Columnist: Some good news about car thefts, bank robberies

Monday, July 8, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

SUMMER, THE SEASON that many local Saturn owners have been dreading, is here.

School is out and -- judging from the auto theft patterns Metro Police officers were seeing last winter -- no Saturn should be safe.

The cars, you'll remember, were disappearing in growing numbers. In December, for example, the relatively rare Saturns accounted for 10 percent of all auto thefts in the Metro jurisdiction.

Police found that young people were using cuticle scissors to steal the cars and feared that summer, with more idle time for teens, would bring a real epidemic.

Instead, the season has brought good news for Saturn owners.

Thefts are way down, says Detective John Hanover.

In May, for example, only 12 Saturns were stolen, compared with a high of 69 in December.

Hanover attributes the steep decline to Metro's high-visibility countermeasures.

As the the Saturn thefts escalated late last fall, officers began routinely following and running the tags on Saturns driven by young people.

They also began confiscating scissors found during searches of kids who were stopped for loitering or curfew violations. In addition, Hanover says, the names of any teens found with the scissors were put on a list of possible suspects for future auto thefts.

It didn't take long for word to get around.

"Maybe we didn't get everybody who was doing it," Hanover says, "but when we're out there and they know we know they're doing it, that itself serves as a deterrent."

* The good news, sadly, does not extend to owners of Southern Nevada banks.

Robbers are still tearing up Clark County financial institutions at a record pace.

They've rung up 76 robberies during the first six months of 1996 compared with 40 for the same period last year, says FBI Special Agent Debbie Calhoun. And three more were pulled in the first three days of July.

There was, however, some much-needed comfort for those beleaguered tellers down at 3225 W. Sahara Ave. These are the folks, you may recall, who have played host to seven robbers in the last year and a half.

The embattled staff got a "bandit barrier" installed in June, three months after Wells Fargo took over First Interstate Bank and the branch in question.

The barrier is an inch-thick, bullet-resistant Plexiglas panel that extends from the counter to the ceiling. It includes a metal plate below the counter, says Wells Fargo spokeswoman Kathleen Shilkret.

If a robber demands money now, Shilkret says, "the tellers can just move back from the barriers and just stand there."

Kind of takes all the wind out of your sails if you're in a robbing mood, I'll bet.

In any case, there haven't been any robberies since the barriers were installed.

* Another bit of good news came in from Al Griffin.

One federal bureaucracy, you may recall, kept insisting Griffin was dead, while another kept insisting his dead wife show up for a disability hearing.

It cost the retired Navy aircraft mechanic $82 and lots of aggravation to "get back alive" and get his Navy pension reinstated.

Shortly after the column about him was published, Griffin says in a recent letter, the letters from Social Security to his wife finally ceased.

"We all got a good laugh about it," he writes about the column, "and I finally got an apology for all the stupid letters they sent."

* There was no good news Thursday night, however, for the scores of folks who took the word of their friendly local TV station and turned up at Hills Park in Summerlin to watch the fireworks.

Instead of fireworks, they found a concert by the Nevada Symphony Orchestra. Nevertheless, close to 100 trusting souls gathered in a field below the bandshell to view the promised pyrotechnics.

But a few minutes after 9 p.m., just as some had begun to question the news broadcast's credibility, the sprinklers came on and the dark field erupted in Pandemonium. Shouting and screaming men, women and children could be vaguely seen scurrying about in the night attempting to gather up their belongings and escape the watery fusillade.

Talk about fireworks. I wish I could have seen those TV station switchboards light up.