Bank-Robbing Bonanza: In 8 Hours, Bandits Hit 4 Banks in 3 Boroughs
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Over a period of eight hours, robbers hit four banks in three boroughs on Monday, police officials said yesterday.
At a Citibank branch on Seventh Avenue in Harlem, the robber made away with $26,630.
Police didn’t link the crimes but said it was an unusual number of bank robberies for one day.
Each of the robberies was carried out with an unidentified male passing the teller a threatening note, demanding money. Police declined to release the details of the notes.
In each robbery, bank employees pulled silent alarms notifying police immediately after the crime took place, though only one suspect was arrested Monday.
The last robbery of the day, at 5:40 p.m. at a Commerce Bank branch on Sixth Avenue in Midtown, ended with an arrest at the scene by an off-duty police officer employed by the bank as a security guard, officials said.
The New York Police Department, on a contract basis, hires out uniformed officers, whose names are taken out of the Paid Detail Unit database, to private vendors across the city for $30 an hour.
Though they are off-duty, they are empowered to make arrests.
The Citibank robbery lasted nine minutes: The robber entered the bank at 12:08 p.m., wrote his note on a deposit slip, and fled at 12:17 p.m., police said.
The large amount of money stolen is highly unusual for a holdup-style robbery, police said. Investigators are interviewing bank employees to determine if there was any collusion between the perpetrator and a teller, officials said.
The day’s robberies started only half an hour after banks open in New York, at 9:30 a.m.
An unidentified male in his 40s walked into the Astoria Federal Savings Bank on Flatbush Avenue in the Kensington section of Brooklyn. After handing the teller a threatening note, he made away with an undetermined amount of money, police said.
Fifteen minutes later, a robbery took place at the Ridgewood Bank on Merrick Avenue in Queens Village, police said. The perpetrator stole $200 and fled in a gray Toyota Camry, police said.
Though the number of reported robberies Monday was out of the ordinary, police Compstat reports show a 73% decrease in robberies in the past 12 years.
