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FBI cracks down on bank heists

By Erica Noonan, Associated Press writer BOSTON -- The holiday season reached its feverish pitch this month. Hurried shoppers laden down with packages milling through busy streets. Stores making larger-than-normal nightly bank deposits after heavy days of sales. The extra volume of both money and people may be good for business, but it makes law enforcement nervous.
Traditionally, the holiday season brings more muggings and pickpocketings. And the FBI's Bank Robbery Task Force is taking extra precautions to prevent an upturn in bank and armored car heists. It has been a difficult season so far, with a number of bank robberies reported in recent weeks, including strikes in Newburyport, Milton and Framingham. But the situation is better than it was in 1985, when the task force -- a consortium of New England-based FBI agents, state and local police officers and bank security officials -- was formed as a heist-prevention weapon, one of the first of its kind in the nation. Back then, greater Boston was considered the armored car-robbery capital of the country, reporting 14 or 15 robberies per year, while the whole nation averaged only about 65, said Task Force supervisor John G. Trahon. 

"Bank and armored truck robbers know no borders," said the 23-year FBI veteran. "They move from city to city and state to state. We needed a way to share information with each other. "Progress came slowly, but surely, he said, with the numbers of armored car robberies dropping from 14 per year on average to seven per year by the early 1990s.But the turning point, he said, was the brutal, execution-style killing of two armored truck guards during a Hudson, N.H., robbery in 1994.The Task Force, along with local law enforcement, responded in full force, drawing on nearly 100 investigators in three states. A racketeering investigation followed, as well as a high-profile prosecution of a gang from Boston's Charlestown neighborhood on robbery and other charges. Six men were convicted. "The outrage over the death of two innocent guards was extensive," Trahon said. "The investigation put a lot of the criminal element on notice. "The Task Force -- which meets several times per year -- includes representatives from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, as well as most of the region's major banks and armored car companies. In the past decade, the force has been part of reducing New England's average bank robbery numbers from more than 250 annually in the early 1990s to under 200 during the mid-1990s, Trahon said. But this year brought an increase, with about 202 heists recorded in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island between October 1997 and October 1998.
To prevent an increase in robberies next year, the task force has placed a high priority on improving technology and employee awareness, especially at smaller banks. One of the most important changes the Task Force recommends is that banks place security cameras at the eye level of customers in each teller booth, rather than in a remote corner near the bank's entrance. Such improvements have produced photos of bank robbers as clear and crisp "as a yearbook photo," said Trahon. The FBI then distributes the photos to banks and the public, via posters, newspapers and web sites. It's a far cry from the fuzzy back-of-the-head shots taken by most bank security cameras just a few years ago, he said. Trahon said the Task Force also gathers a lot of data on suspected bank robbers, tracking patterns and habits -- including the day of the week and time of day some gangs of robbers regularly strike. Investigators also look at trends in bank robberies nationwide, with an eye to preventing their arrival in New England.
One of those is "takeover" style attacks on banks involving several armed bandits holding employees and customers hostage. With a few exceptions, those types of robberies are mostly confined to the West Coast, so far. "That's the only trend we're really concerned about right now," he said. "It's the violence or the threat of violence that concerns us." Another Task Force mission is education and training of bank and armored car employees. Most tellers and guards already are well versed in the use of dye packs, "bait" money -- packs of bills with prerecorded serial numbers -- and secret alarms. But many employees can use pointers on how to respond calmly to a threat and how to best observe and remember details about a suspect. The work has paid off, Trahon said, with a 73 percent solve rate of robberies in 1997, well above the national average of 49.3 percent.

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