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Two years in the making, a new crime database could help banks drastically improve robbery response and prevention.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has approximately 30,000 computerized robbery case files that banks use to get details about crimes and arrests. But due to scant resources and limitations on technology, much of the data in the system falls woefully short of what the banking industry needs.
In some cases, the information is incomplete or outdated because local law enforcement officials are slow in reporting robberies to the FBI. And the antiquated system makes it difficult to analyze the data for emerging trends.
"Some information that's important for us is not in the current reporting," says Stephanie Clarke, the Tacoma, Wash.-based national manager for physical security services at KeyBank in Cleveland. "Things like, what attributed to an arrest how was that person arrested, and was it from security measures we had in place?"
So Clarke and other security officials at major banks are spearheading a project with the American Bankers Association to develop a more modern robbery database. Two years in the making, the system, called BanCAPture, allows banks to submit robbery details directly to the FBI, rather than through local law enforcement agencies, so that the bureau can more quickly analyze the data and help banks improve their security. Just as importantly, the database will also allow banks to share crime information with each other, oftentimes leading to more immediate alerts to potential threats in banks' geographic areas.
"It gives us a much better means to clearly identify and analyze trends that are occurring, and to quickly recognize where we're having an increase in robberies," says Terry Huskey, a Charlotte, N.C.-based senior vice president and physical security director for Wells Fargo. "It also offers us an opportunity to join forces and tackle the problem together as opposed to try to adjust it individually."
Though BanCAPture is technically still in a test phase, several large banks are already using it? enough so that data can come in from 40 percent of the nation's branches.
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