Bank Robbery, By Desperate Amateurs, Increasing

Albert Gehle was talking to his fiancee about a robbery earlier that day at the bank where she worked when a man quietly walked up to a cashier a few feet away. Minutes later, the man left the bank.

"I've been robbed," the cashier said.

Gehle ran out of the bank, jumped in his car and followed the man to a motel. After the man left his car, Gehle called the police. Minutes later, Chauncey W. Anderson Jr., 61, was arrested.

It happens all the time.

During the nine months that Gehle has been dating his girlfriend, an assistant head teller at a Florida bank, the bank has been robbed at least three times, he said.

"It's getting bad," Gehle said. "Everyone is nervous and scared."

The thrice-robbed bank is hardly unique. In the past year, bank robberies throughout the nation have soared, and experts say bank branches are targeted because they often are in isolated centers with few employees or customers. In addition, the experts say, banks are sought out more now because gasoline stations, convenience and liquor stores no longer keep much cash on hand.

"You've got difficult economics, and robbery is certainly one way to deal with it," said Ted Chiricos, a Florida State University professor who researches the economics of crime.

After relative stability for five years, the number of bank robberies in the United States jumped from 6,858 in 1989 to 8,855 in 1990, the FBI reports.

Unlike the movies that depict gangsters blowing up vaults, entering buildings flashing submachine guns and ordering customers to the floor, modern bank robbers are an unpretentious lot. Some bank robbers today are unarmed, although in notes to cashiers they claim to have weapons.

In some respects, the bank robbery that police say Anderson was involved in is typical of those in recent years. He apparently worked alone, police say. They gave this account of the robbery:

Dressed in slacks, a striped shirt and sunglasses, Anderson quietly entered the First Florida bank in St. Petersburg, Fla.

He walked up to the cashier and discreetly pulled out a knife, demanding cash. After he got the money, he escaped in a 10-year-old Toyota hatchback.

Except for the cashier involved, few if any bank employees or customers knew that a robbery had taken placed, police said.

Many of today's bank robbers have limited criminal experience. Anderson, for example, has no prior record except for a few traffic problems, St. Petersburg police say.

The reason is simple, said Clearwater criminal-defense attorney Patrick Doherty: Seasoned criminals know better than to rob banks loaded with cameras and money packs with dye.

"Most robbers rob establishments that don't have photographic equipment," he said. "Most robbers are not utterly brain-dead. If you rob other establishments, the FBI doesn't get involved. And that's a damn good reason not to rob a bank. . . . Your run-of-the-mill criminal has more sense than that."

Furthermore, law-enforcement officials say, they are good at solving bank robberies.

"It's good odds that if a person commits a bank robbery, he's going to be apprehended," St. Petersburg police spokesman Wendell Creager said. "We have a very high closure rate, probably higher than the majority of the crimes we investigate."

Doherty said few cases go to trial because the evidence is so damning. The suspects generally reach plea agreements before trial. And because bank robbers can be prosecuted in federal court, the penalties can be stiff, he said.

"The reason they're difficult to defend is they're guilty," Doherty said. "The chances of getting the wrong person in a bank robbery are very remote."