Bank Heists Drop Sharply Over 9-Year Period, FBI Says

The number of bank robberies has sharply declined in Los Angeles and neighboring counties in the last nine years, the FBI reported Friday.

But assaults against bank customers and employees have increased, said John H. McEachern, supervisory special agent for bank robberies in the Los Angeles area.

In fact, the number of such violent acts in 2001, at 49, was the highest for any year in records compiled since 1993. The counties in question are Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.

McEachern said the number of bank robberies in those counties, 677, was considerably less than half the 1993 total of 1,674.

Most such crimes are not only nonviolent, they also occur so quietly that few bank customers or employees notice, the FBI agent said.

Of the 677 robberies in 2001, 205 were of the “takeover” variety, in which the robber or robbers make such a display that everyone in the bank is aware of what is happening.

McEachern called this a disturbing number and said it has risen as what he terms “master planners” recruit gang members to rob banks with stolen cars, masks and other equipment.

The number of takeover robberies ranged from 154 in 1998 to 144 in 1999 to 156 in 2000, he said, before spiking to 205 last year.

Most violent robberies do not include the use of guns, the FBI said, citing the effects of the relatively new use-a-gun-go-to-prison laws. Other kinds of assaults, with knives or fists, are more common.

The number of customers and employees shot in the last seven years in the seven-county region totals only 17, McEachern said, and just four of those have been in the last four years.

But over that period, from 1998 through 2001, the number of assaults and individual robberies of employees and customers has risen from 20 in 1998 to 31 in 1999, 40 in 2000 and 49 in 2001.

By county, the lion’s share of all bank robberies occurs in the most populous: Los Angeles and Orange. In 2001, there were 397 bank robberies in Los Angeles County, 128 in Orange, 54 in San Bernardino, 52 in Riverside, 30 in Ventura, 14 in Santa Barbara and two in San Luis Obispo.

The all-time record for bank robberies in the seven-county area was in 1992, when 2,641 occurred, amounting to an average of one every 42 minutes each banking day, the FBI said.

However, even with the decline since then, the number last year still makes the Los Angeles region the national leader for bank robberies, McEachern said.