Last week's robbery of a Bank of the West branch in Lincoln was quickly cleared with the arrest of a 47 year-old woman--not your typical bank robbery suspect. It was nice work by an off-duty LPD sergeant, moonlighting at Bryan West hospital nearby. She was monitoring her portable radio, picked up on the description, and spotted the suspect on the hospital campus.
It was the fifth bank robbery of 2013, all of which have been cleared with arrests, mostly in a matter of minutes. I've blogged before about the poor prospects of bank robbers in Lincoln. Nationwide, bank robbery has a very high clearance rate--about 60%, but in Lincoln it is even higher.
Friday, Lincoln Journal Star reporter Lori Pilger sent me a tweet: "So how far back does LPD's 100 percent clearance rate for bank robberies go?", she asked. "Last unsolved bank robbery in Lincoln was 12-7-2007," I replied. If we make it through the rest of the day without an unsolved bank robbery, it will be our sixth year of a 100% clearance rate for bank robberies in Lincoln.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
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5 comments:
That is a mark of which to be proud. Still, from the stories about many of the bank robberies, I can't help but think the robbers were simply looking for free room and board. They couldn't possibly have hoped to get away with it given the ineptness of their work.
How about the non-bank business robbery clearance rate?
10:24,
Overall clearance rate for robberies of businesses was 14/49, or 29%. The national rate for cities in our size category ("Group I Subset" in the FBI UCR) was 22.9% in 2012. If you exclude the banks, we were 9/44: 20%.
So a non-bank biz robber has a roughly 80% chance of not getting caught for any single robbery. However, like bombing missions, that chance of getting caught is cumulative, so if they keep doing it, they'll almost surely get busted.
On bank robberies specifically, an organized, rapid, planned armored car robbery by a disciplined group (such a criminal gang) has a lot better chance of success in the long term than robbing a bank or branch bank. Desperation must be a major reason why people hit banks rather than convenience stores and other such softer targets.
On reflection, gangs are more likely than non-gang robbers to have conduits available to process traceable cash with recorded serial numbers in ways that are not easily traced back to any specific gang member. Gangs can unfortunately be very resourceful and adaptable.
Here's something else gang-related, if you'll permit me to digress: To those that promote the legalization and taxing of drugs as a promised way to strip gangs of income, fund preschools, cure cancer, and bring about world peace, I counter that gangs are not in the drug biz per se, but in the money-making biz. Legalize drugs, MJ for instance, and those gangs will instantly transition into some other lucrative endeavor, like bootlegging untaxed MJ. Prohibition being repealed didn't faze OC at all - they just moved into something else, as OC always has and always will. Mexican gangs are even moving into legal operations like ore mining (go look it up).
If one wants drugs legalized so they can get high and not worry about getting busted, then they should be honest and admit that, instead of promising that legalization will wave a magic wand and cripple gangs. It would do no such thing
LPD should have a billboard boasting of this fact. This would be akin to those "This worksite has been accident-free for xxx days!" Even very dim criminals would cotton on.
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