ARLINGTON, Va. – Although CUNA Mutual, the insurer for over 95% of the nation's credit unions, reports that the pace of credit union robberies so far this year is somewhat slower than it has been in past years, the recent violent attack at the Webster, New York, branch of the $685 million Xerox Federal Credit Union has magnified the danger of robberies. Unfortunately, the solutions popular in other parts of the financial services industry may be beyond the budget of many credit unions. On Tuesday, August 12, at about 9:30 in the morning, two credit union members were shot during the course of a robbery at the Xerox FCU branch. Xerox FCU is headquartered across the country at El Segundo, California, but has branches in many of the locations Xerox has facilities. One of the credit union members shot, Raymond Batzel, 52, an employee of Xerox, was pronounced dead on the scene from a gunshot wound to the head. Xerox has established a fund to collect donations for Batzel's wife and three children and, as of press time, the police have made no arrests in the case. "If you are going to put measures into place to try to prevent robberies, you are probably going to have to lay out some significant money," said Ken Carlisle, CEO of the Carlisle Group Security Consultants, a firm based in San Juan Bautista, California. "There is no doubt that there are measures you can take to make robberies more difficult," he said, "but there are going to be costs for all of them." As proof of both the expense and result of bank robbery prevention, Bank of America has recently announced that it will be adopting a nationwide approach to robbery based on concepts it first tested on its branches and outlets in the greater Los Angeles area. Between June of 2001 and January 2002, those branches were robbed 77 times. A Bank of America branch was also the target of the spectacular assault in which robbers wore body armor and engaged in a full shootout with police using automatic weapons. That attack drew national attention to robbery and to Bank of America and helped motivate the bank to make some adjustments to its policies. "Given that reality we were highly motivated to try to remedy our vulnerability to robbery," said Ken Preston, spokesman for the multibillion-dollar bank headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. The bank's response was to initiate a pilot project through which each of the bank's 281 Los Angeles area branches was evaluated with an eye toward preventing robbery and then specific upgrades were made to each outlet or branch. The bank's tailored upgrades included changes to staff training, equipment and technology designed to make the branches harder robbery targets. Training and staff improvements included adding highly trained armed security officers and more staff training. Building improvements included bullet resistant glass, mantraps with weapons detection capability, bullet resistant bandit barriers, and devices containing smoke, tear gas and electronic tracking equipment. Bandit barriers are the clear shields used to protect teller areas from robberies. Mantraps are the sets of double doors at the entrance to bank branches that can effectively trap dangerous suspects before they enter the bank or as they try to leave. The upgrades got the results the bank wanted, Preston reported, pointing to the 69% drop in robberies at the Los Angeles area branches since the bank completed the program. But as well as the pilot worked, Bank of America would not say how much the upgrades cost and maintained that there was no cost benefit analysis performed as part of the change. "Our priority was the safety of our staff and customers," said Ken Preston, spokesman for the bank. "The incidence of robbery was rising, especially in Los Angeles, and we believed we had to take action." Since most credit unions lack the economies of scale or resources that an institution like Bank of America can bring to the problem, costs remains a factor in robbery prevention – the cost is unfortunately high. Depending on how many branches were being upgraded, according to Carlisle, a credit union could expect to face an up-front cost of roughly $240,000 to make all the upgrades to a branch that were made as part of Bank of America's upgrade program. That would include costs like roughly $45,000 for at least one well-trained security guard, $20,000 for a bandit barrier, $100,000 for a mantrap with weapons detection capability, and $30,000 for high tech digital surveillance equipment. "Essentially, to do everything Bank of America did to one branch, you would have a fortress that's not going to get robbed, but you would probably spend a lot more money on robbery prevention than you would on robbery losses," Carlisle said. But Carlisle also saw virtue in Bank Of America's approach of not doing everything to every outlet, but to evaluate each branch's needs and upgrade accordingly. If a credit union, for example, had three branches and it decided bandit barriers are appropriate for each, or even simple mantraps, overall cost might be in a range where it made more sense, he noted. Phil Tschudy, spokesman for CUNA Mutual said the insurer does not reveal loss statistics from robbery, in part to avoid providing any information that might make credit unions more of a robbery target. He also emphasized that CUNA Mutual urges credit unions to do what they can to evaluate their location, their robbery and risk and take the steps in training and preparation that they can. "Certainly if they can't spend $240,000 on a full anti-robbery package, they can still focus on the measures they can afford to take in robbery prevention," he said. Tschudy pointed to the CUNA Mutual publications Guidelines for ATM and Cash and Robbery as places credit unions could start. Both are available on CUNA Mutual's online Loss Prevention Library. -

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