At 5:45 p.m. on Oct. 1, a man clad in a red sweatshirt and jeans walked into a Washington Mutual Bank at 4770 Royal Ave.. He calmly and quietly passed a piece of paper to the teller, received what he wanted, and walked out minutes later.
There was nothing strange or extraordinary about the man. He appeared to be in his late 30s or early 40s, looked between 5’8″ and 5’10” tall and probably weighed 150 to 160 pounds. He had short, dark brown hair covered by a red baseball cap with sunglasses resting on the brim.
But when the man left in his brown truck, he had escaped arrest for robbery.
The Washington Mutual incident is only one in a series of many robberies that have occurred recently in Eugene. Some are concerned by the new trend. The Oregon Financial Institution Security Task Force is currently offering a reward of $5,000 to anyone with information about one particular robber, known as the “Bandanna Bandit,” who is believed to have robbed three banks between March and August.
Bank robberies happen regularly all over the country – according to the FBI, there were a total of 6,985 bank robberies in 2006 – but in Oregon, bank robbery rates are usually fairly low compared with those in its neighboring states, California and Washington.
The Eugene Police Department reported a total of 22 bank robberies in 2006, a 109 percent increase from 2005. The annual figures have steadily increased since 2000, when only six Eugene bank robberies occurred.
Eugene Police Detective Jeff Donaca attributed the climb to banks’ many branch locations.
“Banks aren’t the huge institutions and main flagships they once were,” said Donaca. “Sometimes only two or three tellers are there, and that presents the opportunity for easy cash.”
Donaca says annual statistics mean little to him; over the course of his 11 years as a detective in Eugene, he has found that bank robberies are better observed as cyclical rather than annual patterns. People are more likely to rob banks when they need money most.
“It goes through cycles: seasonal, economic,” he said. “Holiday season hits, robberies go up. The economy is bad, robberies go up.”
Donaca said most bank robberies that do not occur during an economic depression or a holiday season are usually drug users who “end up in prison and hear about banks, assuming it’s easy money.” Eugene’s large population of heroin and methamphetamine users could explain its large robbery numbers.
FBI bank crime statistics for 2006 show 94 percent of bank robbers are men, probably because “men are more prone to violent actions than women,” said Donaca. “Throughout all the violent crimes you see, men are the aggressors.”
But the “violent crime” of bank robbery has recently gotten a lot less violent. Increasingly more robbers are putting away threatening weapons and are instead slipping demand notes over the counter.
“The word has gotten out there that the sentences for committing a robbery with a weapon come with really long prison sentences, so people have switched to notes,” Donaca said.
Robbers who have weapons on their person or declare that they have a gun or a bomb are investigated by EPD, while robbers who use notes are investigated federally because prosecutors want “to put them away as long as possible,” said Donaca. Federal sentences for armed robbery are shorter than state sentences. However, both investigations, if successful, will lead to long sentences.
Although 22 bank robberies in a year may sound like a lot, the state of Oregon as a whole sees about 90 fewer bank robberies than Washington annually. In 2006, the FBI reported 176 robberies in Oregon, compared with Washington’s 264.
“Maybe there are more gray days in Washington,” said Donaca.
In addition to the Oct. 1 robbery at Washington Mutual, the Key Bank at 2995 Hilyard St. was robbed Sept. 28 at 3:30 p.m. A white male, described to be about 6’3″ tall with straight, dark blonde, collar-length hair, presented a demand note to the teller, collected an undisclosed amount of cash, and walked away. He was wearing a dark-colored lightweight jacket, a collared button-down shirt, work pants, and a canvas fedora-style hat.
EPD spokeswoman Kerry Delf said no arrests have been made. EPD asks anyone with information about either robbery to call Detective Dan Braziel at 682-5836.
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