Take the cash, leave the ATM

PETER BUFFA

I suppose we should be grateful. The bad guys are always bad, and

almost always dumb. The long list of examples grew longer in recent

days, right here in the Land of Newport-Mesa, and as recently as

Friday morning, in fact.

As reported Saturday in the paper, an alarm went off at Cheers

Liquor Store on Mesa Verde Drive in Costa Mesa at exactly 6:15 a.m.

The alarm went off because a person or persons unknown had driven a

motorized vehicle through the store’s front window, wrapped a chain

around the automated teller machine inside the store and tried to

drag it off into the night. Except, by this time, the night was the

day.

It’s called an “ATM smash and grab,” and it’s becoming fairly

common these days. I like stories about ATM smash and grabs because

they provide an answer to that very old question, “How dumb can you

be?” When it comes to bad guys, the correct answer is, of course,

“very.”

ATMs are an enormous temptation for the ethically challenged. The

public piggy banks are everywhere -- in stores, on the street --

spitting out cash like a camel with an attitude, day in and day out.

To the rest of us, the squatty little boxes are just automated bank

tellers, dispensing what is rightfully ours, no more no less. But to

what is laughingly referred to as “the mind” of a bad guy, ATMs are

steel-plated slot machines. If they can just hit the right

combination, bingo, jackpot, we have a winner.

While ATM smash and grabs are growing in number, they are not

exactly rampant. That’s because even most bad guys can figure out

that if someone is going to leave thousands of dollars in cash inside

a little box, it’s going to be a very sturdy little box. That means

you have to not only rip it free from its moorings and load it onto a

truck, but also carry it off someplace where you can bash away at it

for hours with heavy tools and equipment.

Apparently, all of this was lost on the person or persons who

mistreated the ATM at the Cheers Liquor Store on Friday morning.

Costa Mesa’s finest arrived within minutes of the alarm and found the

bad guys absent, but the ATM present and accounted for, lying on its

side in the parking lot in the chilly morning air, which is no way

for a little ATM to be treated.

According to Costa Mesa police, the little guy had a few scrapes

and scratches but hadn’t given up a dollar of its cold, soft cash.

You go, ATM. Could this sordid little tale have ended any other

way? I think not.

It’s hard enough to believe that when someone says, “How about we

drive through that window, rip out the ATM, toss it in the back of my

pickup, take it back to my place and rip it open?” someone else would

say, “Hmm. I like it.”

But what is the 6:15 a.m. part all about? Did they oversleep? Did

they get lost? I don’t get it. By 6:15, the sun was up and so were a

lot of people, including the ones in all those cars on Harbor

Boulevard, which is about 100 yards away from Cheers Liquor, and all

the people rolling out of bed in the apartments that are about 100

yards away in the opposite direction.

I have no idea exactly how many 911 calls were made at the sound

of something crashing through a plate glass window at 6:15 a.m. and

something heavy being dragged into a parking lot with a shrieking

burglar alarm blaring all the while, but I bet it was a lot.

Apparently, as the bad guys tried to wrestle the chubby little ATM

into their ride, even they realized that standing there in broad

daylight with a constant flow of early-morning commuters driving by

and the store alarm screaming nonstop behind them was not a good

thing. Was it the dumbest ATM smash and grab ever? Not really.

I think it’s a toss-up with this one, which happened in Beaumont,

Texas, on June 22, as reported by Beaumont television station

KFDM-TV. Just after 2 a.m., a police officer patrolling beautiful

downtown Beaumont sees two pickup trucks cruising by and flips on the

lights and siren fast, because one of the pickups is towing a flatbed

trailer with a rather large ATM strapped to it.

After a low-speed chase that lasts a few blocks, which is as long

as a chase in downtown Beaumont can last, the driver of the truck

towing the ATM finally pulls over and throws in the towel. It doesn’t

take long to crack the case, given the gaping hole in front of the

Gulf Employees Credit Union on Dowlen Road a few blocks away, to say

nothing of the stolen backhoe standing quiet and forlorn beside the

hole.

Moral of the story: if you do manage to get the ATM loaded onto

your flatbed with your backhoe, try covering it with something before

you drive through town.

But the bell-ringer, by far, is a caught-on-tape sequence in a

mini-mart that has been around for a few years and that you may have

seen by now. Captured on a surveillance tape, a very well fed bad guy

who has broken into a closed mini-mart is flailing away at an ATM

with a sledgehammer. He knocks it from its pedestal, then starts

pounding away at it like John Henry just before quitting time.

Eventually he is so worn out that he slumps to the floor in a

heap, just as a police car drives into the parking lot. He yanks at

the front door, which is locked, once, then twice, then takes a

mighty swing at it with his sledgehammer. The hammer bounces off the

door, hits him square in the face and lays him out cold. It didn’t

take long to crack the case.

They may be bad, but thank God they’re not bright. So anytime you

need some green, try the ATM, by all means, and take your receipt.

Just leave the machine, please.

I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at ptrb4@aol.com.