What has 395,000 locations, runs through $10.1 billion a year and is the capital "C" in CASH COW? The answer is your friendly, neighborhood ATM. It's part of a larger family of machines stretched across the planet, in 7-11s, free standing kiosks in shopping centers, the supermarket where you shop, and on and on. It's become part of our lives, something we depend on for its convenience. And of course, the owners of ATM's don’t do too bad with the fees they hit us with. We certainly pay for the convenience. I suspect it helps banks with their overhead too, no human tellers, just machines to spit out the money and add up the fees.

Even though I hate getting my monthly statement when they dollar me to death, this was not a motivation for our I Team story. The motivation came from some interesting Internet research our team came up with. The story was given to reporter Lauren Reynolds, photojournalist Michael Gonzalez, I team researchers Sarah Steadman and Stacy Lee to develop, and it has turned out to be a MOST curious story.

It began after we found U.S.Department of Justice statistics and information on ATM crimes. Using this, we could tell our audience what an ATM thug "looks" like. We could provide a profile of the typical gun- or knife-toting hood that will do what it takes to get your money. We got all of that, no problem. To go with this story, we wanted to find out which ATMs in our region have the greatest incidence of robberies. That's something you would think would be available with a little digging. Not so. We checked with the San Diego Police Department, and they told us ATM crimes were considered street robberies, and no specifics on ATM crimes were available. They were all lumped togther. We knew about a specific ATM location at College and El Cajon that had been hit twice in one week last year and asked for information on those crimes but were told by a police spokesperson "there was no significant public interest" in releasing the information If I was one of the "public" who used this particular Washington Mutual ATM I probably would probably have a great deal of interest in a robbery series. But it’s not just our local “we know what's best for you” police department. We also found Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver and St.Louis police departments didn't track ATM crimes. Now that seems odd. Or maybe it is just me. We knew the feds don’t have any information, they have to depend on the locals to feed it up the line to them.

So who better to know about ATM holdups than the banks that control most of them? After all, it is their bal game. So we contacted the California Bankers Association and the American Bankers Association. Before we did, we did find they both have the same outdated 12-year-old information on their Web sites. Twelve years old? What is that about? So we e-mailed and called both associations with this question "Does the (ABA,CBA) have any current data on ATM robberies involving customers using the machines?" You would think this sort of information would be readily available Our e-mail request and phone question went to cpaullins@cabankers.com and mmohsberg@aba.com. We explained this was for a story to air on 10News and on 10News.com Usually, well- heeled outfits get right back to you. Not these two. . So far, not even an acknowledgement of the phone calls or e mails.

At the time of publishing this blog, it's been over two days and counting.


Let me know what you think.

jwblog@10news.com