Generally, law enforcement officers will provide
the basic details of the robbery to the media,
including how the robbery took place, suspect
description and copies of the surveillance video.
Here’s what your credit union
needs to do:
1. Designate
one person to deal with the media.
2. Inform all
other employees to refrain from speaking to the media.
3. Do not
allow the media to enter the credit union until law enforcement completes their
investigation.
4. Do not
allow media to photograph the inside of the credit union. (Legally, you cannot
prevent them from taking pictures/videos outside from public property, such as
the sidewalk.)
5. Do not
disclose the names of credit union employees or any witnesses. (They will be
able to obtain witness names from the police report without your assistance.)
6. Do not
disclose the amount of money taken.
7. Do not
discuss your security system.
8. Do not
disclose any security procedures. *
9. After consulting with law enforcement, you may
release the following to the media:
• Date and time of the robbery
• Your name and business phone number
• A brief statement assuring members it is safe to continue to use the credit
union.
10. Contact
the Idaho Credit Union League at (800) 627-1820 or (208) 343-4841 with details
of what happened.
* NOTE: Avoid statements such as "Our
people did exactly what they were trained to do. They gave the robber the money
and got the robber out of the credit union."
FBI officials inform us that these types of
statements actually encourage robbers to target credit unions and banks by
making them think they are easy targets.
