'Do You Know Me???' asks MySpace page by police tracking robber
Last updated Saturday, March 3, 2007 10:13 PM CST in News
By Jon Gambrell
The Associated Press
LITTLE ROCK -- He's about 60, with graying hair and a bald spot on the crown of his head -- and he looks forward to meeting "more bank tellers so that I can continue my crime spree!!!"
As police continue searching for a suspect in four bank robberies across Arkansas, one local department has taken the unusual step of creating the man a profile on the social networking Web site MySpace, hoping someone will recognize him.
"He's not like a lot of bank robbers where he wears a mask or something to conceal his face," said Fort Smith police Sgt. Jarrard Copeland, who created the page. "The pictures are definitely clear enough and there's enough of his face and facial features exposed that someone who knows him will definitely recognize him and hopefully they'll call police."
Copeland, aided by his fiancee who once had a MySpace profile, created the page to nab the bank robber. The suspect's first robbery occurred Jan. 8 at a U.S. Bank branch in North Little Rock. Two weeks later, on Jan. 24, he robbed the First National Bank at Fort Smith, moving from one teller to the next over, police said.
On Feb. 12, the suspect entered the Bank of the Ozarks in Van Buren and robbed a teller there. During the latest robbery, at a U.S. Bank branch in Alma on Feb. 22, the suspect wore a blue jacket with "FBI" lettering on the left front and a blue ball cap.
Amid a backdrop of $100 bills and a song from a "Police Academy" film, Copeland laid out the information about the bank robber on the page -- he's suspected in four robberies in Arkansas in the last two months. However, the police sergeant appears to channel the exclamation-heavy prose of a MySpace-addled teen, titling the page "I rob banks for a living!!!!!"
"I am average height and weight but I have very noticable (sic) scaring (sic) on my neck and lower jaw," the profile reads. "These scars were likely caused by acne earlier in life but there's no hiding it."
A series of bank security camera photographs flash as a slideshow on the page. A linked photo gallery shows other stills, including captions like "Here I am robbing the Van Buren bank. See my little gun?" and "I'm robbing the bank in Fort Smith here.... I'm so cool!!!"
The circulated photos so far have not yielded an arrest, which Copeland said "leads us to believe he's living outside of this media market."
"We figure that might be one way to get this photo outside of the market," he said.
Steve Frazier, an FBI spokesman based in Little Rock, said his agency "didn't have a problem" with the MySpace effort, though they would stick with their traditional bulletins to the media. Frazier said agents met with the state police and local police departments this week to discuss leads on the case.
"We're working it pretty strong," Frazier said. "Whenever they commit multiple bank robberies, we throw a lot of resources at it.
The page already had 142 visits two hours after going live Friday, Copeland said. But as far as the comic captions, Copeland said he didn't go out of his way to ridicule the robber.
"I'm not concerned about taunting him," he said. "If it can get him flustered and it can cause him to slip up and make a mistake, it might help us apprehend him."
Web Watch:
MySpace page: www.myspace.com/bankrobber2007
Fort Smith Police Department: http://www.fortsmithpd.org/
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Yourspace Cadet wrote on Mar 4, 2007 7:11 AM: