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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

No bank wants the perception...

It's even simpler than that: no bank, and more importantly, no insurance company which carries banks as clients, wants to defend or settle a lawsuit alleging wrongful death through negligence of a would-be hero bank employee. The predicted loss of a bank robbery is high four figures. A wrongful death lawsuit would cost six or seven figures. This suggests a simple strategy which works fine: invest in the low-hanging fruit for physical security, comply with robbers, and pay for robberies out of the petty cash.

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>The predicted loss of a bank robbery is high four figures.

Having worked as a bank teller, that figure is much, much lower. Often they'll only get away with a couple of hundred dollars.

Otherwise you're right. I think a lot of people still have the romantic picture of Bonnie & Clyde or Hollywood style movies like Heat. The reality is that bank robbers nowadays are idiots. They're high on crack or otherwise don't know what they're doing. They are dumb. All bank robberies are investigated by the FBI, and these guys get caught.

This isn't just fear for the customers or perception, it's a dangerous situation where the loss is really not that great. Meanwhile a teller that tries to act like a hero could get himself or others shot, over a couple of hundred dollars.

Having worked as a bank teller, that figure is much, much lower.

So this claim surprised me -- I'm always willing to be wrong, but didn't think I was here -- so I went bouncing around in my backfiles to find the statistic I had quoted off the cuff.

It turns out, after following a few citations in papers, that the FBI keeps fairly accessible info on this.

http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/bank-crime-st...

$7.5k per incident, give or take.

That is a fascinating set of stats - thank you :-)

* No-one gets up early on a Monday to rob a bank,

* 1 in 10 bank robberies leave without a penny - one in ten !

* Perps die a lot more than anyone else.

* They only identify (catch?) 50% - but incredibly 95% of robbers can have their race identified (doesn't anyone wear masks anymore?)

* There is a high number (78% of those caught) of first time bank robbers. (Then again that might be obvious)

Well they can all go on my list of things I did not know yesterday.

> They only identify (catch?) 50% - but incredibly 95% of robbers can have their race identified (doesn't anyone wear masks anymore?)

A ski mask or similar does not necessarily obscure all racially identifying characteristics (e.g. you can see skin color, eye color, eye shape and often pick up the gist of bone structure — as well as hear their voice if they speak).

WRT masks and race there was a really interesting bank robbery where the robber obscured his race with a latex special effects mask and sunglasses.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/white-bank-robber-chang...

Interesting that even with those precautions he was still caught.

I was going to say something about the median being fairly lower, but looking through those stats and seeing only 215 vault robberies versus 4,870 robberies at the counter, I'm less confident that it is significantly lower. I believe I stand corrected. It may have been just my region, or my supervisors may have simply been mistaken.

In the bank I worked at they would get almost nothing useful - unless the exploding dye packs failed.

> "The reality is that bank robbers nowadays are idiots"

Once when I was getting off the bus, a police car pulled up right in front of us, 3 more police cars pulled in behind the bus, and even more were approaching. The police pulled a guy off the bus and took a roll of cash out of his pocket and put it into an evidence bag. I found out later from the girl who'd been sitting next to him that the police asked him if he'd just robbed a bank and he confessed right there on the bus.

One of my bus driver friends told me it's common enough that they have a procedure for bank robberies -- their dispatch phone rings, they listen to a description of the bank robber, and if he's on their bus they call back with some sort of code word. Of course, the robbers think they're being oh-so-clever getting onto a city bus, because nobody would ever guess that's your getaway car.

That works in places with relatively developed legal systems and enough police and prosecution to eventually catch most bank robbers. Otherwise, there's an endless stream of people coming in, grabbing $10k, and leaving.

In the third world, I've seen banks with military/police with automatic weapons set up outside banks, or private security at the same level. (also, in these places, liability in the event of wrongful death is lower (or, by outsourcing to the government, you get to take advantage of sovereign immunity), and there is more cash on-site)

you get to take advantage of sovereign immunity

Not all countries have that./

Correct - if you have adequate response, you need less prevention.

In Central America, my house is fully encased in steel bars (in addition to a wall), so you'll need to spend a bit of time and noise getting in. And we have 24/7 armed guards on rotation, and the entire subdivision is walled off with ~15-20 foot gates.

A friend I know consulted on a few bank robbery cases and reviewed the security videos. The firepower the criminals would bring in was astounding. Big long machine gun (not rifle) type things. I believe I read reports of grenades/RPG or something, too.

Whereas in the states, none of the places I've lived would take much more than a pointed stick to get in.

It's an interesting situation. I think I'd rather bank robbers had a stick than an RPG. Of course, ideally there would be no bank robbers.

I wonder if there's two equilibria here - at low levels of robbery, there's a Nash equilibrium (law enforcement and robbers as predator/prey). However, because there's a limit on how much police and prosecution resources can ultimately be increased, eventually the robberies overwhelm law enforcement and you reach an equilibrium at a high level of robbery limited only by the availability of potential robbers.

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