A spree of daring daylight bank robberies has struck Eugene during the past month – five between June 26 and Friday – and only one of the perpetrators has been caught.
But bank robberies are not the dramatic affairs presented in movies, said Romaine Straub, vice president and regional manager for Umpqua Bank.
Bank robbers do not generally fly in by helicopter as part of a crack team of international thieves brandishing automatic weapons, but rather walk in and simply request money from the teller.
“Nobody knows this is going on,” Straub said. “The guy comes in, he either has a note or just says ‘this is a robbery.’”
She said robberies are low-key affairs that do not cause great loss for the bank or compromise customers’ economic safety.
The local robbers at-large have all been identified as white men working alone with witnesses estimating their ages ranging from early 20s to late 30s, according to press releases. Each
approached a teller, demanded and received unspecified amounts of cash and fled, evading capture.
Despite the four who have evaded arrest, Federal Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele said, the authorities are likely to capture most of them; seventy to eighty percent of bank robbers in Oregon are caught.
“They do a number of years in federal penitentiaries usually for only a few hundred dollars,” Steele said. “It’s a stupid crime that carries very heavy penalties.”
Bank robberies come in waves, Steele said, lulling then swelling in dramatic bursts.
“It tends to be cyclical,” Steele said.
Steele said no formula exists for explaining why they tend to ebb and flow, but she said it may be due to serial robbers or repeat offenders being released from prison.
The FBI often works in conjunction with local police to capture suspects, she said, because robbing a federally insured bank is a federal crime under the jurisdiction of the FBI, but can be prosecuted in state courts.
Detective Dan Braziel of the Eugene Police Department said he doesn’t see a connection between the robberies, but that EPD has seen a marked increase in cases during the past month. He was not able to comment on the cases beyond the locations and times of the robberies and physical descriptions of the assailants.
The banks hit by robbers were the Bank of America at 201 E. 11th Ave. on June 26, Pacific Continental Bank at 2400 W. 11th Ave. on July 11, Umpqua Bank at 1175 Valley River Dr. on July 13, Washington Federal Savings Bank at 200 E. 11th Ave. on July 18 and Bank of America inside Market of Choice at 1060 Green Acres Rd. on
July 21. Not one of the banks was willing to release the amount of money stolen, and only one would comment at all.
The only suspect captured so far, 18-year-old Richard Joseph Simons-Gifford accused of robbing Bank of America inside Market of Choice, is charged with Robbery in the First Degree and is currently being held in the Lane County Jail. The young man was carrying a 10-inch knife at the time of his arrest, a press release states, but a knife was not used during the robbery.
Contact the news reporter at [email protected]