Austin Chief of Police Stan Knee addressed the Austin City Council on Thursday on the recent high number of robberies that have occurred this year, specifically bank robberies.
Austin has averaged 16 bank robberies a year over the past three years, Knee said, but Austin has seen 22 bank robberies and two attempted bank robberies since January.
"I come from Southern California, which is the bank robbery capital of the United States," Knee said, "and in my 35 years, 29 of which were in Southern California, I have never seen the explosive increase in numbers that I have here, [at the] first of the year in the city of Austin."
There have been 16 arrests made in the 24 instances, Knee said. Most of the robberies occurred in the area around the intersection of Interstate 35 and U.S. 183.
"Generally, [the suspects] are involved in narcotics ... that being the reason why they have committed the bank robberies," Knee said.
Several of the apprehended suspects have also committed bank robberies in other cities, like Dallas and Corpus Christi, Knee said.
"For the first time in at least three years, we've seen what we refer to as 'serial bank robbers,'" Knee said.
Knee said APD maintains several initiatives in an attempt to prevent such incidents. One main procedure is the Internal Task Force, made up of more than 60 officers and detectives who perform stakeouts and gather information from other cities when suspects are suspected of committing bank robberies outside of Austin.
APD also tries to analyze crimes so they can place additional resources where the department thinks robberies are most likely to occur.
Bank Robbery Prevention Seminars have been held to better equip bank employees with the knowledge they need in the case of a bank robbery occurring.
"We're putting the word out and reminding folks who'll be coming in contact with petty criminals that each time they rob a bank, they face up to 20 years of imprisonment for each count," Knee said. "We're trying to make sure people understand that robbing banks is not a simple process with no count of accountability after you do that."
Residential and individual robberies are also prevalent in Austin, especially within the Hispanic community, Knee said. Citywide, 90 robberies occur a month. Eighty percent are of individuals; 52 percent of the victims are Hispanic. These numbers are slightly down from previous years, but still too high, Knee said.
"We've really over the last several years taken a lot of time and put forth a lot of effort in which to address this issue," Knee said. "Recently we added two additional detectives to the robbery unit. We've increased the number of Spanish speaking detectives in the robbery unit as well as support personnel, and the victims services person is bilingual, as is the administrative person."
The APD is also working with Spanish language media to promote robbery prevention and event response, he said.
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