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
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Nick Catrantzos + Tom Goff
- All Secure
- NICK CATRANTZOS is the lead author of the All Secure website and is the emeritus security director for a large public organization. He has also managed security aspects of corporate takeovers, response to international hostage situations, and finding and keeping secrets. He has been board certified in security management, licensed as a private investigator, and certified as an incident commander. He worked as a case officer for a discreet branch of public service. He protected stealth technology at Lockheed and, later, as a consulting security director for both Kroll and Control Risks, he assisted executives with workplace violence cases and with protecting VIPs and critical assets globally in volatile areas. Nick's partner, TOM GOFF, was a captain in the Military Police Corps, U.S. Army Reserve and has a law degree from the University of California at Davis. He is a former reporter for Fortune Magazine, was senior editor at New York Magazine and Esquire, and has provided crisis and communications counsel to senior executives at Fortune 500 companies, including Lockheed, ARCO, Microsoft, Nissan, and Sony Pictures.