There have been three bank robberies in the Odessa during the last couple of months. One was on November 12, and two occurred within an hour of each other on December 17.
Last January 27 there was a bank robbery in Odessa, and the description of the robber has some similarities to the descriptions of the others. Here's the way they were described:
January 27 robber: Hispanic male 5 feet 7 inches tall, black hair and fair skin, wearing a blue sweatshirt, blue sweatpants and a blue baseball cap;November 12 robber: No description reported by Odessa American;
December 17 robber #1: Hispanic male between 5 feet 7 and 5 feet 10 inches tall, dark complexion and wearing a white baseball cap, a gray hooded pullover sweatshirt and a nylon blue jacket;
December 17 robber #2: Man weighing between 160 and 170 pounds with mustache, wearing a black baseball cap, gray sweatshirt, blue jeans and sunglasses.
Well, it could be the same guy. It's interesting that the December 17 robber #1 didn't get any money, and the second robbery occurred an hour later. All of the robberies involved the handing of a note to a teller.
One would think that video images of these robberies would be shown on tv so that anyone who recognized the robber could come forward. But, no. There was a grainy video shown on tv after the December 17 robbery, and I made the observation that the video quality of tapes of bank robberies was pitifully poor.
So, I suspect that there just aren't any useful images of the guy. And, I'll just restate my previous conclusion, and that is that bank managers must have assessed the risk of a robbery and have determined that it isn't worth the money to upgrade their video equipment. It will be interesting to observe how much longer the serial bank robber continues to operate before they do that.
[Aside: If I were in the video equipment business I would certainly be calling on Odessa banks to try to sell them some new gear.]
Bill Vanderland, Midland FBI special agent in charge described bank robbers as follows:
"In my experience, people who rob banks are the lowest average IQ of any criminals we deal with," Vanderland said. "They're fairly desperate people without good judgment. They're not the rocket scientists of the criminal community."
As I stated before, it's a pass/fail test, and so far the robber is scoring a passing grade.
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