PNC Bank Robbery 'Not the Best Laid Plan'

A young man down on his luck and unable to make the rent on his apartment in Milwaukee returned to his parents' home in Wauwatosa on Wednesday and did what most people wouldn't do.

He planned a bank robbery.

According to police reports, the 21-year-old told officers after his arrest that he was at the home he grew up in, in the 1700 block of North 72nd Street, when he decided to rob a nearby bank. He said the selection was random; he knew the area well enough, so he picked the nearest target.

He typed up a demand note, put on a sweater, hat and aviator-style sunglasses, and walked to , 6810 W. State St.

According to witness accounts, at 1:30 p.m., he entered the bank briskly, striding past a guard who should have stopped him and asked him to remove his hat and sunglasses for video identification purposes.

He went straight to a teller and nervously unfolded his note. It contained a demand for money – specifically, for just the amount he needed to pay his rent.

The teller just as nervously counted out some bills, accidentally coming up a bit shy of the total requested, and handed it to the robber, who turned and left – and left his note lying on the counter.

The teller hit the alarm and told the guard to lock the doors, saying, "We've just been robbed."

Outside, the young man put the next part of his plan, concealing his identity, into effect. He took off his hat and sunglasses, stripped off his sweater, rolled it all into a ball and discarded it – in the street, in plain sight, not 100 feet from the bank.

A leisurely escape plan

Police swarmed toward the area from all directions, but the suspect had gotten enough time to walk away north on 68th Street and disappear. Officers got a description from witnesses as quickly as possible, but under most circumstances would have expected the perpetrator to be long gone from the immediate area by the time they knew what to look for.

But in this case, an officer searching the neighborhood well after the fact saw a young man standing idly at the out-of-the-way corner of North 67th Street and Powell Place – still only about 700 feet from the bank. His clothing did not quite match the description he had just been given, but it was close enough – he was wearing a light-colored T-shirt instead of a light-colored sweater – and in physique he looked about right.

The officer found an unfolded pocketknife with 2-inch blade in the suspect's left pants pocket and a wad of cash in large bills in his right. He handcuffed him and sat him in the back of his squad car while he investigated further.

After several more minutes had passed, the officer said, a second marked car showed up – not a squad car, but the taxicab the suspect had called to pick him up.

It soon became clear that the officer had his man, and he was placed under arrest. He willingly gave a statement admitting he had robbed the bank.

"It was," said Wauwatosa Police Capt. Jeff Sutter, "a combination of some good police work – and a moron."

Of the trail of evidence the suspect left behind and his lengthy wait for a hired getaway car, Sutter added, "It was not the best laid plan."

How to describe it?

An interesting side note to the case is that police were given a flawed piece of critical information to begin with.

Among those first called to the crime scene was the department's K9 officer with Police Dog Addy. Addy is trained not only to sniff out drugs and to take down criminal suspects but also to track.

Addy's partner took him to the bank, and the dog immediately began pulling him to the north up west side of 68th Street. Addy briefly lost the trail, but got excited again when his officer took him to the east side of the street.

Addy's head "snapped" toward a balled-up black sweater lying in the gutter, the officer said. But that must have been a mistake, he thought, because not one but two witnesses at the bank had said the man was wearing a tan or beige sweater. One of the witnesses was the teller who had been face to face with the robber, and both gave close descriptions of the suspect's pants, sunglasses and his hat, right down to its Kangol style.

But even as the officer stood over the clothing that so interested Addy, a correction came in. Despite what the witnesses thought they had seen, video footage clearly showed the suspect had been wearing a black sweater.

Don't doubt the dog. Inside the sweater were the hat and glasses.

Another note: As it turned out, to the arresting officer, the unfortunate young suspect in his light-colored T-shirt more closely resembled the initial, incorrect description than he would have had he left his black sweater on.

Even the best part of his ill-conceived plan, the quick change, had failed to serve him well.