Inept Bank Robbers Plague Philadelphia : Crime: One asked a teller to loan him a pen. Then he wrote his holdup note. Public transit is the getaway method of choice.

You know things have gotten out of hand when a bank robber has to borrow a pen from a teller to write his holdup note. This wacky turn of events occurred during robbery No. 120 in a bizarre epidemic of heists that has kept this city alternately in jitters and stitches as robbers hit as many as three or four banks in a day.

People seem to rob banks here almost as casually as they tap automated tellers, nailing the same bank two, three, even five times. The total stood at 122 recently, compared to 97 in all of 1990. There have been only two injuries: One guard was shot in the foot, a bank employee was cut on the arm.

Unlike the notorious Willie Sutton, who meticulously planned his robberies, these Philly Suttons are mostly unarmed and seem to act on impulse, frequently tearing off a deposit slip to scrawl a demand note.

“If we had people who put some thought into their crimes, maybe we could develop patterns and figure it all out,” said police Inspector Tom Seamon. “A lot of them say they just thought of it as a way to make money.”

When President Bush visited town Sept. 12, a teller at Bell Savings Bank, at 15th and Locust streets downtown, looked out the window at police preparing for the event and spotted, across the street, a man who had robbed the bank three months earlier. With 500 extra police downtown, the arrest was easy: A bank employee stepped outside and alerted the nearest cop. The man told police he was planning another bank robbery that day.

Jack Greene, professor of criminal justice at Temple University, is studying police data on the robberies. He said they bear little resemblance to bank robberies as criminologists know them.

“Bank robbery is a crime that involves some calculation,” he said. “You pick a target, an escape route. Here, we have people literally walking out of the bank, going down the street and getting on a bus. The image of a long, black getaway sedan and a driver with gloves on just doesn’t match up.”

These robbers are a different breed. Some are first offenders. Several are homeless. Some have jobs and “rob banks on the side,” as Seamon put it.

Public transportation is a favorite getaway mode. A man arrested last month was charged with holding up three banks near the Market-Frankford elevated train line. Also last month, two tellers and a construction worker chased a robber to a New Jersey-bound commuter train and got the motorman to wait at the station until the cops came.

The experience is traumatic for bank employees. Provident Bank, one of the city’s most prominent and the site of 12 robberies since April, provides them counseling, spokeswoman Linda Wolohan said. Many other banks are doing the same.

Seamon and Greene blame the recession, particularly severe here, as a leading cause of the crime wave. And intense media interest may be encouraging copycats. The TV news often begins with an announcement of the day’s bank robberies.

“We’re right up there with the lottery number,” Seamon said. “People see it on the news and think, ‘Hey, I can do that.’ ”

Bank robbery does not seem to pay, however. The maximum sentence is 25 years, and it is one of the easiest crimes to foil because the robber is likely to be filmed and tellers make good witnesses. In 1990, about 70% of bank robberies here were solved. The rate this year is 30%, but that can rise fast: Police recently detained a suspect in 12 robberies and charged him in some of them.

The robbers aren’t paying much either. The man who held up First Pennsylvania Bank on Sept. 18 got only $10. But that’s all he asked for.

He handed the teller a note saying, “I want $10.” She complied.