Editorials

A harrowing event visited this community last Wednesday.

That's when two men with panty hose pulled over their heads robbed a branch of Wachovia Bank in Lenlock and kidnapped two women, who they later released in Gadsden. No arrests have been made in the case.

The only good news — miraculously, that is — is that no one was killed or seriously injured.

It could have been much worse. Thank goodness it wasn't.

Unfortunately, there also is this: An internal Wachovia e-mail from executives to branch officials in Calhoun County, dated July 15 and later leaked to The Star, contained specific information about a possible bank robbery.

Citing FBI information, the e-mail mentioned three possible robbery dates, including July 16, the date of the Lenlock robbery. The e-mail also specified a three-hour time window when the robbers might strike. As it turned out, the two men did rob the Wachovia Lenlock branch during that time.

So, if the FBI had such good information, why were the robbers still successful?

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that local law enforcement officials had no idea the FBI had the information, and because the FBI didn't share it.

Both Calhoun County Sheriff Larry Amerson and Anniston Chief of Police Johnny Dryden say their offices received no information from FBI officials before the robbery, although Amerson did receive a request from another area bank for additional security last week, which he provided.

Amerson told The Star that his office does occasionally get information about possible threats to area banks, but rarely, he said, are they as detailed as this one.

It is also disturbing that not all of the banks got the message. While the corporate office of Wachovia was notified by FBI officials, at least one independent bank in Anniston, Noble Bank on Quintard Avenue, was not.

When reached in his Birmingham office, FBI spokesman Paul Daymond repeated what he said to Star reporter Nick Cenegy last week — that the FBI does not "sit on information" when it has specific knowledge of a potential crime.

"We are not trying to withhold information," he told The Star's editorial page. "But based on the intelligence we received, we did notify the law enforcement authorities we thought were appropriate at the time."

Daymond would not say which authority or authorities were notified.

When asked why Noble Bank officials were not alerted, Daymond said he had not seen the intelligence, but it may have been so specific that not all banks in the area needed to be alerted.

"Hindsight is 20-20," Daymond said. "Should we have done something different, should we have alerted the sheriff, for example? Maybe, but based on the information we had at the time, we alerted those people we thought needed to know."

It's unproductive to pretend to know the intricacies of law enforcement or the particulars of FBI intelligence. But from a strict, common-sense way of looking at the situation, it seems that the better course of action would have been for an FBI agent to pick up the phone and call the local cops.