$ecurity solutions: Recent robberies prompt changes at banks

After three robberies in less than eight months -- two at the same location -- First Commercial Bank executives had seen enough.

In the wake of the May 20 robbery at the bank's Morley, Missouri, location, bank executives reassessed the company's security equipment and procedures, "reviewing and reviewing and reviewing and noting areas that we could tighten down on," said Mary Lawrence, the bank's chief operating officer.

Three suspects have been charged with robbing the Morley bank in May and the bank's Essex, Missouri, branch in March.

The May 20 robbery was the second at the Morley branch in recent months; the first, in October, involved four suspects, two of whom already have pleaded guilty to federal charges.

"We've always had some stuff in place, but after this, we started mapping it out: 'What if that robber had gone here? Could we see him?'" Lawrence said. " ... We went with the best high-tech camera we could possibly get. That's half of your battle in catching your robbers, is being able to get a good visual picture."

The bank increased the quantity and quality of its security cameras and is installing locks that will require tellers to buzz customers in and out of the bank instead of letting them enter the building at will, Lawrence said.

"It's for our customers' protection as well as the employees'. … We do not want a robber to come in with customers inside the bank, because then you've got a hostage situation," she said.

The bank also follows protocols common to the banking industry, including keeping vaults on time locks that make it impossible for anyone to get in or out until a set number of hours have elapsed, Lawrence said.

"They can hold a gun to you or shoot you or whatever, but you're not getting it open," she said. "Once it's locked, it's locked."

Other robberies

The robberies in Morley and Essex -- in which robbers restrained employees before taking undisclosed amounts of cash -- are among several high-profile crimes at area banks in recent months.

The most dramatic was last month in Cairo, Illinois, where James Nathaniel Watts is accused of killing two First National Bank of Cairo employees and seriously injuring a third in what federal court documents characterize as a failed robbery attempt.

Authorities arrested Watts, 29, after a high-speed chase that led to a two-hour standoff at a railroad trestle spanning the Ohio River in Cairo. He was indicted Tuesday for armed robbery resulting in death and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Those actions, while alarming, are also unusual, said Rebecca Wu, a spokeswoman for the FBI's St. Louis division, which covers the area of Missouri east of Columbia.

"More often than not, when someone robs a bank, they try to draw as little attention to themselves as possible," she said.

Typically, bank robbers come in quietly, slip a note to a teller and leave quickly, Wu said.

"People in the bank won't even know that the bank got robbed, other than the teller who got the note," she said.

Local cases

Cape Girardeau saw at least five bank robberies last year, including one involving then-19-year-old Andrew Maberry, who pleaded guilty in December to robbing First State Community Bank at 1602 N. Kingshighway.

Maberry surrendered to the St. Louis FBI office less than 24 hours after the agency launched a campaign seeking public assistance in finding the man agents dubbed the "I-55 Bandit."

He was sentenced to five years in federal prison after admitting to at least 10 bank robberies in five states, including several in communities along Interstate 55 in Missouri.

Maberry followed the traditional pattern, using a note and implying he was armed. No one was hurt in any of the robberies.

In another case from 2013, David Carl Dawson was charged with attempting to rob First Missouri State Bank in December. Dawson told police he needed money to pay the ransom for a friend who had been abducted in South Africa, according to a probable-cause statement filed in the case.

Online court records show Dawson pleaded guilty in March to the attempted robbery and an earlier property-damage charge in which he was accused of damaging an automated teller machine in an attempt to open it.

Last June, Adrian Settles pleaded guilty to the Feb. 6, 2013, robbery of Cape Regional Credit Union.

Robbers also hit The Bank of Missouri, 1622 N. Kingshighway, twice in 2013 -- once in January and once in March.

More recently, a man walked into the Bank of Missouri branch at 440 Broadway on May 9, placed an item he claimed was a bomb on a counter and fled on foot with an undisclosed amount of cash.

In an email last week, Darin Hickey, public information officer for the Cape Girardeau Police Department, said that case remains under investigation.

Stats and solutions

Nationwide, the FBI reported 5,014 bank robberies in 2011 -- the most recent year for which data were available -- 110 of which occurred in Missouri.

The nationwide figure has dropped steadily since 2008, when 6,700 bank robberies were reported, but Missouri's numbers have fluctuated during the same period. In 2008, the state saw just 96 bank robberies, with that number rising to 119 in 2009 and 2010 before dropping to 110 in 2011.

"During the recession, the numbers did pick up higher," Wu said.

She did not have statistics for individual cities or counties, but Wu said the FBI's St. Louis division has handled the same number of cases this year as last.

"I can tell you to date, we are on track with what we've seen last year to date," she said, with the division investigating 21 bank robberies from Jan. 1 to May 27 this year, identical to the same period in 2013.

That puts the region on pace to match its 2013 total of 53 bank robberies -- the lowest number since 2008, she said.

Last year, the division solved 74 percent of its bank robberies, well above the national average of 56 percent, Wu said.

Good relationships with local law enforcement agencies and media assistance in distributing information about suspects helped close those cases, she said.

"We have a really good working relationship with our local law enforcement," Wu said. "Bank robberies are always worked in conjunction with local law enforcement."

Small targets

Lawrence said robbers seem to target small banks, which have correspondingly small staffs.

First Commercial Bank has nine locations, all in small towns.

"We feel like that's part of it," Lawrence said. "We're a smaller bank. Two robbers come in … and take control of the two tellers immediately."

Federal data would seem to back up Lawrence's theory: While the U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2012 that 80.7 percent of the nation's population was concentrated in urban areas, FBI statistics show just 64 percent of bank robberies, burglaries and larcenies occurred in metropolitan areas and suburbs.

First Commercial Bank CEO Norman B. Harty appealed to customers to be patient as the bank works to make patrons and employees less vulnerable to such attacks.

"We will move forward with the hope that our customers will understand that this inconvenience is necessitated by the recent events at our rural facilities and the madness that has invaded our society in recent times," he wrote in a recent message to customers.

epriddy@semissourian.com

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