The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) -- In a period of just over an hour Monday, six Manhattan banks were targeted by robbers, including one who had held up the same bank just last month.
The series of unrelated robberies began at 1:45 p.m. Monday, when a man in his 20s entered a Citibank at 1748 Broadway and handed a teller a note demanding money. The man indicated he had a gun but when the teller did not immediately comply with his demand, he walked out empty-handed, police said.
Eight minutes later, a woman walked into a Chase Bank at 400 East 23rd Street, where she, too, passed a note to a teller. The teller gave her an undetermined amount of cash and the woman ran off, police said. Officers later arrested Susan Karp, 42, a few blocks from the bank.
At 2 p.m., a teenager tried to rob a Fourth Federal Bank at 242 West 23rd Street, also by passing a note. But the teller identified him as the same man who had held up the bank Nov. 7, and 17-year-old Tory Neely was arrested at the scene and charged with the previous robbery, police said.
Next, at 2:18 p.m., a man in his 30s slipped a note to a teller at Commerce Bank at 666 Broadway and fled with some money.
In the fifth incident, at the Chase Bank at 1 Lincoln Plaza, a man announced a robbery at about 2:30 p.m. and made off with an undisclosed amount of cash. Finally, shortly before 3 p.m., a man described as about 30 years old passed a note to a teller at the Ponce De Leon bank at 1925 Third Avenue and fled with an undisclosed amount of money.
Besides Karp and Neely, no one had been arrested in the robberies as of early Tuesday, said police spokeswoman Cheryl Crispin.
Nearly a year ago, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the city’s banks took security too lightly, forgoing bulletproof teller windows and other safety measures that would thwart unarmed robbers looking for an easy take.
In April, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said lax security had contributed to a “scourge” of heists in the city.