Colorado bank robberies have risen sharply in the first half of 2005, and law-enforcement officials say they are concerned about a dangerous pair of commando-style robbers hitting banks in the Denver metro area.
By mid-July, there were 160 reported bank robberies, including a few in Wyoming, already surpassing the 130 to 150 that typically occur in a calendar year, according to the FBI.
While theories abound – perhaps the trend is a function of a lagging economy or an increasing number of bank branches – authorities are at a loss to definitively explain it.
“Why is there a spike?” said John Lipka, an FBI supervisor with the Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force. “I’m a sociology and psychology major, and I’ve been doing this for 19 years. I can’t tell you.”
Experts say typical bank robbers are an impulsive group, frequently drug users who are looking to get quick cash by passing a note to tellers who have been trained not to resist.
But a pair of so-called military-style bank robbers, who have been hitting banks in Colorado Springs and the south Denver metro area, are different in chilling ways.
Brandishing automatic weapons, they take over a bank, forcing people to the floor. They wear masks and military-style clothing and even have fired shots at a witness outside a bank.
Authorities believe they are responsible for four bank robberies this year in Highlands Ranch and Centennial and four others in Colorado Springs last year.
“They are really dangerous,” said Steve Linstrom, a Colorado-based assistant vice president and security specialist for World Savings Bank. “They come in. They take their time. They’re very aggressive.”
Linstrom said his company has controlled access in its bank branches to discourage takeovers and keeps its employees aware of robbery activity and suspects’ descriptions.
Employees are told to cooperate with robbers, but the mere act of an employee making eye contact with a person entering a bank could discourage a would-be robber, Linstrom said.
Linstrom, who has worked in bank security for two decades, wondered whether the current wave is attributable to experienced robbers getting out of prison.
He also said that the increasing number of bank offices, many of which tend to have fewer employees than the downtown banks of a decade or two ago, might play a part in the rising number of robberies.
Statistics compiled by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., an independent government agency that insures deposits, show an increase of nearly 25 percent in the number of Colorado bank offices between 2000 and 2005. As of this month, there were 1,497 offices.
“You’re seeing a lot more new targets out there,” Linstrom said.
Economic downturns tend to coincide with increased bank- robbery rates, said John Hall, a spokesman for the American Bankers Association, based in Washington, D.C.
Bank robberies peaked in 1992, Hall said, when the country was going through a recession.
Robert McCrie, a professor of security management at City University of New York who has studied bank-robbery trends for decades, said the crime has remained common despite improving security technology.
The relatively small amount of money that banks lose in a robbery – typically $1,000 to $2,000 – isn’t incentive enough to devise more sophisticated security, McCrie said. Tellers are taught to cooperate and activate security cameras, he said.
“Simply throw them the money, push the button so we can get an image of the offender and play it cool,” McCrie said is the strategy.
Banks across the country lost nearly $73 million to bank robbers in 2003, the latest year for which FBI statistics are available.
Of the 160 bank robberies that the Denver office of the FBI has investigated – a number that includes two or three Wyoming bank robberies – the vast majority occurred in the Denver metro area, said Lipka of the FBI.
Many of the bank robberies this year appear to be committed by relative novices, said Mark Woodward, a Denver police detective who is president of the Colorado Association of Robbery Investigators.
Woodward discounted any theory that tied bank robberies to a poor economy. He said bank robbers teach one another and are perversely proud to do it.
“Bank robbery has always been kind of a glamour crime among thieves,” he said. “All the legendary criminals of old did bank robberies.”
Woodward said identifying bank robbers goes a long way toward apprehending them.
Improvements in digital photography and technological advancements that enable authorities to circulate security photos within minutes of the crime also help, said Lipka.
Lipka said his staff is examining robbery patterns and talking to prison authorities and other law-enforcement officers in an effort to identify and catch the robbers.
“We’re on track to have a very busy year,” Lipka said.
Staff writer Alicia Caldwell can be reached at 303-820-1930 or acaldwell@denverpost.com.
