The standing instruction
Robbery response
The most important thing on this website, and the thing we will not negotiate on.
Four rules
Comply. Observe. Do not intervene.
Written into every post order, briefed at every branch, and tested rather than assumed.
- 01
Cooperate fully
Money is insured. Nobody at your branch is. An officer who complies alongside your staff is behaving correctly, not passively.
- 02
Do not draw, do not pursue
A firearm presented at a teller line puts staff and customers between two armed people. Pursuit into a car park does the same thing outdoors, with witnesses.
- 03
Observe deliberately
Height against the door frame, clothing, speech, vehicle, direction. An officer trained to observe under stress is worth considerably more afterwards than one who acted.
- 04
Account, immediately
A contemporaneous written account before anyone compares notes. Memories converge quickly once people start talking, and investigators need the separate versions.
Then why arm the officer
Because the deterrent operates before the event, during selection, and because the genuine armed exposure at a branch is around cash movement, opening and closing rather than at the counter. Those are different moments with different rules.
What we train instead of intervention
Observation under stress, which is a learned skill and degrades fast without practice. Description discipline — height against a fixed reference, not an estimate. Note-taking immediately afterwards. And managing the branch in the minutes after, while everyone is shaken.
The first ten minutes afterwards
Secure the scene, account for everyone, keep witnesses separated, preserve anything touched, and get the recording protected before it is overwritten. Officers rehearse this sequence, because nobody thinks clearly at that moment.
Your staff need to know the rule too
If your tellers expect the officer to act, the moment becomes unpredictable and dangerous. We brief branch staff explicitly on what the officer will and will not do, and that briefing is repeated when staff turn over.
Afterwards is a welfare matter
Being present at a robbery affects people for a long time, including the officer. We support your institution's process and we relieve our own officer from the post rather than putting them back on shift the next morning.