As recently as last month, a man sporting dark glasses, long sleeves and a flat-rimmed hat walked into a Scarsdale bank, slipped a teller a note reading “GIVE ME ALL YOUR (…)” and simply walked out and made off down the street.
Photos and video surveillance of the Scarsdale robbery was released to the public, and the suspect was sought by police using bloodhounds to track him. He presented no weapon during the robbery, and no one was injured. It remains unclear how much money the suspect walked away with.
Scarsdale police, utilizing every asset from the FBI Bank Robbery Task Force and the Westchester County District Attorney’s Financial Crime Division, have so far been unsuccessful in apprehending the suspect.
“The suspect did obtain cash from the teller, but we are not disclosing the amount,” Scarsdale Police Capt. Thomas Altizio stated. “The investigation is still very active, with DNA samples being submitted to the Westchester County Forensic Lab and hours of surveillance video from all around the downtown area being analyzed, with more video expected to come.”
In the past few years, banks in Eastchester, Scarsdale, Yonkers, Tuckahoe, Brewster and in nearby Greenwich and Fairfield have been victimized by robbers, most of which did not involve weapons.
As a result, a Westchester Bank Robbery Task Force was created last year, including investigators from Briarcliff Manor, Bronxville, Carmel, Greenburgh, Tuckahoe, White Plains, the state and Westchester County police departments and FBI to combat what Public Safety Commissioner George Longworth described as “brazen bank robbers that struck multiple communities.
“The approach forms a model for how we proceed in the future to investigate major crime patterns that cross jurisdictional boundaries,” he said. “We need to look for a shared service effort and pool resources and investigative leads.”
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