Take the cash, leave the ATM
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PETER BUFFA
I suppose we should be grateful. The bad guys are always bad, and
almost always dumb. The long list of examples grew longer in recent
days, right here in the Land of Newport-Mesa, and as recently as
Friday morning, in fact.
As reported Saturday in the paper, an alarm went off at Cheers
Liquor Store on Mesa Verde Drive in Costa Mesa at exactly 6:15 a.m.
The alarm went off because a person or persons unknown had driven a
motorized vehicle through the store’s front window, wrapped a chain
around the automated teller machine inside the store and tried to
drag it off into the night. Except, by this time, the night was the
day.
It’s called an “ATM smash and grab,” and it’s becoming fairly
common these days. I like stories about ATM smash and grabs because
they provide an answer to that very old question, “How dumb can you
be?” When it comes to bad guys, the correct answer is, of course,
“very.”
ATMs are an enormous temptation for the ethically challenged. The
public piggy banks are everywhere -- in stores, on the street --
spitting out cash like a camel with an attitude, day in and day out.
To the rest of us, the squatty little boxes are just automated bank
tellers, dispensing what is rightfully ours, no more no less. But to
what is laughingly referred to as “the mind” of a bad guy, ATMs are
steel-plated slot machines. If they can just hit the right
combination, bingo, jackpot, we have a winner.
While ATM smash and grabs are growing in number, they are not
exactly rampant. That’s because even most bad guys can figure out
that if someone is going to leave thousands of dollars in cash inside
a little box, it’s going to be a very sturdy little box. That means
you have to not only rip it free from its moorings and load it onto a
truck, but also carry it off someplace where you can bash away at it
for hours with heavy tools and equipment.
Apparently, all of this was lost on the person or persons who
mistreated the ATM at the Cheers Liquor Store on Friday morning.
Costa Mesa’s finest arrived within minutes of the alarm and found the
bad guys absent, but the ATM present and accounted for, lying on its
side in the parking lot in the chilly morning air, which is no way
for a little ATM to be treated.
According to Costa Mesa police, the little guy had a few scrapes
and scratches but hadn’t given up a dollar of its cold, soft cash.
You go, ATM. Could this sordid little tale have ended any other
way? I think not.
It’s hard enough to believe that when someone says, “How about we
drive through that window, rip out the ATM, toss it in the back of my
pickup, take it back to my place and rip it open?” someone else would
say, “Hmm. I like it.”
But what is the 6:15 a.m. part all about? Did they oversleep? Did
they get lost? I don’t get it. By 6:15, the sun was up and so were a
lot of people, including the ones in all those cars on Harbor
Boulevard, which is about 100 yards away from Cheers Liquor, and all
the people rolling out of bed in the apartments that are about 100
yards away in the opposite direction.
I have no idea exactly how many 911 calls were made at the sound
of something crashing through a plate glass window at 6:15 a.m. and
something heavy being dragged into a parking lot with a shrieking
burglar alarm blaring all the while, but I bet it was a lot.
Apparently, as the bad guys tried to wrestle the chubby little ATM
into their ride, even they realized that standing there in broad
daylight with a constant flow of early-morning commuters driving by
and the store alarm screaming nonstop behind them was not a good
thing. Was it the dumbest ATM smash and grab ever? Not really.
I think it’s a toss-up with this one, which happened in Beaumont,
Texas, on June 22, as reported by Beaumont television station
KFDM-TV. Just after 2 a.m., a police officer patrolling beautiful
downtown Beaumont sees two pickup trucks cruising by and flips on the
lights and siren fast, because one of the pickups is towing a flatbed
trailer with a rather large ATM strapped to it.
After a low-speed chase that lasts a few blocks, which is as long
as a chase in downtown Beaumont can last, the driver of the truck
towing the ATM finally pulls over and throws in the towel. It doesn’t
take long to crack the case, given the gaping hole in front of the
Gulf Employees Credit Union on Dowlen Road a few blocks away, to say
nothing of the stolen backhoe standing quiet and forlorn beside the
hole.
Moral of the story: if you do manage to get the ATM loaded onto
your flatbed with your backhoe, try covering it with something before
you drive through town.
But the bell-ringer, by far, is a caught-on-tape sequence in a
mini-mart that has been around for a few years and that you may have
seen by now. Captured on a surveillance tape, a very well fed bad guy
who has broken into a closed mini-mart is flailing away at an ATM
with a sledgehammer. He knocks it from its pedestal, then starts
pounding away at it like John Henry just before quitting time.
Eventually he is so worn out that he slumps to the floor in a
heap, just as a police car drives into the parking lot. He yanks at
the front door, which is locked, once, then twice, then takes a
mighty swing at it with his sledgehammer. The hammer bounces off the
door, hits him square in the face and lays him out cold. It didn’t
take long to crack the case.
They may be bad, but thank God they’re not bright. So anytime you
need some green, try the ATM, by all means, and take your receipt.
Just leave the machine, please.
I gotta go.
* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs
Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].
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