Retired burglar Jack Dakswin—a pseudonym—told me his story over Skype and, to a certain extent, e-mail.
Witold Rybczynski’s question “Where is the front door?” comes from his book How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).
The specific flights with the LAPD Air Support Division described in this chapter took place in July 2013 and January 2014; quotations or references to conversations with LAPD pilots and tactical flight officers come from my interviews. The NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory study of aerial policing in Los Angeles is called “Effectiveness Analysis of Helicopter Patrols,” published in July 1970. The full text can be found on archive.org.
Mike Davis’s City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (London: Verso Books, 1990) remains a provocative introduction to L.A.
The anthropological study of CCTV control rooms mentioned in this chapter is called “Behind the Screens: Examining Constructions of Deviance and Informal Practices Among CCTV Control Room Operators in the UK” by Gavin J. D. Smith (Surveillance & Society 2, no. 2/3 [2004]).
Grégoire Chamayou’s essay “‘Every Move Will Be Recorded’: A Machinic Police Utopia in the Eighteenth Century” was published online by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and is available on the institute’s website (mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de).
More information about “stepped frequency continuous wave” radar technology can be found at the website of L-3 CyTerra (cyterracorp.com). The court case involving the man in Wichita, Kansas, was covered extensively in the media; in particular, see “New Police Radars Can ‘See’ Inside Homes” (Brad Heath, USA Today, January 2015) and “Police Home Radar a Possible Amendment Violation” (editorial, USA Today, January 2015). Kyllo v. United States was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on February 20, 2001, and decided June 11, 2001.
Tad Friend’s article about high-speed car chases in Los Angeles is called “The Pursuit of Happiness” (New Yorker, January 23, 2006). The interview with LA Creek Freak blogger Jessica Hall was conducted by Judith Lewis (“The Lost Streams of Los Angeles,” LA Weekly, November 2006).
FBI special agent Brenda Cotton spoke to me as part of a symposium I organized while director of Columbia University’s Studio-X NYC, an off-campus event space in Manhattan; the specific event was part of a film festival called “Breaking Out & Breaking In” (April 2012). Cotton appears briefly in the memoir of retired special agent William J. Rehder, written with Gordon Dillow, called Where the Money Is: True Tales from the Bank Robbery Capital of the World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003). Chapter 4, “The Hole in the Ground Gang,” was particularly useful for this book, but I recommend the entire book. The June 1986 heist by the Hole in the Ground Gang was not widely covered in the media at the time. However, see “Burglars Dig Tunnel into L.A. Bank, Take $91,000” (Ashley Dunn, Los Angeles Times, August 1987) and “Tunnels to Lucre: Cases of Bank Thefts by ‘Sophisticated’ Burrowing May Be Linked” (David Freed, Los Angeles Times, August 1987); more recently, see “Boring Thieves Had Tunnel Visions” (Steve Harvey, Los Angeles Times, December 2009). The lunch with Rehder described in this chapter took place at the Spitfire Grill in Santa Monica, in June 2012. The website for Rehder’s new consulting firm run with Douglas Sims, Security Management Resource Group, can be found at bankrobberysecuritysolutions.com.
The story of Albert Spaggiari has been told and retold dozens of times. Although he has since disowned it, novelist Ken Follett’s nonfiction book Under the Streets of Nice: The Bank Heist of the Century—which is essentially just Follett’s revision of a book originally written by René Louis Maurice—is nonetheless interesting. See also “Albert Spaggiari, 57, Mastermind of Notorious Riviera Bank Heist” (Constance L. Hays, New York Times, June 1989). In August 2010, a member of Spaggiari’s gang, Jacques Cassandri, published a book claiming that he, not Spaggiari, had planned the heist; Cassandri’s book, La vérité sur le casse de Nice (The truth about the Nice heist) was published in French under the pseudonym Amigo. Sensational headlines notwithstanding, Cassandri’s role as the true mastermind has not been confirmed. See “Police Arrest Mastermind of 1976 French Ocean’s Eleven Bank Heist” (Henry Samuel, Telegraph, January 2011). As this book went to press, Cassandri was out on bail.
“Crumbly Berlin sand” refers to Berlin’s having seen more than its share of bank tunnel jobs over the decades; a local criminal is even dubbed the Tunnelgangster by German media. See “Berlin Bank Robbers Dug 30-Metre Tunnel into Safe” (Associated Press, January 2013) and “Mystery Bank Heist Is Flashback to Berlin’s Murky Underworld” (Joseph de Weck, Bloomberg Business, January 2013). Although I refer to this story in the getaway chapter, it is relevant to mention it here: “Berlin Bank Robbers Escape … Right Under Cops’ Noses” (Rick Atkinson, Washington Post, June 1995).
The anecdote about New Songdo City came from an interview with a New York City–based IT consultant who requested anonymity due to the nature of his remarks.
Richard Stark’s novel The Score (reissued in 2009 by the University of Chicago Press) remains a great read, with a brilliant premise, and should be adapted for the screen. Breakout (New York: Mysterious Press, 2002) is another worthwhile Stark novel, featuring the elaborate heist of a converted armory. Note that “Richard Stark” was a pen name for novelist Donald E. Westlake, whose books The Hot Rock (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1970) and Thieves’ Dozen (New York: Mysterious Press, 2004) are particularly enjoyable.
Bill Mason’s memoir, Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief (New York: Villard, 2003), written with Lee Gruenfeld, is a thoroughly enjoyable introduction to the life of a cat burglar. Mason’s appearance on CNN was in September 2003; a transcript of the show is available online.
My conversation with Jack Dakswin—a pseudonym—took place over Skype, with some preliminary details shared over e-mail. The book I refer to here, Local Code: The Constitution of a City at 42 Degrees North Latitude by architect Michael Sorkin, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 1996 and appears to be out of print. “Where Have All the Burglars Gone?” was published by The Economist in July 2013.
The long section in the middle of this chapter about burglary law, history, and theory relies upon a handful of texts. “‘Breaking the Plane’ in Burglary Cases” by Nate Nieman appeared on the Northern Law Blog in March 2011; there, Nieman specifically discusses an Illinois Supreme Court case called State v. Beauchamp. The Illinois State Bar Association also discusses this case in a weekly roundup on their blog; see “Quick Takes from Thursday, Feb. 3, Illinois Supreme Court Opinions” (Chris Bonjean, Illinois State Bar Association, February 2011). “Statutory Burglary—the Magic of Four Walls and a Roof” by Minturn T. Wright III was published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review 100, no. 3 (December 1951). The state burglary laws of Nebraska, New York, and California, referenced in this chapter, can all be found online. The Brooklyn Bridge white-flag stunt was well documented by The New York Times: see “A Brooklyn Bridge Mystery: Who Raised the White Flags?” (Vivian Yee, New York Times, July 2014), “German Artists Say They Put White Flags on Brooklyn Bridge” (Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, August 2014), and “Charges Weighed in Flag Swap After 2 Say They Did It” (Joseph Goldstein, New York Times, August 2014). The quotation “there is a possibility you could charge burglary” was found in this latter article.