Man Repeatedly Robs Bank in Oakland Hills/Montclair, Apparently Without Opposition

[jordan179]

Under the heading of "it's too easy" comes this strange story from my current hometown of Oakland. According to Henry K. Lee of the San Francisco Chronicle in "Repeat Oakland bank robber sought," (August 4th, 2010, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/ ( Read more... )

Comments

[seawasp]

That's been the policy of the retail stores I've worked at. I wasn't even allowed to chase some schmuck who I had SEEN steal stuff; the one time I did my manager nearly had a heart attack.

[squid314]

I've heard that it has to do with insurance. The bank's robbery insurance will cover anything they lose from robbery, but their health insurance or whatever won't cover injuries or deaths from resisting robbery, since those are "preventable" if they don't resist. So the banks have no incentive to resist and every incentive not to.

[bdunbar]

But it looks to me very much as if either this bank has some insane policy of total cooperation with anyone who threatens to rob them, no matter how improbable the threat, or as if the staff have the collective courage of a sack full of wet noodles.

IIRC banks have a strict 'don't taunt the bank robber no matter what' policy. Violate the policy you could get fired - and who needs that?

Look at it from management's point of view: the money is insured. And some teller with more courage than common sense could offer up resistance to a real robber and then *blam* you've got a dead employee or two. There is no upside to leaving it up to their judgement, and lots of downside.

If I were the management of Wells Fargo, this would bother me.

Sure. But you're not. Walk a mile in their shoes and you'll have a whole new perspective on risk and why corporate does some of the things they do.

[luagha]

Now, they ARE supposed to give him the bags with the radio transponder and the money with the exploding dye and tear gas packets....

[engelhardtlm1]

I think in terms of incentives...

And that suggests that the insurance explanation is a good one. If the money was actually lost to the bank, then they'd have a strong incentive to stop theft. Since it's insured, they only have an incentive to have policies that decrease the cost of theft (and thus insurance premiums). My guess is that insurance companies have found that reporting successful robberies to the police is significantly less costly than trying to fight bank robbers directly.

[jordan179]

Well, for the insurance companies. The damage to the bank's reputation only harms the insurance companies secondarily.

[engelhardtlm1]

I'm not sure how this hurts the bank's reputation. Nonresistance minimizes the odds that the bank robber will take hostages or open fire - so customers are less likely to fear for their safety. Because the money is insured, depositors aren't worried that their money isn't "safe". So, besides you, who thinks less of Wells Fargo because they have this policy?

[operations]

I think less of the whole damn country. There used to be a time when there were lines drawn, and crossing those lines often resulted in you DYING, and it was not that long ago either. Nowadays, they make it so damn easy to BE a criminal and so hard to be a WORKER or LEGAL that one wonders why anyone bothers with above board employment.