Officer Alex explains why it never pays to bank on being a criminal
I was passing under a railroad overpass on St Elmo Avenue when I noticed a man hanging outside the passenger window of an early 80’s model Cadillac as it traveled south towards the possibly famous Incline railway. Actually it wasn’t so much the protruding torso I noticed as much as it was the gym bag billowing whitish smoke he held as far as possible from said thorax.
Bank robbery. Why? Why in this age and time do people still insist on robbing the one business that makes physical fortifications and armed geriatrics part of its customer service experience?
I mean I get it—it’s comparatively safer than robbing a family-owned gun store in middle Tennessee or Texas (Nashville and Austin respectively being the likely exceptions due to demographic changes), but I tried making a mental list of “successful” bank robberies in the course of my now uncommonly long career and I drew a blank.
The lack of success does, however have a common denominator: Intelligence Quotient.
Allow me to explain: Last year a bank robber accidentally left his wallet at the scene of the crime after fleeing with cash. The wallet contained his driver’s license, social security card, and his parole registration card.
Following his lead, another robbery suspect left his cell phone at a bank after running off with the loot, which was swiftly traced by the police thanks to the man’s mobile phone provider, who charged him for roaming. He was out of state.
A man went into a bank, pulled a gun, announced a robbery, and pulled a brown paper bag over his face as a mask, but only then realized he’d forgotten to cut eye holes in said bag.
A San Francisco bank robber walked into a Bank of America branch and wrote, “This iz a stikkup. Put all your muny in this bag.” He panicked, however, that someone may have seen him write the note and would call the police, so he walked out, crossed the road to a Wells Fargo bank and walked up to the teller with the same note.
This future Employee of the Decade told him she couldn’t possibly accept his stick-up note because it was written on a Bank of America deposit slip and that he would either have to fill out a Wells Fargo deposit slip or go back to Bank of America.
Defeated, he said “Okay” and left. She called the cops who found him back in line at the Bank of America.
After robbing three banks in our great state of Tennessee, a man took his clothes to a dry cleaners presumably to conceal evidence. He left the hold-up note still in the pocket of his shirt.
A possible all-time favorite (admittedly based purely in jealousy): a bank robber was left behind at the scene of the crime when the getaway driver panicked and drove off. Thinking on his feet, he attempted to steal a nearby car but discovered it was an unmarked police car with two cops inside. (Those. Lucky. Bastards.)
You’re sensing a pattern at this point, yes? And yet still they persist. Clearly it doesn’t take intelligence to be a criminal—the lack thereof in fact being a prerequisite more often than not—but still. While entertaining, this is embarrassing.
Cops aren’t just laughing at you; your peers and colleagues are laughing. Criminal Darwinism is a part of the natural order of things but don’t put both thumbs on the scale, pal.
My guy with the literal smoking gun? I’m a terrible cop (I once lost my service weapon in my own patrol car for a panicked twenty minutes), but even I caught his ass before he even made it to the Incline.
Anyway, time to make a deposit. I’ll be sure to update this submission if I’m lucky enough to bear witness to another anecdotal paragraph—fingers crossed.
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.w