Bullets, Bombs, and Fast Talk by James Botting

Author:James Botting
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
Published: 2008-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

HARVEY LEE GREEN AND THE TRI-LATERAL COMMISSION

Harvey Lee Green was one of those guys who had trouble pushing a broom in a work release center. A Vietnam vet with an alcohol problem, a drug habit, and a dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps, Green had come back from the war with extra baggage. Trouble was, life had no distance for Harvey. It was all about just getting across the street safely. He was kind of an African-American Forrest Gump. Unfortunately for us in the LA FBI office, Harvey Lee Green was living in Hollywood.

One ugly gray morning in the spring of 1988, while the pigeons were still picking at the night’s leftovers under the bus benches, Harvey was sauntering down Hollywood Boulevard trying to find his way to work. He carried a bag of laundry over his shoulder. As he passed by a branch of the Bank of America, he was suddenly overcome by inspiration. He turned into the bank, waited patiently in line, and then when it was his turn announced to the teller that he was robbing the bank. He smiled and then made a point of telling her that he was carrying a bomb in the bag over his shoulder.

Some tellers freeze, some cry, some pee in their pants, and others just hand over the money. This one calmly pulled the robbery alarm triggering the police and FBI into action. And then she told Harvey it’d be a minute or two while she rifled through her cash drawer making sure that she gave him all the bait money. Because his pickled brain functioned in slow motion while the neurons searched for a connection, Harvey smiled at her and waited patiently instead of becoming agitated.

Harvey had also never heard of the Two Minute Rule. Every experienced bank robber knows that staying in a bank longer than two minutes exponentially increases your chances of getting caught. Get in and get out in two minutes, and you may be able to beat the black-and-whites responding to the robbery alarm that some teller down the line has pulled while you were looking the other way or cramming the money into that Carl’s Jr. lunch bag, unless you have an off-duty cop standing in line behind you. Then it can really get interesting.

Los Angeles is known as the bank robbery capital of the United States, so cops all know what to do. So do the FBI agents. Friday is bank robbery day, and the record still stands at twenty-eight. Fourteen on Saturdays after the S&L’s decided to remain open. In 1992 the Los Angeles area experienced 2,641 bank robberies. So everyone in Los Angeles with a police radio hears “2-11” (robbery) alarms all day long. In most cities, a 2-11 alarm will pump up the adrenaline of all the cops on the street. In Los Angeles, it just becomes an annoyance. You also have to understand that while driving around in the sprawling city of LA, you may still be ninety minutes driving time from a bank that just got robbed.

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