Don’t Mess With Citizens National Bank

At 11:55 a.m. on December 5, 2003, a man dressed in dark pants, a white shirt, black gloves and a black mask walked into Citizens National Bank in Mount Enterprise, Texas, pulled out a gun and held up a teller at point blank. Moments later, as he ran out of the bank with cash in hand, the camera caught him with his tongue exposed through the mask.

“My employees did everything right,” said Tommy Jimerson, assistant cashier over properties, purchasing and security for all of the CNB branches. “They gave him the money, waited till he left, and locked the doors.”

Jimerson was at the Henderson branch, 15 miles away, when the robbery happened. He called the Rusk County Sheriff Department in Henderson and the FBI in Tyler, Texas.

“The sheriff deputies from Henderson were on site before me with two cars, and two more came after, along with the FBI, who had to drive about fifty to sixty miles,” said Jimerson. “The FBI was really impressed with the images (that the digital video multiplex recorder captured of the robbery).”

While the Sheriff’s department doesn’t have any jurisdiction in Mount Enterprise, the local police asked them to step in and do the investigation.

“The head dispatcher’s wife was an employee at the bank,” said Lt. Ricky Alexander of the Rusk County Sheriff’s Department. “I took three other investigators with me. The bank copied the incident from the digital video recorder to disk and handed it to us. The images were clean and it caught him in the act. They had such a wonderful system. Based on the clarity of the images, I told my boss I’d have the guy in custody by Monday morning.”

Lt. Alexander’s team identified a possible suspect, and brought him in on charges of driving without a license.

“The digital video showed the structure of his body,” said Alexander. “He said it wasn’t him, but when he claimed to have come in from a certain direction, the cameras proved otherwise. I could sit on my own computer and move the angles on the pictures, including the camera to the parking lot.”

Alexander worked on the case all weekend.

“On Sunday at 9:30 p.m., I nailed him,” said Alexander. “A lot of it was because of the recording system that they have. The fact that they had the ability to search by the time of the event was wonderful.”

Once the robber confessed, the deputies recovered his gun and all but $200 of the stolen money.
The arrest also led the way to clearing up some other unsolved cases in which he had been involved.

The robber, in his mid-20’s pled guilty in July and is now serving 11 years.

“If other people would use Dedicated Micros’ recorders,” said Alexander, “it would make our job a lot easier. It’s a wonderful asset for law enforcement. When the FBI got there, I think they were in awe of the system as well. It’s a remarkable tool.”

Mount Enterprise, Texas is a small town with a meager population of 586, and a single stoplight. The town had its humble beginnings as the crossroads of Highways 84 and 259.

But they like it that way, because there are a lot of advantages to living in a community where everyone knows your name. After all, whether your reputation improves or goes awry, you can rest assured that everyone will know which direction it took by dinnertime.

Traffic is light, children can walk safely around town, and life is good amongst the old oaks and pines that provide shade from the Southern heat.

Many residents work for the school, the bank, or the stake mill, or drive to nearby Henderson or Nacogdoches. In addition, the town boasts a neighborhood pharmacy, a grocery store, and a few convenience stores and service stations.

But even in a quiet town, crime occasionally happens.

Citizens National Bank (CNB) opened in March of 1930, just after the Great Depression was beginning to affect the entire nation.

Over the years, the bank has grown to seventeen banks spread out over six counties from an area Southeast of Dallas to near the Louisiana State line, two drive-in facilities and an insurance company, Citizens Financial Group. The Mount Enterprise branch is the most southern of the seventeen Eastern Texas banks that are run by CNB.

As CNB acquired banks over time, they inherited diverse and outdated security systems. Jimerson had hired a trusted dealer, 3D Security Inc. in Henderson, Texas, to design and install compatible systems in each branch.

“There were all types of security installed,” said Chris Dunn, president of 3D Security Inc. “Most were six- to eight-zone panels with lots of zones tied together, such as all the holdup buttons. All had monochrome standard resolution cameras.”

CNB has always had security in its branches, but in the Mt. Enterprise branch, they had repositioned all of the cameras and installed a new digital video multiplex recorder just two weeks before the robbery. Jimerson hadn’t even had the time to get the system up on his network yet.

Dunn said that the most ineffective aspect of the original installations was the placement of the cameras and the lack of equipment maintenance.

“I like to hang my cameras low,” he said. “Most cameras were positioned too high, allowing someone wearing a cap the ability to hide his or her face.”

