# 25 bank robberies every day -- 1/4 get away with it **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 1, 2021, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147 "2021-04-01T10:58:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MagicEyes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@MagicEyes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MagicEyes)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2021, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/21 "2021-04-02T01:58:28Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Dude served his time and was released. He _immediately_ drove to the same bank, different location, and purely by chance my friend was working at that branch. Guy held up a teller (not my friend). When the police show up my friend tells them she is certain he was the same guy who had held her up years prior. My favorite local bank robber tried to make his getaway on a bus. Sadly, he was not successful, and he spent some time in jail. He got out, and apparently he did not learn anything, because as soon as he got out of jail, he tried to rob the same bank again and escape on the bus. I think he’s probably still in jail. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2021, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/22 "2021-04-02T18:43:57Z")
> [@Bootb](#): > > No cite at the moment, but I’ve read that the salary for a bank guard is more than the average amount stolen in a robbery. The average take in a US bank robbery is about four thousand bucks. It’s simply not possible to steal very much money; there is not enough cash that you can get hold of in a few minutes. Only if it’s an inside job, or you’re insanely lucky and show up just as some guy who hit it big in Vegas is depositing his blackjack winnings, can you make a big score. A disproportionate number of bank robbers are drug addicts who need money for their next hit. Someone who more interest in easy cash than scruples can find a way to steal more than $4000 that doesn’t involve committing a federal crime. A reasonably good shoplifting ring can do better than that with less risk. A crew can take a bank for far more money, but of course then you’re splitting it. ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2021, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/23 "2021-04-02T18:59:42Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > No one seems to have proofread the article I’m assuming Pastore and Maguire refers to the Criminal Justice Sourcebook, not some whitepaper on murder rate during bankrobberies. If so, that should probably be 30 deaths per year during a bank robbery (almost always the perpetrator), not deaths in 30 percent of bank robberies. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2021, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/24 "2021-04-03T00:02:34Z")
> [@Bootb](#): > > No cite at the moment, but I’ve read that the salary for a bank guard is more than the average amount stolen in a robbery. You need to factor in the idea that there may be multiple robbery attempts during the year. Also, just having an obvious guard present has a double benefit - crooks think twice about robbing the place, and the customers may feel more confident that the bank and their money is safe. ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2021, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/25 "2021-04-03T00:22:51Z")
> [@gotpasswords](#): > > You need to factor in the idea that there may be multiple robbery attempts during the year. Also, just having an obvious guard present has a double benefit - crooks think twice about robbing the place, and the customers may feel more confident that the bank and their money is safe. Yes, but, > [@RickJay](#): > > The average take in a US bank robbery is about four thousand bucks. It’s simply not possible to steal very much money; there is not enough cash that you can get hold of in a few minutes. Even multiple robberies at a single branch in a year will, on average, cost the bank less than keeping a single armed guard on duty for that year. An armed guard _may_ make a crook think twice about robbing the place. But if you’re a junkie just trying to score enough cash for you’re next hit, you’re probably not thinking that clearly in the first place. And an organized gang isn’t likely to be deterred by one guard, either. An armed guard may make the situation _more_ dangerous. And an armed guard _may_ make customers feel more secure. Or it may make them feel _less_ secure. They may feel like the fact that the bank feels the need for armed guards indicates it’s likely they’re going to be caught in a robbery every time they go to the bank. Either way, I literally can’t remember the last time I was in a bank which had an armed guard. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an armed guard in any branch of my bank, including the one which was robbed _multiple_ times in one year. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2021, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/26 "2021-04-03T00:38:57Z")
> Through a Freedom of Information Act request, CIR [Center for Investigative Reporting] obtained incident‐level data on bank crimes in the United States reported to the FBI from 2007 to 2011…The presence of an armed guard was the strongest factor in whether incidents turned violent. Armed guards were working during 1.8 percent of bank crimes in the data but were present for 12.8 percent of incidents that had violent events. > **[How\_we\_analyzed\_bank\_robbery\_data.pdf](https://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads-cironline-org/uploaded/uploads/How_we_analyzed_bank_robbery_data.pdf)** > > 106.62 KB Note customer injuries (per 1,000 incidents): No armed guard: 3.0 Armed guard : 5.1 Since customer injuries can have very big dollar consequences, overall it is not a good idea to have armed guards. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2021, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/27 "2021-04-03T01:47:20Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > Since customer injuries can have very big dollar consequences, overall it is not a good idea to have armed guards. Seems to be missing some key information. In particular, whether an armed guard had any deterrence effect. Suppose that an armed guard deterred non-violent robbers but had no effect on violent ones. Then, you would expect the injury per incident rate to go up since you have the same injuries for a smaller pool of incidents. Also, although they’ve found a correlation between having armed guards and injuries in an incident, it doesn’t follow that the armed guards are the cause of the injuries. It may be that banks in areas with high violent crime rates are more likely to have armed guards. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2021, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/28 "2021-04-03T04:49:18Z")
