Status: Prank that backfired
The Brainerd Dispatch (requires registration) reports on an April Fool's Day prank that went slightly wrong, ending up with the prankster, a 57-year-old woman, getting charged with disorderly conduct:
About 10:15 a.m. Saturday, the woman stopped at Wells Fargo Bank at 424 W. Washington St. in Brainerd to make a legitimate withdrawal from an account. When she was finished, she handed the teller a note that read, "I'm here to take money," said Brainerd Police Chief John Bolduc... a bank employee called 911 indicating the bank was being robbed. Officers from Brainerd and Crow Wing County responded to the bank but the woman had left, Bolduc said. She was stopped by a Crow Wing County sheriff's deputy a short time later at Highways 18 and 25 in east Brainerd, where she was arrested for disorderly conduct and taken to the Crow Wing County jail.
I guess banks, like airports, are one place where you don't want to joke around about security issues.
Comments
Granted, the reaction he got would've been about the same anywhere he went with a gun in public, but it could've turned out VERY bad for him had I not known who he was. The FBI takes a slightly darker view of people with guns in banks. They're definitely not a place you want to joke around in.
Banks in high-crime areas will have the aforementioned double-locking doors, though they're usually *NOT* keyed to metal (bags of coins count as metal). More draconian measures are fast-closing shutters, bullet-proof glass, and even tear-gas launchers.
In any case, that sort of thing would get you in trouble, even before 9/11, and with everyone and their cousin jumpy, they're not gonna ask questions after..
I've been to the bank on multiple occasions (in the drive-up line) when the shades get pulled & "CLOSED" signs go out...middle of the day. I just assumed they were getting robbed, or having a drill or something. Boy, was I ticked.
Plus, the service is always terrible.
If that last detail has nothing to do with your story, then why mention it at all? :roll: