RULES FOR BANK ROBBERS

According to the FBI, most modern-day bank robberies are ”unsophisticated
and unprofessional crimes,• committed by young male repeat offenders who
apparently don‘t know the first thing about their business. In spite of the
widespread use of surveillance cameras, 76% of bank robbers use no disguise,
86% never study the bank before robbing it, and 95% make no long-range plans
for concealing the loot. This advice is offered to would-be bank robbers,
along with examples of what can happen if the rules aren‘t followed: 

1. Pick the right bank. Don‘t follow the lead of the fellow in Anaheim,
California, who tried to hold up a bank that was no longer in business and
had no money. On the other hand, you don‘t want to be too familiar with the
bank. A California robber ran into his mother while making his getaway. She
turned him in. 

2. Approach the right teller. Granted this is harder to plan. One teller
followed the holdup man out of the bank and down the street until she saw
him go into a restaurant. She hailed a passing police car, and the police
picked him up. Another teller was given a holdup note by a robber, and her
father, who was next in line, wrestled the man to the ground and sat on him
until authorities arrived. 

3. Don‘t sign your demand note. Demand notes have been written on the back
of a subpoena issued in the name of a bank robber in Pittsburgh, on an
envelope bearing the name and address of another in Detroit, and in East
Hartford on the back of a withdrawal slip giving the robber‘s signature and
account number.  

4. Beware of dangerous vegetables. A man in White Plains, N.Y., tried to
hold up a bank with a zucchini. The police captured him at his house, where
he showed them his ”weapon.• 

5. Avoid being fussy. A robber in Panorama City, Cal., gave a teller a note
saying, ”I have a gun. Give me all your twenties in this envelope.•  The
teller said, ”All I‘ve got is two twenties.• The robber took them and left. 

6. Don‘t advertise. A holdup man thought that if he smeared mercury ointment
on his face, it would make him invisible to the cameras. Actually, it
accentuated his features, giving authorities a much clearer picture. Bank
robbers in Minnesota and California tried to create a diversion by throwing
stolen money out of the windows of their cars. They succeeded only in
drawing attention to themselves. 

7. Take right turns only. Avoid the sad fate of the thieves in Florida who
took a wrong turn and ended up on the Homestead Air Force Base. They drove
up to a military police guardhouse and, thinking it was a tollbooth, offered
the security men money. 

8. Provide your own transportation. It is not clever to borrow the teller‘s
car, which she carefully described to police. This resulted in the most
quickly solved bank robbery in the history of Pittsfield. 

9. Don‘t be too sensitive. In these days of exploding dye packs, stuffing
the cash into your pants can lead to embarrassing stains, not to mention
severe burns in sensitive places as bandits in San Diego and Boston
painfully discovered. 

10. Consider another line of work. One nervous Newport, Rhode Island,
robber, while trying to stuff his ill-gotten gains into his shirt pocket,
shot himself in the head and died instantly. 

11. Be prepared to back up any threat. One would-be robber went into a bank
armed only with a finger in his pocket, which he tried to pretend was a gun.
Upon receiving the typically tactful note - ”Hand over the money or I blow
you away• the teller said,  ”I‘m sorry sir. I‘m afraid I‘ll have to see your
gun•. The felon turned round and walked out. There were a couple of
ridiculously inept bank robberies in Scotland a few years ago. In one, the
robber used his bicycle as a getaway vehicle! A man in the street was given
a bag of money for holding the bike steady as the robber tried to mount it
with the cash in his hands. The robber hadn‘t worked out how to ride a bike
when both hands held bags of money... Another was even worse. The robber
asked the cashier for £5,000. The cashier started laughing. (I don‘t know if
this was from fear or if the cashier felt this was a joke.) The robber then
asked for £500. The laughing increased. He then asked for £50. Even more
laughter. By the time the robber had got down to asking for 50p, the cashier
was laughing uncontrollably. The robber then climbed on to the counter and
tried to vault over the bullet-proof glass. He fell flat on the floor. At
this, he decided to get out of the bank. He tried to leave using the
revolving door, but pushed it in the wrong direction, so it stuck. He was
still pushing it in the wrong direction by the time the bank staff realised
that the robbery was for real and got out from behind the counter to make an
arrest. Another inept bank robbery happened in Pittsburgh: one Friday an old
man held up the branch he‘d used for most of his life, without using any
kind of disguise. The following Monday he went back to deposit the haul into
his account, with the notes still in the bank‘s wrappers.

12.Come prepared. One robber handed a note to a cashier saying ”Put £5,000
into a paper bag and don‘t say anything.• The teller wrote on the back, ”I
don‘t have a paper bag.• The robber fled.