What Bank Robberies Can Teach Scared Moviegoers

Beefing up security may placate worried customers, but attaining meaningful results is less a question of cost than of effectiveness. Of course it costs more to instigate new access controls, add guards, and increase physical or video surveillance. So what? Would any such combination of measures have eliminated the carnage of last week’s Aurora, Colorado, massacre during the midnight showing of the latest Batman movie? It is doubtful. Absent an armed defender vigilant enough to avoid being the shooter’s first victim and proficient, calm, and courageous enough to return fire, adding an extra guard or camera would not have delivered meaningful protection. Studies of bank robberies may not have been the first to contend with the same dilemma, but a nervous media and movie-going public would do well to go down the same analytical trail.

Solid references to current studies on bank robbery appear at the end of this essay. Let us begin the discussion, though, with a security professional’s recollection of what banking had to figure out about the armed guard dilemma after a study in the 1960s. The venue was a major urban area in the East Coast, perhaps Philadelphia. The problem? Armed bank robberies were on the rise, and it was not clear whether the presence of an armed guard was helping or hurting. Does this dilemma not sound familiar to motion picture theater owners debating enhancing security in the wake of the recent shooting?

The Usual Opening Questions

1. An armed guard deters an armed attacker, right?
2. If not, does an armed guard’s presence increase the chances of a shoot-out, or of the guard being hurt or killed first, after which more casualties are likely to occur?
3. Does having an armed guard, or any other security measure, ultimately pay for itself both financially and in customer retention?

The Answers

Not necessarily, maybe, and hardly. Specifically, robbers who were intent on striking banks at gunpoint were relatively undeterred by an armed guard. The guard would have to relax, take a restroom break, or otherwise lower his guard at some point, whereas the armed robber or robbers had the luxury of choosing the moment to attack, hence the advantage of surprise. Professional robbers could neutralize a single armed guard with relative ease, without necessarily having to inflict injuries. The guard’s gun would then become one more weapon in the wrong hands. Amateurs, or unprofessional robbers, who continue to be the more frequent bank robbers to this day, might be deterred because more of them act with threats than with firearms. (See Deborah Weisel’s paper and other references below for more details on this point.) However, amateurs also tend to walk away with lesser sums of bank money, because a small score goes hand-in-hand with a quick escape. Some security measures pay for themselves, but others produce unintended consequences, such as alienating legitimate customers or costing far more than they save.

Key Findings

One particular bank found that the average robbery amounted to a loss of X dollars, whereas the annual cost of armed security, at the time, amounted to something like seven or eight times X dollars. The incidence of bank robberies in a year for that bank, meanwhile, ranged between one to four per year. So the bank’s management immediately noted that the armed guard’s presence cost more than the typical loss over a year. What ultimately caused the bank to forego armed security, however, was partly a concern over the liability the bank would face in the event of a shootout between robber and armed guard where customers or bank employees were caught in the crossfire. It also arose partly out of the discovery that other measures were more cost effective and acceptable to customers. Greeting everyone who came into the branch, for instance, turned out to be a big deterrent for amateur robbers because this simple act eroded their sense of anonymity. (Even to this day, most robbers are amateurs who do not disguise themselves and who act alone.) Cash handling procedures which limited the amount of money a teller could lay hands on at any bank window also decreased the average take for the average robber trying to make a quick score and elude capture. Finally, bullet-resistant bandit barriers reassured bank employees more than a guard yet did not alienate customers as much as some more cumbersome security measures such as mantraps, where only one person can enter through a revolving door at a time. (The latter do indeed deter bank robbers by slowing down entry and exit, but also at the expense of annoying legitimate customers.)

Today’s lessons, as noted by Professor Weisel and by studies such as those by the National Institute of Justice or by FBI statistical analyses, leave the consistent impression that not every site needs all the same security measures. Certainly the basics apply, such as securing emergency exits to prohibit clandestine entry by villains. But as the studies showed for banks, some locations are more prone to attack than others. For banks, determining factors can be urban vs. rural venue and ready access to major escape routes. Similarly, movie houses that attract very large crowds and times when such crowds tend to be most unruly – typically at night – may deserve more security enhancements according to their exposures.

Professional bank robbers attack early, before the bank is too busy and when they are in the best position to control the people in it. Amateurs aim for later in the day, when the bank is crowded and when they can slip into the crowd with less of a chance of drawing attention. Studying such particulars helps bank defenders make the right decisions about what losses they want most to avoid. The one class of individual most likely to get hurt if a bank robbery turns violent is, as one may suspect, bank employee. This is why employees are trained to offer minimal resistance, and why both amateur and professional bank robbers have reason to expect some return on their criminal efforts.

