Whatever numbers they collect will be fine.
I’m thinking in general it would be
number of robberies [sub]= robberies/bank[/sub]
number of banks
Well, to get specific, you would also need a time period. For example, average number of bank branches that are open during the course of a year (lets take the average of the number open on Jan 1 and Dec of that year).
And number of robberies during that year.
And location. Some countries are worse than others, same with cities/neighbourhoods.
I’ve heard one banker say it averaged once per three years.
Google time:
In Los Angeles from '93 to '03 it looked like there was about one robbery per 5 years per bank. [1]
[There are an] average of 7,000 bank robberies a year… [2] [Cite from 2001]
[As of Q1 1999] there 8,721 FDIC-insured commercial banks in the US. [3]
Hmmm. This is wicked hard.
Random amusing Google hits:
- “Activity 24: Plan a Bank Robbery”. [G]
- “One bank robber in Kentucky chose to go naked – and left the astonished bank teller unable to recall a thing about his face.” [H]
Random interesting Google hits:
- The amount of money stolen in bank robberies is typically small, an average of $1,200. *
Wow. That makes it so not worth it, but isn’t most crime that way?
[1] http://www.wib.org/wb_articles/crime_dec04/fbi_dec04.htm
[2] http://www.bankersonline.com/articles/bhv12n08/bhv12n08a3.html
[3] http://www.settlersbank.com/lib/pdf/advertorials/v1_n6.pdf?PHPSESSID=3cd7637fe5815d84ee9799b416c0d755
[G] http://www.waze.net/oea/activities/24
[H] http://www.bankersonline.com/security/mbg_notfashion.html
Oh yeah, one tip. You should probably ensure the inclusion of Credit Unions and Savings and Loans in whatever final count of bank branches you choose to use.
Also be careful to discriminate betweens counts of banks and counts of bank branches. Bank One is ONE bank but has thousands of branches, etc. I think that’s why the “off the cuff” numbers I could google up are seriously conflicting.
I’ve been curious about this too. Some branches might get hit every month and others might not have any attempts on them for fifty years at a time.
One thing I can tell you is that robbery is one thing that banks just do not talk about. I’m in a bank security department, and that information is not available to me. I’m also on a “bank security personnel only” message board, and it’s not often discussed there either. Being robbed is taken as a sign of weakness, so that information is held close so crooks don’t get to thinking that some particular branch is an easy hit.
As for the amounts robbers might get out the door with, most teller drawers don’t hold more than one to two thousand dollars. Some banks are also moving to ATM-like machines called CDUs or Cash Dispensing Units. The teller enters a transaction on their terminal to give the customer x amount of cash, and rather than have that cash in their drawer, they go to the CDU, (usually located behind the teller line) punch in their ID number and the thing spits out the cash. The devices may be expensive, and they may slow down transactions, but the make it so a teller’s drawer may have nothing more than whatever checks people have deposited and ten bucks or so in change.
That seems odd to me. It was always my impression that the actual robbing of a bank was easy. It was the escaping from the Feds that’s the hard part.
Aren’t the tellers trained to just give you what you ask for? After all, the banks are insured, and since bank robberies are so high-profile after the fact, there’s little reason to worry much about stopping them in action.
Or is Hollywood playing me for a fool yet again?
I used to work for a credit union in Colorado, and our branch had never been robbed. The reason? A terrible parking situation. We were an old building with inadequate parking for our needs and no easy access to a main road. We were a bad target.
However, as we were preparing to move into our big new main branch, with it’s huge parking lot and easy access to a highway, we were told matter of factly that we would begin to be robbed, there was no question. And we weren’t in a particularly high crime rate area.
Yes walrus, Hollywood is partially correct. That speech in Heat about “It’s not your money, it’s the bank’s money, don’t be a fool” is right on.
Give them what they are asking for, try to notice as many details as possible (height, weight, accent, facial features, permanent features such as tattoos, unusual clothing or other details), don’t argue or try anything stupid. Most bank robbers are not murderers, and they don’t want to hurt anyone. They just want to get in and out as fast as they can, with as much as they can get.
How does this help prevent robbery losses? I doubt a robber cares much whether the cash comes from the teller’s drawer or from a CDU. Sure, the police might show up in the extra thirty seconds it takes the teller to get to the machine, but I doubt a thirty-second delay to thwart potential robberies is worth the cost of installing and maintaining the machine.
Most bank robberies are all about time- you need to get it done as quickly as possible, with the least amount of hassle. A smart robber casing a bank probably wouldn’t bother with a branch that used the machines instead of cash drawers.
You can’t just walk up to a CDU and press “Give me $2000” - the machine only responds to transactions that have been entered at the teller’s terminal. A robber would have to initiate a valid withdrawal for a dispense code to be generated and sent to the CDU, in which case it’s not robbery any more.
So why can’t the teller just enter a withdrawal request from someone’s account? Surely the tellers have access to the account numbers of their clients.
Most tellers don’t have a list of all the bank’s account numbers handy.
Also, see my post above about “get in and out quickly.” What you describe is way too much of a hassle for a successful robbery.
There are two other factors which the automated cash machine would affect for the robber: The teller gets to walk away from the robber, and other people could find out.
If the teller can walk away, to go to the machine, the robber has to worry that the teller won’t come back. Also, most bank robberies are accomplished with no one other than that one teller knowing about it until the robber is walking away. This is compromised if the teller walks away from the window.