FIGHTING CRIME AT THE CASH MACHINE
Not much stands between you and a crook at a cash machine, but security measures such as alarm buttons and secret codes might actually make you less safe.
So ATM's are really safe, right? Maybe yes, maybe NO
On a deserted street in an unfamiliar part of town, though, your antennae naturally go up, and for good reason. It seems inevitable that where there's cash, there's crime, even if the odds of getting hurt are apparently slim. The closed-circuit TVs and video cameras common at ATMs don't prevent crime so much as document it for trial
For victims -- such as a man recently robbed, bloodied and left with a shoeprint on his forehead -- those slim odds are no comfort. And efforts to arm ATMs with panic buttons and secret PIN codes not only have gone nowhere, they might actually backfire if implemented.
In the end, you're on your own at the ATM, armed with common sense.
An incomplete picture
ATM's are placed on sites where demand is greatest. Each year, the network of cash machines in the countries logs about 14 billion transactions -- or about $1 trillion worth."As a whole, they're very safe and very convenient," says Kurt Helwig, the president of the Electronic Funds Transfer Association, a trade group based in Fairfax, Va., that promotes adoption of electronic payment systems.
Violent crime at ATMs appears to be uncommon. How uncommon? on whether panic buttons and secret codes are good ideas for improving safety.
The researchers came to no conclusions. They pointed out that the only statistics on ATM crimes were sketchy, with most of the data coming from old banking industry surveys.
The surveys cite low odds --- one in 1 million to one in 3.5 million -- that you'll be robbed at an ATM. But those odds are probably useless. Without knowing how the research was done, their reliability is impossible to assess,
The real problem is, nobody is carefully tracking violent crimes being committed at ATMs,. "There's no government agency at the federal or state level that's doing it. The Authorities collects some data on bank robberies, but those data would not tell you what you want to know."
Robbery versus fraud
That's in part because crime statistics usually fail to distinguish between ATM robberies and fraud, which is another (and much bigger) issue.Also, when police tally up robberies and kidnappings, they don't typically note whether an ATM was involved. For example,a woman was abducted from her working place and forced by a stranger to drive to an ATM and withdraw cash. That crime is likely to be counted as a kidnapping, not an ATM robbery.Now how would police decide what qualified as ATM robberies? Would they count only holdups that occurred as customers withdrew money? Or would they include robberies that occurred after customers left the ATMs? If so, how far from the machines?
ATM robberies probably aren't widespread; if they were, there'd be a national hue and cry. In at least a couple of larger cities, police say they have worse things to worry about.
A worse problem, is ATM card thefts. Crooks also steal the PINs or figure them out, and then use the cards to loot bank accounts.
