Bank Holdups Plunge 58% in Southland

Three years after a bank robbery epidemic prompted a crackdown by federal investigators and bank security officials, bank heists in the Los Angeles area have plunged 58%, FBI officials reported Friday.

Experts credited a growing willingness within the banking industry and law enforcement to share information with each other, increasingly high-tech electronic surveillance in banks, and tougher federal mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines.

They also suggested that the trend of bank mergers will have a silver lining by eliminating some branches and thus leaving fewer targets for would-be thieves.

Los Angeles-area bank robberies soared to 2,641 in 1992, a record high that accounted for nearly one-third of all U.S. bank holdups. But by last year the number had slipped to 1,122, the lowest in a decade.

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Although the Los Angeles region still recorded more bank heists than any other metropolitan area last year (New York was the closest with 245), its robberies have declined far faster during the last three years than the national drop of 39%.

The number of “takeover”-style Southland holdups, in which multiple bandits take bank customers and employees hostage instead of targeting a single teller, fell even more, to 185 from 448.

“I’m not going to declare victory,” said Charlie J. Parsons, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles regional office. “What I’d love to do is make some other city the bank robbery capital of the world. That’s going to take some doing.”

By its geography, the FBI’s seven-county Los Angeles region is an easy mark, splattered with an estimated 3,500 bank branches and seemingly endless ribbons of freeways that allow easy escapes.

What has changed, authorities say, is the profile of the basic bandit.

In the early 1990s, about 80% of bank robberies were drug-related, the FBI said. In many cases, addicts held up banks on impulse, often by passing a note to a teller and demanding cash.

Since 1992, investigators have observed a sharp rise in the number of holdups committed by gang members. They were stunned by the 220% rise that year of “takeover” heists, in which the thieves frequently planned their moves in detail, swarmed the bank armed with semiautomatic weapons, and occasionally stole their spoils from the bank vault instead of a single employee.

Federal agents and bankers speculate that bank robberies soared in 1992 as a result of that year’s riots in Los Angeles, in which thousands of weapons were believed stolen from gun stores by gang members. Firearms pilfered during the riots were recovered after several robberies, including one in Las Vegas.

In response to these developments, the FBI beefed up its Los Angeles bank robbery unit, assigned many of its gang investigators to work bank robbery cases, and focused on apprehending the busiest bandits instead of solving individual holdups. Longer minimum sentences have kept more bank robbers, considered to be serial criminals, behind bars, Parsons said.

Although banks traditionally have tried to balance security concerns with their efforts to create a customer-friendly climate, he added, they have discovered that customers have responded well to heightened safety measures.

California bank security experts say they have installed hundreds of “bandit barriers”--bulletproof plexiglass windows at teller sites--and increased the use of exploding “dye packs” tucked in with cash. They also consulted investigators about better placement of high-resolution video cameras, and mounted automatic 35-millimeter cameras in some branches for the highest-quality pictures. Investigators have used still photos culled from footage at victimized banks to make wanted posters, and security experts have trained their employees more extensively in how robberies are likely to unfold.

“This is a problem that has become a threat to people feeling safe in bank branches,” said John Stafford, a spokesman for Bank of America, which installed bandit barriers in 200 of its 1,000 California branches. “There’s been a real necessity to respond to that--in a way that enhances people’s feeling of security.”

The California Bankers Assn. also formed a task force with FBI, Secret Service and other law enforcement officials to hunt career bank robbers and act as a clearinghouse for tips. The state’s largest banks also have pooled funds to support a toll-free tip hotline.

Despite Parsons’ contention that “this is not an accident,” some bank officials suggest that the drop in robberies may have been caused by less predictable factors, from an upswing in the Los Angeles economy to a decrease in crack cocaine use.

Parsons and others acknowledge that the largest financial losses are likely to come not at the hands of flamboyant bandits, but from code-savvy computer hackers.

“From a dollar standpoint, there’s no comparison. If we were just looking at financial losses, we should put all our resources in the fraud,” Parsons said.

Nevertheless, he said he found the rise in street gangs’ involvement in bank holdups more disturbing than the proliferation of modems: “There’s nothing that scares me more than a 14-year-old with his finger on the trigger of an Uzi in a bank full of people.”

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And while federal prosecutors once faced some difficulty in trying such “baby bandits”--juveniles enlisted by older gang members to commit heists--FBI officials said there has been an increased willingness by judges to allow violent juveniles to be tried as adults.

In one spree of bank robberies across downtown Los Angeles last year, a cadre of thieves dubbed “The Professional Bandits” recruited juveniles to do the inside work. One robber would approach a bank employee and ask to open a new account, then announce, “This is a professional robbery.”

With the help of information from the banks and intelligence, investigators have arrested 50 suspects in the 60-heist blitz since last May. If convicted, each faces a sentence of 20 years to life, according to the FBI.

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Bank Robberies Decrease

FBI statistics released Friday show that the number of bank robberies committed in the Southern California area has dropped considerably since peaking in 1992. Officials also noted a decline in violent takeover heists.

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L.A. Area* L.A. Area* U.S. Bank Bank Takeover Year Robberies Robberies Robberies 1991 9,381 2,355 140 1992 9,062 2,641 448 1993 8,646 1,674 435 1994 7,091 1,200 206 1995 5,500 1,122 185

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* Los Angeles area includes Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

** Takeover-style robberies involve bandits who take bank customers and employees hostage while they steal the money.

Source: FBI