Bank Robberies Have Almost Doubled in the Last Year in New York City

While the general message from the Bloomberg administration has been that crime is down, that people are healthier, that everything is groovy, the New York Times City Room blog reports on a crime increase in one area: Bank robberies in New York City nearly doubled from 2010, when there were 26, to 2011, when there were 44 armed incidents. Of course, this is still nothing like the gritty days of yesteryear (in 1979 there were 319 armed bank robberies). But still! To what do we attribute this increase, which, along with more man-on-bank crime, has brought us cinema-ready villains like the "Bouquet Bandit" (above, caught) and the "Dapper Bandit," a/k/a Dana Connor, pictured after the jump, who is still on the loose?

The Times reports that because bank robberies had actually decreased, in 2010, the NYPD pulled the six detectives from the Joint Bank Robbery Task Force, which "for more than 30 years had handled armed bank robberies in the city."

In the months that followed, bank robberies went up, and the amount of cases closed has decreased by, in some cases, half:

Of the 44 bank robbery cases last year, 17 were closed by year's end, with 10 arrests (some were multiple hits by the same suspect), for a 39 percent clearance rate. In past years, clearance rates have sometimes been twice that.

There are currently five unsolved robbery patterns -- and of those, the only suspect named is Dana Connor, who as recently as December 27 allegedly robbed the Citibank at 1 Park Place. He's wanted for 10 jobs in all.

As for the haul related to the risk of attempting to rob a bank, it sounds like a take of as little as $1,000 is typical -- though law enforcement apparently doesn't like to talk much about the crimes that have been "successful" (as in, lucrative) so as not to entice others to try their hand at a heist.

And...this just in:

One Thing Hasn't Changed: Banks Have the Money [NYT]

[JDoll / @thisisjendoll]

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