ATM Safety Bills Stalled After Amy Lord's Death
BOSTON (CBS) – In the months after Amy Lord's death there was a push for new laws requiring increased safety measures at ATM's. But WBZ-TV found more than two years later, those bills have gone nowhere.
The ATM safety bills would have required better lighting, locking doors, and mirrors. The biggest change would have been a requirement that all ATM's have a "panic button" that would connect to local police in an emergency.
A previous victim of an ATM crime had been pushing for the changes for 15 years. In 2014, the man told WBZ's I-Team, "what happened to Amy Lord might not have happened had these measures been in place, but we'll never know."
A bill introduced by Sen. Brian Joyce never passed.
It came up against heavy opposition from the banking industry. The Massachusetts Bankers Association said of the Lord case, "As far as we can see in that instance, there was really nothing else the banks could have done."
The organization has spent more than $1 million lobbying the legislature on a variety of industry topics. As for the ATM bill, they argued there aren't enough ATM crimes to justify the measures.
Despite the attention, the bill the ATM panic button bill never passed. This session, it is being introduced again.
Co-sponsor Representative Chris Walsh (D-Framingham) says it is certain to face opposition. He says there are legitimate questions about false alarms, whether the requirements are really justified and a lack of data.
"If you don't have the statistical background knowledge of what's really happening, how much do we want to intervene into something that might not be terribly broken," he explained.
Walsh says this version of bill calls for a deeper dive into the data to determine how often and where ATM crimes happen.
He admits, two years after Amy Lord's murder, the bill's passage remains a long shot.