, vice president of security for First Interstate Bank and chairman of the security committee for the San Francisco-based California Bankers Assn.

“If we had that large of a percentage of the other crimes, this place wouldn’t be called Southern California anymore. They’d call it hell.”

And the crime has come with increasing bloodshed. In 1990, out of 12 deaths related to bank robberies nationwide, half were local robbery suspects who died during battles with authorities.

That’s the record number of bank robbery suspects to die locally in one year. Three Southland bank robbery suspects were killed in 1988 and another five were killed in 1989, authorities say.

So exasperated are banking officials that the California Bankers Assn. ran a full-page newspaper ad last week detailing the exploits of their 15 worst offenders, beseeching the public for help in putting them behind bars.

The bank robbery forecast for the coming decade looks even bleaker. For each bank robber who goes to prison, investigators say, at least one or two upstarts--including repeat offenders fresh from prison and others on probation or parole for other crimes--are there to take his place.

As a result, after a drop in 1984 and 1985, Southland bank holdups have increased steadily, leading authorities to believe that a new Los Angeles-area record is in the future.

“The jails and prisons are so overcrowded that a lot of people are back on the street before their time,” said Bill Rehder, bank robbery investigation coordinator for the Los Angeles office of the FBI. “Sometimes they start robbing banks the day they get out. Because this is a career offender offense, I gave up years ago on the concept of rehabilitation.”

Law enforcement officials also cite the Southland’s growing population, quick-access freeway system and the wealth of suburban bank branches as keys to the bank robbery trend. Drugs are another problem. More than 85% of local bank robbers have a drug habit fueling their crime, officials say.

The rise in increasingly violent bank holdups has cost more than money.

There has been a human toll as well.

On Wednesday in one of 10 such robberies to occur throughout the Los Angeles area, a pair of holdup artists stormed a Gardena credit union and kicked a female teller in the face and body to gain access to the vault.

And two days before Christmas, a Los Angeles bank robber stuck a gun in the face of a 21-year-old teller, cocking the hammer to make his point. The woman was not physically injured, but a rising number of bank employees have sought professional counseling to cope with the stress of such incidents.

Elizabeth Hayes, regional director of the Los Angeles-based Managed Health Network, a health consultant for several area banks, said the number of tellers who enrolled in the company’s Post-Robbery Counseling Program increased five-fold in the last four months of 1990 alone.

“A lot of these tellers are very young and they’re not equipped to handle the kind of trauma that comes from having a gun or a demand note shoved into their faces,” she said.

In 1990, the Southland saw the likes of bank robbers such as Daniel Ernest Hayes and Carlos Fernando Padilla, both of whom were suspected of robbing more than two dozen banks at gunpoint before they were caught, authorities say.

Hayes, a drug addict in his mid-50s, robbed banks throughout the Inland Empire before being arrested last fall. Investigators say that he died of a heart ailment before being indicted.

And Padilla hit numerous banks throughout the Southland from Orange County to the San Fernando Valley before being arrested last summer.

Padilla was indicted on 10 counts of bank robbery, authorities say. A week ago, he pleaded guilty to three of the counts in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

FBI Agent Rehder has become something of an expert on bank robberies and bank robbers.

On an average weekday in the Los Angeles area, he says, there are seven bank robberies. One in five unfolds as a “takeover crime” in which customers are forced at gunpoint to lie on the floor. The rest involve note-passing or verbal threats, sometimes accompanied by the display of a weapon.

Because of extended bank hours, Friday afternoons are usually busy times for robbers. So are weekdays after a national holiday, when robbers are sometimes waiting in line as a bank opens, authorities say.

The average take in a bank holdup is $2,800, statistics show--resulting in a net of more than $4.6 million in 1990. The run-of-the-mill robber, Rehder says, lasts four months before he or she is caught.

The FBI, the lead agency in investigating local bank robberies, has made arrests in about 85% of its cases since 1984. But only a fraction of the money taken is ever recovered, Rehder said.

Authorities say that in terms of man-hours spent on investigations and net financial loss, last year was even worse than 1983--when a handful of persistent repeat robbers accounted for a larger than usual number of crimes.

That year featured the area’s all-time record holder--a character dubbed the Yankee Bandit who wore a baseball cap during some of the 64 robberies he committed that year. The yearlong rampage included six robberies in a single day--a national record--before he was arrested in January, 1984.

Edwin Chambers Dodson was convicted and sentenced to 25 years at Terminal Island in San Pedro, authorities said. He died in 1987 of natural causes.

“These guys are the ultimate high-risk gamblers when you consider that we solve about nine out of 10 local bank robberies,” said Rehder, one of 30 Los Angeles-area bank robbery investigators for the FBI. “You’d have better odds if you went to Vegas and let your life savings ride on the crap table.”

Many robbers soon learn that bank tellers are trained to handle robbery demands without argument and that the trend in banks is to do away with armed security guards because of concern over possible gunplay.

The recidivism rate among bank robbers is high, Rehder said, as many fall back into their drug habits upon release from prison--and start robbing banks again.

Many bank robbers emerge from less serious offenses to work their way up to the crime considered the Big Daddy of them all--where there are always ample witnesses, blinking bank cameras and stiff federal penalties.

“It’s a macho crime . . . a power trip,” Rehder said. “In take-over robberies, the sawed-off shotgun is the weapon of choice. There’s lots of overkill involved because, in the end, this is definitely a crime of intimidation.”

That is why so few women take to robbing banks, he said. Of the 200 defendants convicted of the crime in Los Angeles each year, fewer than half a dozen are female.

Bank robbery is also a younger man’s crime. Most serial bank robbers are between 20 and 50, lawmen say.

Jack Katz, a UCLA sociology professor who researched bank robberies for his book “Seductions of Crime” says that most bank robbers aren’t the slick, well-organized operators that they were in the heyday years of the Depression.

One study showed that half the robbers don’t research a bank’s layout before they strike--preferring to walk in cold and take their chances, he said.

“Bank robbery no longer fits the image of the sophisticated crime,” Katz said. “It’s now being committed by unstable, disorganized personalities who are not all different from the run-of-the-mill street criminal.”

Investigators say that Los Angeles inherited the distinction of the world’s bank robbery capital from New York during the late 1970s.

For their part, banks have installed sophisticated camera equipment and devices such as dye packs--bundles of money designed to explode after the robber leaves the bank, coating both 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 and the robber.

In the end, however, it is their image as an easy mark that is making Southland banks more of a robbery target than ever, authorities say.

“It’s becoming easier to rob banks because banks are into public relations these days,” said Lawrence G. Lawler, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles bureau. “They want their customers to feel warm and friendly. They provide ample parking right near the bank entrance.

“Everything banks do to attract customers attracts the bank robbers as well.”

L.A.-AREA BANK ROBBERIES

The total for 1990 approached the all-time high, which was 1,854 reached in 1983. By far the greatest number occurred in Los Angeles County.

The county-by-county view for 1990

Los Angeles County: 1,231

Orange County: 221

San Bernardino County: 98

Riverside County: 55

Ventura County: 44

Santa Barbara County: 14

San Luis Obispo County: 4

TOTAL: 1,667

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation

Compiled by Times researcher Michael Meyers