The bottom line is that the absolutely worst and least effective security to deploy in the wake of an emotionally charged tragedy is to launch complicated, costly, and questionable security programs that soon take on the trappings of permanence. This is why visible and much touted beefing up of security at movie theaters is more likely to be a display of security theater than effective protection for the long term.

References for Further Reading:

D. L. Weisel, The Problem of Bank Robbery, 2007, Center for Problem-Oriented Policing. Retrieved July 26, 2012 from http://www.popcenter.org/problems/robbery_banks/print/

T. L. Baumer and M. O. Carrington, The Robbery of Financial Institutions, January 1986, National Institute of Justice

R. J. Ericson and K.M. Balzer, Summary and Interpretation of Bank Crime Statistics, February 7, 2003, FBI.

-- Nick Catrantzos

The Good Don’t Hide

At least, they do not disassociate themselves from their work. On the contrary, they sign their names, taking pride in the quality of their output. This is why true virtuosi seldom shy away from having their full names indelibly linked to their paintings, symphonies, novels, legislation, or scientific discoveries. Even the most introverted who guard their privacy and slink away from crowd or limelight will not hesitate to lay claim to their own work.

Contrast this tendency, now, with the institutionalized tendency to distance employees from their work product. What passes for today’s customer service may well epitomize this modern tendency. The person answering your call, perhaps from an offshore hotline or just as easily from across town, is increasingly unlikely to self-identify. At best, you may be able to cadge an employee number and first name out of the individual. What about an identifiable first and last name, however? Slim chance. If the customer service is particulary substandard, even minimal identifiers may be absent, with calls disconnected midstream as you get to the point of demanding identification in your effort to escalate to some form of higher authority. What is behind such anonymizing tendencies?

There are official, unofficial, and underlying motives, if one cares to explore them.

Officially, employers proclaim their concern for employee safety as a reason for insulating their minions from their customers. After all, the argument goes, there is no shortage of crazed, disgruntled masses out there, and it would appear uncaring to grant the latter the means of readily identifying employees whom they might target in a fit of rage.

Unofficially, particularly when outsourcing hotlines and customer service functions to India, China, the Philippines, or elsewhere, employers attempting to affect a local, down-home persona in marketing their wares cannot allow employees to fully identify themselves with foreign-sounding names that give the lie to such marketing deceptions. Thus, they assign American-sounding first names to their customer service employees, and so Suresh now becomes Steve when answering the phone.

Underlying motives may be harder to establish with certainty, but they may be inferred. If, unlike an artist who is proud of the painting, the customer service employees are under trained and mediocre or perfunctory in the discharge of their duties, can it be that their management knows that no one in the company is all the way dedicated to customer service? If so, then is it not easier to dodge accountability and diffuse blame in direct proportion to how hard it is to pin down exactly which employee said what to the dissatisfied customer?

Quality counts and magnetizes signatures to its canvas. Inferiority, however, craves anonymity and makes orphans of its output. This is also why the best and even the second best are easy to identify. In Olympic season, it is no challenge to note that gold and silver medals are awarded to specific contenders and proudly counted by the countries spawning their respective athletes. Who goes to any length to claim last place, however? Oh yes, that would be what’s-his-name from…wherever it was. The same kind of thinking and identification applies to assessing the quality of goods and services everywhere. The fully identified and identifiable may not always be the best, but the ones hiding under many veils of anonymity will invariably be racing for the bottom.

Per corollary, what may one infer when the good appear to be going to inordinate lengths to hide despite their superior output? Then they are hiding from something else altogether, whether from old sins, predators, or something that is haunting them from some sphere that is distinct from the competence in which we are observing them at their best. Everybody has lapses and something not to be proud of, even if they are the only ones who can still remember it.

-- Nick Catrantzos

What's Next after Al-Qaeda

There is no shortage of opinions about whether Al-Qaeda is dead, impotent, or about to mutate into new levels of lethality. What is in short supply, however, is clear reasoning backed by credible citations that take the discussion away from casual editorializing and into the realm of useful analysis.

In the essay below by Clint Watts of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, such analysis brings several interesting and well supported ideas to the fore. Who knew that bin Laden was at work to rebrand his organization before his demise? What role did financing play in the ascendancy of Al-Qaeda and does it continue to play in the role of its emerging successors? What has worked in countering Al-Qaeda, and what indicators are worth monitoring to neutralize the next major terrorist organizations?

Watts takes all these matters on in a short, clearly written paper that has just come out. Here is the link to the thoughtful analysis:

http://www.fpri.org/enotes/2012/201207.watts.al-qaeda.html

-- Nick Catrantzos