Locking Device Keeps Bank Robbers Out

If two machine-gun toting men in black body armor tried to rob this bank they wouldn’t get past the front door.

But today it is Rachael Bergen of Sherman Oaks who can’t get through. After she walks through the front door into a small glass-encased vestibule, an alarm sounds and a second door in front of her locks with a click.

That door is controlled by a metal detector, like the ones common in airports. When it detects a gun, or any other piece of metal, it blocks access to the bank.

“It’s my glass case--again,” says Bergen after a security guard recognizes her and allows her into the bank. “These doors are a pain in the neck.”

But they may also be the future. In the wake of the North Hollywood shootout Feb. 28, banks are shopping for more effective weapons against robbers. This Home Savings branch at 13949 Ventura Blvd. is one of 10 banks in Southern California that are using the device.

Called an Access Control Unit or ACU, it looks like any glass-enclosed vestibule. But the glass is bulletproof and the locks are automatic.

The first door has to close and lock behind entering customers before they can open the interior door--but if the instrument detects metal, that door locks and an alarm sounds. If a robber were inside, the two sets of locked doors could hold him until police came--so long as bank officers could be sure he really was a robber.

“There was a time when a man came in and set off the alarm. And he didn’t want to show what [metal object] he had,” says branch manager Monika Rye. “So he just turned around and left--I guess we’ll never know . . . “

Rye said the security door makes it possible for the bank to create a more casual atmosphere inside, eliminating bullet-proof “bandit barriers” at the teller counter. The security door is better, Rye said, because it secures the entire bank; the barriers protect only the tellers.

“This is a proactive measure banks can take,” said Jim Etheridge, vice president of sales and marketing at Ontario-based Hamilton Safe Inc.--the company that sells the device in California.

“Most of the products we sell are really more along the reactive line,” he says. Video cameras and secret alarms that alert the police all do their work after a crime has occurred.

The idea for the security doors came from Italy, where such devices have become the norm, Etheridge said. The metal detectors are the same kind used at the doors of the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., which scan for the mass and density of metal.

“Keys and pagers will not usually set it off,” so customers will not be unduly inconvenienced, he said.

Etheridge said 30 additional orders have been received from Southern California banks for the ACUs, which cost $40,000 to $50,000. Twenty-four of those orders are for Home Savings branches.

After the North Hollywood Bank of America robbery, Hamilton Safe fielded a flood of calls about the system from banks and other businesses, including convenience stores, Etheridge said.

Home Savings spokesman Adrian Rodriguez said the bank has installed the security doors at its high-risk locations, including the Sherman Oaks branch, which was robbed last August.

“Since we installed the metal detectors, we haven’t had any robberies at those locations,” he said.

In fact, no bank has ever been robbed after it installed the metal detectors, Etheridge said.