Most of the bank guards I see these days are stationed in the parking lot, which makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Librarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_librarian/32/402_2.png) [@The\_Librarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Librarian)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2021, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/29 "2021-04-03T13:25:26Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > I literally can’t remember the last time I was in a bank Me neither. What was it we used to do there? ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2021, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/30 "2021-04-03T13:56:09Z")
Stand in line for toasters and covet their securely chained pens. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2021, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/31 "2021-04-03T20:16:41Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > Either way, I literally can’t remember the last time I was in a bank which had an armed guard I’ve never seen that in my life. Granted, I live in Canada, so I asked my best friend, who’s lived in the USA since 2000, and he’s never seen an armed guard in a bank, either. Armored car truck staff DO carry weapons, in Canada and in the USA, but they are far likelier to be the targets of armed thieves. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2021, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/32 "2021-04-03T21:33:18Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > I’ve never seen that in my life I haven’t been in a bank recently. I haven’t been _anywhere_ recently. 🙂 But sometime after bank robberies became common in Melbourne, I walked into the State Bank headquarters while wearing a full-face M/C helmet, and sat down to fill out a withdrawal slip. As I was considering if I should withdraw $10, or $15 (I was poor), I looked up to the mezzanine floor and saw a security guard in front of me. “That’s interesting”, I thought. “I’ve never noticed a security guard up their before”. I looked around. There was another security guard over on my left, and another over on my right, and another further back, and they were all facing me. I gently took off my helmet and set it on the desk. When I went up to the teller, I left the helmet on the desk. I was pretty sure that the security guards would keep an eye on it… Soon after, there were ‘no helmet’ signs on all the bank branches, so I guess I wasn’t the only one to make that mistake. 10 years earlier, there hadn’t been any security guards. The manager at the bank where my dad banked had a hand gun in his drawer, but that was it: he certainly had no expectation that he would meet an _armed_ bank robber, or any bank robber at all. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2021, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/33 "2021-04-03T22:46:03Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Armored car truck staff DO carry weapons, in Canada and in the USA, but they are far likelier to be the targets of armed thieves. Canada had a particularly brutal armored truck robbery a few years ago, but it was by one of the security guards: > **[University of Alberta shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Alberta_shooting)** > > On June 15, 2012, 21-year-old security guard Travis Baumgartner, an employee of G4S Cash Solutions, shot four of his coworkers, three fatally, in the HUB Mall building on the campus of University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He stole his employer's armored truck and money, and gave the cash or left it at the homes of his mother and two friends. Baumgartner was arrested the next day in British Columbia, as he made plans to cross the U.S. border. > On September 9, 2013, Baumgartner plea... > **[Travis Baumgartner | Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers](https://murderpedia.org/male.B/b/baumgartner-travis.htm)** > > Travis Baumgartner, an armoured car guard who shot and killed three colleagues during a robbery in Edmonton, Canada, was sentenced to life in prison in 2013. ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2021, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/34 "2021-04-03T23:01:01Z")
Remember that all banks are insured for theft. They aren’t losing any of those $4,000 (assuming a small deductible. I don’t know about that). Like metal detectors in some high-rises, they may deter crime, but they are only there if the insurance company gives enough discount to pay for them. The banks don’t like robberies-it upsets the staff. Other than that, it is a minor cost of business. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2021, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/35 "2021-04-04T09:21:34Z")
> [@rbroome](#): > > Remember that all banks are insured for theft. They aren’t losing any of those $4,000 I doubt that a bank would make a claim for a trivial amount (to them) of $4000. Maybe $millions, but not $thousands ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2021, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/36 "2021-04-04T17:47:58Z")
It’s in the interest of the banks to under report how much bank robbers get away with, even to the police. I doubt there is a reliable estimate of what the average take really is. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2021, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/37 "2021-04-04T21:03:59Z")
Under report? All of the robberies in my state I have heard about say “an undisclosed amount of cash” or words to that effect. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2021, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/38 "2021-05-27T11:04:13Z")
One of my favorite yarns about life in Newfoundland, A cab driver takes a parcel to the air express office at St. John’s airport, but the desk clerk is on a break or something. On the outgoing pile is one of those canvas bags with a bank logo on it that screams “I am full of money, small unmarked bills”. Which quickly disappears, and now a branch in Labrador is missing what is supposed to cover payday at the mines. The bank tells CBC “Naw, we don’t insure things like that, the premiums would kill us”. A couple years later, a retired cab driver in Labrador is buying everyone drinks and bragging how he pilfered that bank bag. The Mounties got their man. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2021, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147/39 "2021-05-27T11:16:50Z")
I hope he at least changed clothes before being arrested again. I wonder if he was found by scent without needing the hounds. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/25-bank-robberies-every-day-1-4-get-away-with-it/939147.md?page=1)