Bank robbery influx noted by Laguna police

Laguna Beach police are puzzling over the city’s fourth bank robbery in four months, on Friday, Jan. 18, but see no clear pattern or links among the incidents, Sgt. Jason Kravetz said.

“It’s very unusual to have so many bank robberies in Laguna,” Kravetz said.

The city had gone for nearly two years without a holdup before October, 2007, when the same bank was robbed in two separate incidents about two weeks apart.

In the latest incident, Bank of America on Ocean Avenue was robbed at 5:56 p.m. Jan. 18 by a man who claimed to have a bomb device under his jacket. He escaped on foot with $2,000-$3,000. That man was described as in his sixties with a bandage on his lower chin that could have been a disguise, Kravetz said.

In October, Citizens Bank on Glenneyre Street was robbed two weeks in succession. One of the robbers was captured after a street shootout with police. The other escaped.

About a week later, Bank of America on Ocean Avenue was robbed by an allegedly homeless man who demanded $1 and was caught hiding under a blanket at Main Beach.

“There is no reason that these two banks have been targeted,” Kravetz said. The banks are located in very different parts of town, with Ocean Avenue being a high-traffic zone and Glenneyre Street a quiet, semi-residential area.

Kravetz noted that local banks have been cautioned to be cooperative with robbers for safety’s sake.

“As we can see in today’s incident [the Jan. 22 robbery in Costa Mesa that ended in a high-speed pursuit], these robberies can be dangerous,” Kravetz said.

The recent spate of robberies followed a long period of few such incidents in Laguna.

Before October, the last time a bank was robbed in Laguna was more than two years prior.

In November, 2005, World Savings Bank on Broadway was robbed by a man who handed a teller a note. That robber, dubbed the “enormous ears bandit,” was captured by the FBI in February, 2007 and accused of robbing more than a dozen banks, including the one in Laguna Beach.