Cops Crack Down on Smash-and-Grab Crimes

May 27, 2009 -- In the old West, bank robberies followed a certain script. The bad guys had a gun and got away with the cash, and the good guys were always in hot pursuit.

But in the new West, criminals have strayed from the script. The modern revision? They are targeting tiny banks, which have all of the cash but no teller and, too often, no security except for a small camera.

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In Dallas last year, it seemed to police as if someone was constantly trying to rip off an ATM. It was happening nearly every night.

"At the time, ATMs were pretty easy targets for them to get with not a lot of risk of being caught," said Lt. Todd Thomasson of the Dallas Police Department. "Just an easy target with a low-risk, high-reward payoff."

In each case the crime is roughly the same. Crooks use a truck, usually stolen, to smash through the front of a gas station. They load the ATM -- and they're gone. Sometimes, they wrap the ATM with a chain and drag it out of the store. Thieves have even stolen construction equipment to scoop up ATMs outside of banks.

Smash and Grab: ATM Task Force

It is a scene repeated all across the country. In Lake Charles, La., thieves drove through the front door of a Target store. At first, they couldn't get their chain around the machine. When they finally did, they proceeded to rip the machine in half. In the end they did manage to get away with the good stuff. In Mobile, Ala., when a van came through the front of a Walgreens, the two crooks struggled with the ATM a bit but eventually managed to get it inside the van.

It's relatively easy money -- or at least it was.

What a difference a year makes. So far in Dallas in 2009, there have been only five successful ATM heists. What changed? For starters, police here formed an ATM task force that put dozens behind bars.

"They started seeing cops everywhere they went ... and they got the message," said Thomasson.

So did the stores. They started moving ATMs away from the front door, and started bolting them to the ground or to the wall. The result was a series of criminal missteps, usually caught on tape.

Smash and Grab: Collateral Damage

Just a few weeks ago, one bad guy got creative in Dallas. He stole a front-end loader from a construction site and drove it into a Walgreens. He did so much damage, he couldn't locate his valuable target.

"He's in there for 10 seconds and gives up and runs away," said Thomasson.

But he left behind quite something. "Over $125,000 damage just to the building," said Det. W.B. Prettyman, who's worked business burglaries in Dallas for three decades.

Prettyman said that while ATM thefts here are way down, criminals are becoming more creative.

"As they harden the target, the ATM thieves have stepped it up. This is causing a lot more collateral damage than before," he said. "They bolt them down heavier. They used to be able to be yanked off. You can't just yank them off right now. And they are continuing to do other things to harden the targets. You build a better mousetrap, you get a bigger mouse."

One of his favorite examples involves crooks who stole a box truck and backed it over the ATM at a bank drive-thru. They knocked it off the base, but didn't realize it weighed more than 3,000 pounds.

"Just a couple of guys pushing on it," said Prettyman. "It looked like a Three Stooges movie."

The criminals didn't get away with a cent. The same thing happened to another group of would-be thieves who seemed to have a perfect plan. Four masked men ran into a CVS to case the joint and locate the ATM in the middle of the drug store. They called the driver to give him the go-ahead.

But before the truck could smash into the ATM, it hit the shampoo aisle. Suds spilled all over the floor and under the tires.

"The truck lost traction and just sat there and smoked up the place," said Prettyman. "They had to abandon everything."

But why do criminals opt for ATMs as opposed to walking into a bank with a gun or a note?

"If you go into a bank with a gun or a note and you get caught, you are going to prison for a long time," said Prettyman. "If you steal an ATM, the penalties for property crimes are lower. [Penalties] are so far apart... they are not even close."

Smash and Grab: Sentencing Debate

And the bad guys know this.

"I've done interviews with a guy and he's looked at me and said.. 'Ha, it's state jail. I don't care,'" Prettyman recalled. "We've interviewed prisoners who've said ... they quit throwing drugs to do this because the risk of going to prison was less."

Police say the courts should treat ATM heists like their cousin crime, the bank robbery. Ten years in federal prison.

Prettyman agreed. "Without a doubt. The bad guys do not like dealing with the Feds. They'll deal with us but they don't like dealing with the Feds."

So until the laws catch up in the new West, cops will keep chasing and the criminals will keep trying.

Not exactly like the storybook endings of the old West, where the good guys always get their man and ride into the sunset.