How to scare bank robbers?

[Piggybank Cop]

Try smiling.


FBI agent credits system with cutting bank thefts in the Seattle area
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:23 a.m. ET April 12, 2007

SEATTLE - What’s the best way to make a bank robber turn around and walk out the door empty-handed? Try a handshake and a smile.

Excessive friendliness is the key to the “Safecatch” system created by FBI Special Agent Larry Carr. The premise is that an overdose of courtesy will unnerve would-be robbers and get them to rethink the crime.

“If you’re a legitimate customer, you think, ’This is the friendliest person I’ve met in my life.’ If you’re a bad guy, it scares the lights out of you,” said Drew Ness, a vice president of Bellevue-based First Mutual Bank, who advocates the approach.

Carr, who has taught the method to employees at 16 Washington banks over the past few years, credits the system in part for the drop in Seattle bank robberies from 80 in the first three months of 2006 to 44 during the same period this year. On Tuesday, he ran a training session for employees at a First Mutual branch in Seattle.

Sharply different approach
The method is a sharp contrast to the traditional training for bank employees confronted with a suspicious person, which advises not approaching the person, and at most, activating an alarm or dropping an exploding dye pack into the cash.

When a man walked into a First Mutual branch last year wearing garden gloves and sunglasses, manager Scott Taffera greeted him heartily, invited him to remove the glasses, and guided him to an equally friendly teller. The man eventually asked for a roll of quarters and left.

Carr said he suspects the man was the “Garden Glove Bandit,” who robbed area banks between March 2004 and November 2006.

Carr stressed that employees should never put themselves in danger, and they should comply with any demands made by an armed robber.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18075473/

[jmur5074]

You know what else will deter would be bank robbers?


Guards, who are ARMED, and NOT 80+ years old.

[bird1]

[foxxymomma50]

Just keep one of these at the front door of each bank....I don't think they would have a problem with bank robbers then!

[BEB]

Apparently laughing at them works too.

http://www.wsoctv.com/news/12718924/detail.html

Robbery Foiled When Employees Get Giggles

Would-Be Bandits Flee After Being Laughed At

UPDATED: 12:33 pm EDT April 21, 2007

Police are searching for two would-be bandits after Postal Annex employees got the giggles and foiled an attempted armed robbery, reported television station KPTV in Portland, Ore.

Portland police said two men wearing red bandanas walked into the Postal Annex on Southwest Beaverton Hillsdale Highway around 9:30 a.m. Friday and told the workers to empty the register.

One of the men had a fold-up knife and was having problems opening it. The employees, thinking the attempted robbery was a hoax, laughed at the would-be robbers, KPTV reported.

The assistant manager, playing along with what she assumed was a joke, picked up the phone and threatened to call 911. As soon as she said the three numbers, the two would-be robbers were gone, the employees said.

"He didn't have a serious voice to him," said employee Shelley Martin. "We thought he was kidding, so we were laughing back at him."

"We just didn't take them seriously. It was like having your kid brother come up with his cowboy and Indian thing," said employee Nicole Luedtke.

The two men didn't get any money, but they did get away, giving the good-humored employees at Postal Annex a priceless anecdote.

Police are investigating the incident as a serious crime for the two men did show weapons.

Police said it is always best to take armed robberies seriously and don't do anything so bold that it might put you or anyone else in danger.