I’ve been watching The Kill Point on Netflix. This is a short series about a bunch of military guys that take hostages in a bank.
I’ve seen a bunch of these types of shows recently, and have started to wonder how often banks actually get robbed. I don’t get the news, and I never see anything about it in my feed reader, so it seems like it is an incredibly rare thing.
To find out for sure, I turned to my good friend Mr. Google and found a neat FBI Bank Crime Statistics page with 2010 Q3 stats (July, August, September):
I. Violations of the Federal Bank Robbery and Incidental Crimes Statute, Title 18, United States Code, Section 2113
Violations by Type of Institution
Robberies Burglaries Larcenies Grand Total”All Violations: 1,325
Loot Taken and Recovered
Loot was taken in 1,189 (90 percent) of the 1,325 incidents. Loot taken is itemized as follows:
Cash $ 9,346,252.66 0.00 $ 2,703.78 0.00 0.00 $ 9,348,956.44 Full or partial recovery of loot taken was reported by law enforcement agencies in 232 (20 percent) of the 1,189 incidents in which loot was taken. Loot recovered is itemized as follows:
Cash $ 1,395,976.43 Securities”Face Value $40.00 Checks (Including Traveler's Checks) $90.00 Food Stamps $0.00 Other Property $0.00 Total $1,396,106.43
$9.3 million stolen just in Q3 of last year?!?!?! Assuming this was an average quarter, we are talking $37.4 million stolen from banks in the US every year. I seriously never would have suspected that bank robberies were that successful in today’s age of high tech security and abundance of cops.
Even crazier is the number of bank robberies. 1,310 robberies in 2010 Q3 means about 14 robberies per day. Worse, the robbers got away (at least initially) in 90% of the robberies. Me thinks TV over dramatizes the whole hostage-taking-bank-robber scenario a bit.
Have there been any bank robberies where you live? I think when I was a kid there was one with hostages in a city nearby, but it was short lived.