The banks originally had VCRs in all locations, and all of the videotape players all appeared to have 20,000 to 80,000 hours on them, and no apparent maintenance, said Dunn.

The bank originally had VCRs in most locations.

“Loading the tape, rotating it, forgetting to do it – and every time I looked for something on the tape, it wasn’t there,” Jimerson said. “Digital technology takes out the human error. You have to get one that works, and stay with it.”

Dunn chose high resolution Sony SH-SSCDC393 color cameras and Panasonic PA-WVCW474AS SuperDynamic II color cameras with Rainbow Auto Iris Varifocal lenses to give the bank clear, crisp color pictures for each bank branch. The Panasonic cameras managed the difficult outdoor lighting and Panasonic outdoor armored domes monitor the ATMs. Dunn said that the varifocal lenses were used to focus on the facial features of customers using the front teller line and exiting the bank, so that they could check personal identification as well as activity.

“Dedicated Micros’ Digital Sprite 2 DVMRs with nine- or sixteen-camera capability and 320GB hard drives allow each bank to record video at better than SVHS quality and still retain over 30 days’ archive of events recorded,” said Dunn. “These units are extremely easy to program, and have an activity detection feature to start the recording process for individual cameras. The ability to review an incident from any branch using the bank’s WAN has proven very valuable on numerous occasions. Multiple viewers can watch video from multiple locations.”

Dunn said that each branch had to be completed in one day because all vaults are on timers.

“Planning and execution must be precise,” said Dunn. “Installing a system in an existing bank building is always challenging with having to pull all new cable and wire inside and out of a building, and to do it while the bank is open makes it doubly challenging.”

Exact locations of cameras and sensors are planned and drawn out. Camera cables must avoiding florescent lights and high power cables that cause electrical interference with cameras.

“Florescent lighting works on 60 cycles per second, as do cameras,” said Dunn. “It is actually possible to have a camera blacked out because it has become in sync with the light. If you run cables in parallel with high voltage wiring, you can end up with hum bars or distortion running across the picture.”

The old security systems had a limited number of zones, so wires were tied together to keep the number of zones within the CPU size. Dunn zoned each sensor separately, which even in a small branch, adds up quickly when zoning each door, holdup button, motion detector and vault.

“We try to pull what cables we know will be a problem – such as the ones that go across the lobby – before we do anything else, so we aren’t in the way,” said Dunn. “When we go behind the teller line, we set our cameras first, then drop the cables down the walls afterwards.”

Dunn also uses a lot of wireless security equipment wherever possible, which is supervised so that management always knows the condition of each sensor.

“We put wireless holdup switches on each station,” he said. “If someone pushes the button by accident, the management will know which teller pushed the button. If you have a robbery, you’ll know where exactly the robbery is taking place.”

After the first few systems were installed, Jimerson realized the added benefits that they provided.

“I monitor all the banks from one location on Fridays,” he said. “At peak times, I can see if tellers are talking on the phone or taking care of customers. I also count customers to see if there is enough help to take care of the lobby traffic.”

All locations are single story, except the two-story main bank. That was the final bank that Dunn installed. Sixteen cameras cover both floors and are recorded on Dedicated Micros’ BX2 1TB unit.

The system has proven capabilities beyond security. A travel trailer from out of state came in the parking lot. The driver couldn’t negotiate the turn so he went through the ATM drive. He caused $10,000 of damage to the ATM and broke the entire back off of the travel trailer, including the license plate and ladder. The incident was captured by the DVMR.

“You could see his bed and everything,” said Jimerson. “We’re still working with the insurance company.”

Since the bank branches are so spread out, Jimerson also discovered that he could monitor bank renovations using Dedicated Micros’ Network Viewer over his WAN.

“I sat in my office and watched the electricians move the ladder and put the floor down in our Malakoff branch bank,” he said. “It was a six-month operation. It surprised me how they did some things. Not having to drive up there was a help. When they installed the new Formica on the teller line, the tellers had to move out in front of the counter, so I watched them during the job.”

Jimerson has monitored renovations at six locations in the past two years. He informs the contractor when work isn’t up to par or when people don’t show up, all without leaving his office.

The bank management is very impressed with the system, said Jimerson. They are in the process of building a new 3600 square feet location in Longview, and they will install the same CCTV and recording system.

So if you’re driving through East Texas one day and see the standard slogan “Don’t Mess With Texas,” changed to “Don’t Mess With Citizens National Bank,” don’t be surprised, because they don’t tolerate bank robberies or internal theft, and they’ve got the security systems to prove it.