Question

Do banks have silent alarms?

Answer 1

Most banks do have a silent alarm system that the teller can press to summon the police.

However it's usually not safe to try and press the button until after the bank robber is gone which kind of defeats the purpose of the silent alarm system.

Usually the tellers are told to give the bank robber the money and then press the button afterwards so that the bank robber leaves the bank and hopefully does no harm.

When my mom worked in a bank she was always told to go alone with what the bank robber demanded and just hand over the money.

The money that she handed the bank robber also included a die packet that was set to go off after the bank robber got out of the bank.

If the bank robber stuck their hand in the money then the die would get all over their hands and then there would be a certain soap to get the dye off of their hands.

Then the teller would press the silent alarm to alert the police to the bank robbery and the police would then arrive and then go out searching for the bank robber.

It's best to let the bank robber get out of the bank before the police show up because then it could lead to a hostage situation and the bank robber could hold the teller at hostage when the police show up.

So they usually give the bank robber the money and then alert the police to avoid a potentially deadly hostage situation.

Answer 2

The bank I worked in for a few years had a silent alarm and thankfully I never had to use it but there was a button under the teller counter where I could easily push the button without the bank robber knowing about it.

The silent alarm would then send a signal to the police and then the police would come to our aid.

But we were told to always hand over the money the bank robber and then put a dye packet in with the money without the robber knowing about it so it makes the money unusable and easy to detect that it was robbed.

Then we let the robber get away and we already have the police arriving while the bank robber tries to get out of the bank.

Our bank also had alarm strips embedded in the glass of the windows so if someone touched the glass or broke the glass the alarm would silently go off and send the police as well.