Prometheus 6

Quotes of note:

"The word of mouth is that it's easy, it's safe and it's gratifying," said Robert McCrie, a professor of security management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York who has studied bank robbery for 30 years. "So it's not surprising that the octogenarian, or a mother with children at home, or people with all sorts of uncharacteristic backgrounds would be attracted to trying to give it a go. It can be just about anybody."

and

Security and law enforcement officials say a number of factors are to blame for the democratizing of bank robbery, chief among them the knowledge, widespread among the public, that bank tellers are often instructed to comply with thieves in order to get them out of the bank as quickly as possible.

Why are they notable? Because they imply that criminality in the mainstream is a widespread problem, suppressed only by fear of punishment. Incredibly significant, if true.

Today's Bank Robber Might Look Like a Neighbor
By WARREN ST. JOHN

The case of J. L. Rountree seemed at first an aberration, something from "News of the Weird." Last August, Mr. Rountree, 91 years old, walked into the First American Bank in Abilene, Tex., and handed the teller a note reading "Robbery."

"You're kidding," the teller said.

"Hurry up," snapped Mr. Rountree, who was unarmed. "Or you'll get hurt."

Mr. Rountree — no sprinter — left with $1,999 and was soon arrested by the local police, who gave him the perfect headline-grabbing nickname: the Grandpa Bandit. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Then in December, Sally Ann Smith, 56 and described by a neighbor as "a wonderful, caring and loving person, and a devoted grandmother," was arrested at her home in Peoria, Ariz., on charges of robbing two banks at gunpoint. Ms. Smith, too, got a nickname: the Grandma Bandit.

Then there were Robert Day, an armed 68-year-old bank robber in Texas, and Brenda Bishop, the Granny Bandit of Macomb County, Mich., who was unarmed; both are now in prison. And on Thursday, the police said, an unarmed 70-year-old man named Gordon Bryant tried to rob the Farmers State Bank in Versailles, Ill. The police said they had found Mr. Bryant outside the bank with a stocking over his head.

While it may be tempting to view these bank-robbing grandparents as evidence of a moral collapse among older Americans, more likely they say something about the changing nature of bank robbery. Once the pursuit of hardened, shoot-'em-up bandits like Bonnie and Clyde, and later of violent street gangs packing 9-millimeter guns, bank robbery has become a kind of everyman's felony.

While about half of bank robberies in the United States are still committed by drug addicts desperate for money and a third by veteran bank thieves, law enforcement officials and criminologists say an increasing number are being pulled off by thieves who have a lot more in common with Willy Loman than Willie Sutton. They are teenagers and senior citizens, stay-at-home parents and established career types — in short, anyone with an acute need for cash.

…The number of bank robberies nationwide has fluctuated for 15 years, spiking during tough economic times and falling during good years. Although violent bank robberies are still a problem — banks in Washington D.C., for example, have recently been terrorized by a gang of masked, heavily armed robbers — the majority of the 7,412 robberies last year were so-called "note jobs," heists committed by pen and paper rather than a weapon. Twenty-five years ago, according to the F.B.I., only about a third of robberies were note jobs — the preferred method of the Average Joe and Jane bank robber with no criminal past, experts say.

"Most of these are people who have no record at all. They start off as virgins to crime and they jump into this as a first option," said William J. Rehder, a former bank robbery expert for the F.B.I.

New York City experienced a kind of note-passing epidemic last year. Bank robberies surged 64 percent, and though 84 percent of the robberies involved no weapons, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly admonished bank executives for not paying enough attention to the problem. Last year, 16 of Commerce Bank's 17 branches in New York were robbed. In 2003, North Fork Bank, which has 78 branches in New York City, experienced 36 robbery attempts.

The people pulling off some of those heists hardly fit the profile of seasoned crooks. Last September, the police said, a 12-year-old boy made away with $30,000 from an East Village branch of Citibank after passing the teller a note that read, "Give me the money or I'll shoot you" (He was later arrested and his mother charged for putting him up to it.)

In January, Pamela Kaichen, 44, a riding instructor known as the "soccer mom bandit," pleaded guilty to the unarmed robbery of six banks in Connecticut and Westchester County and received a four-year sentence. (Ms. Kaichen, who wore a blond wig during the holdups, blamed her crimes on stress from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. She had volunteered at Ground Zero.)

Outside New York, the story is much the same. Last June, for example, Tighue Shields, 53, the greenskeeper of the Weston Hills Country Club in South Florida and well-known in the golf world for his greens work on the P.G.A. Tour, was arrested in connection with three armed bank robberies in Scottsdale, Ariz. The authorities said Mr. Shields flew to Scottsdale to rob banks on his days off.

And just eight days ago, a 15-year-old Michigan girl pleaded no contest to bank robbery; though she was unarmed, the girl passed the teller a note saying there was an AK-47 pointed at his head.