Banking under the watchful eye of the law
It would be nice to live next door to the fire station if your house caught fire.
Similarly, if you want to feel safe while using an automatic teller machine, the optimum location would be at or near a police station – a site even a dul lard potential robber would avoid.
That’s the thinking of officials in Anne Arundel County, Md., a county of 460,000 people located between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, which began installing ATMs in all its police stations in 1995.
The county took this action to provide safer ATM access for its 11,824 employees and other residents after eight ATM robberies in 1995, which included an undercover officer being shot. Even though ATM robberies are statistically rare, like airplane crashes they have a disproportionately negative impact on the public’s image of safety.
Anne Arundel’s program required the cooperation of the county executive’s office, police department and employees’ credit union, which owns and operates the ATMs.
The first-year results show that their combined efforts have paid off. Countywide ATM crime decreased to one incident in 1996, and one to date in 1997 Both incidents occurred, however, at non-county ATM sites. As of June, the county reported 43,940 crime-free transactions at police station ATMs.
Anne Arundel informed the public about the ATM program through radio, television and the print media, as well as through newsletters and direct mail. In addition, large signs were placed at each police station with an ATM card symbol and police shield.
Currently six credit union-operated ATMs exist within the county: one at each of the four police stations, one inside the Arundel Center (a county complex), and one at the credit union’s main office.
The county may also install ATMs at a new courthouse and a community college, says County Executive John Gary. “The success of this program is greater than we had anticipated,” he says.
Anne Arundel claims to be the first government jurisdiction in the nation to place ATMs throughout its police stations. New York City is about to start its own program, and other cities such as Los Angeles have installed ATMs in county facilities, but only to provide greater convenience to their employees.