By: Steve Macko
The number grew by three on Thursday. In the suburb of Bloomingdale, located in Du Page County, the NBD Bank at #80 Stratford Drive was robbed by two men wearing ski masks. This robbery was not your usual "get the money from the bank teller" heist. The two suspects reportedly robbed two bank employees who were carrying money from a night depository. The two suspects were armed with handguns, disarmed the two employees, grabbed a bag of money and then fled in one of the bank employee's car.
The other two bank heists were more mundane. Another NBD Bank branch was robbed. This one in Elgin at 304 South McLean Blvd. And the other was at the Manufacturers Bank located at 1200 South Ashland Avenue in the City of Chicago. In each of these robberies, a single suspect walked into the bank and handed a bank teller a note demanding money.
The vast majority of the bank robberies are similar to the two just mentioned. Unlike television and the movies, there has been no dramatic shootouts with police, no crooks wearing funny costumes and certainly no heists worth millions of dollars. Most of the bandits are described as a bunch of two-bit thieves, who act alone and get away with relatively little cash. Bob Long, the spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Chicago said, "Most of the robberies were teller thefts. The robbers were lucky if they got $2,000."
Even though the bank robbers are walking out with small amounts of mostly insured money, banks in the Chicago area are beefing up their security. Some banks are hiring more security guards for their lobbies. In the northwest suburb of Wheeling, IL, all five banks in town plan to have off-duty, uniformed Wheeling Police officers standing guard. Many of the banks are investing in new security camera systems that will provide higher-resolution and sharper images of the offenders.
Banks are more and more using money with recorded serial numbers which will help investigators trace the money. Banks are also using more dye packs which are slipped in with the stolen loot and explode, marking the bandit and the money with dye.
Authorities are not sure why there has been an increase in bank robberies in the Chicago area this year. Nationwide, there has been a dramatic decrease in this kind of robbery. According to FBI statistics, during the first nine months of 1995, there were 5,938 bank robberies in the United States. A dramatic decline from the high of 9,388 bank robberies that occurred during the same time period in 1991.
In the bank robbery capital of the world, Los Angeles, the number of bank holdups has dropped from 2,641 in 1992 to 1,099 in 1995.One can see why the Chicago record high of 142 for an entire year is essentially a slow month in Los Angeles. John Hoos, the FBI spokesman for the Los Angeles field office said that the reason for the sharp decrease in robberies in his area can be attributed to improved bank security measures and an intensive police effort to apprehend the street gangs responsible for a large number of the robberies. Hoos said, "We had groups of people going into banks, guns drawn, ordering customers on the floor and verbally and physically abusing them. They were organized takeovers. The banks realized that something had to be done."
Most of the suspects that hold up banks, in the Chicago area, rarely show a weapon. Most of the heists are not well organized. Most are sloppy and ill-planned, according to the FBI. Perhaps the most dramatic robbery of the year happened on March 4th in southwest suburban Oak Lawn when three suspects set off a smoke bomb and fired shots into the air when they robbed the Standard Federal Bank of Oak Lawn.
The FBI field office in Chicago says that currently there are two suspected serial bank robbers in the area. One male suspect in his early 20's has hit seven banks in Cook, Du Page and Lake Counties. The other is a very non-typical blond female in her early 30's who has struck five banks, including the same bank in the Will County town of New Lenox, three times, this year.
(c) Emergencynet NEWS Service, 1995
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