Police accuse bank robbery suspect of gobbling up note (with dashcam video) 
 
 Police accuse bank robbery suspect of gobbling up note (with dashcam video) 
 
 By Gina Mace 
 
 Special to the Beacon Journal 
 
 Police believe they have their man. 
 
 But they fear their suspect in a bank robbery may have eaten some of the evidence — the note handed to a Streetsboro bank teller demanding cash — while he was handcuffed and leaning over the hood of a police cruiser. 
 
 Twinsburg police Patrolman Daniel Biada said a dash cam video of Thursday's arrest of John H. Ford, 35, of Cleveland, shows Ford gobbling a piece of paper while officers searched his pockets. 
 
 ''As we're searching him, officers are removing items and throwing them on the cruiser [hood],'' Biada said. ''We're searching him for weapons. We're not looking at his head.'' 
 
 The whereabouts of the note demanding money came into question after Biada was taken into custody and Streetsboro investigators asked whether officers had found the piece of paper. 
 
 Twinsburg police reviewed the images captured on camera and said they observed Ford leaning over to eat something off the hood of the cruiser. 
 
 ''He grabbed it in his mouth, just like Pacman,'' Biada said. ''He just ate it right there.'' 
 
 Authorities said they found a .38-caliber pistol on the driver's side floor of Ford's car and a wad of cash covered in red ink on the passenger side of the vehicle. 
 
 Ford is also a suspect in bank robberies in Stow and Akron. 
 
 In the Streetsboro case, a man walked into the FirstMerit branch on state Route 14 around 10 a.m. and handed a teller a note that demanded money. The robber did not produce a gun inside of the bank. 
 
 Witnesses say he fled in a dark Ford Escort. 
 
 Twinsburg police stopped Ford, who was driving a black Ford Escort, on Interstate 480 shortly after the robbery was reported and turned him over to Streetsboro police. ||||| A "brazen" trio has robbed nearly two dozen Los Angeles area banks in the span of seven months and police, worried that the bandits' attempts may become violent, appealed last week to the public for help in catching them. 
 
 The suspects are still on the loose, Det. Joe Harris with the Los Angeles Police Department's Robbery-Homicide Division told NBC News Friday, a week after the department released security footage of the three men and asked the public to call in any information that might lead to their arrests. 
 
 The LAPD decided to release the videos because police have "had it" with the volume of heists connected with the group — 23 since November, Harris said. 
 
 "They're hitting all over the place," he said. 
 
 Typically, the thieves casually walk into their target bank and one hands a teller a note, according to the LAPD. "They demand money and claim to be armed while threatening violence if their demands are not met," said a statement from the department. 
 
 No one has been physically hurt to date by the robbers, who have been dubbed the "Cold Hand Bandits" because one of the suspects wore winter gloves during one of the first robberies, said Laura Eimiller with the Los Angeles FBI office. But authorities worry that the violent threats on the notes might become reality if the robbers don't get what they want. 
 
 LAPD's robbery homicide division seeks the public's help in identifying bank robbery suspect. LAPD 
 
 The FBI is working with the LAPD, along with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Alhambra Police Department, Pasadena Police Department and Long Beach Police Department to identify and catch the three suspects, who are considered "armed and dangerous," according to the LAPD. 
 
 "It is scary," said the manager of a bank that the "Cold Hand Bandits" have robbed twice. 
 
 The manager, who didn't want to be identified for security reasons, told NBC News she will be on edge until the robbers are caught, but the chance of robberies is always a fear. "Working with cash, that’s the worry that we have every day," she said. 
 
 The most recent robbery took place in late April and was a repeat performance at a bank in the city of Artesia that the suspects had robbed ten days earlier, according to security footage released by the LAPD that showed portions of five different robberies. 
 
 Footage from April 18 shows a single robber handing a teller a note and then exiting with a wad of cash she hands him. 
 
 In footage from April 28, one of the suspects wanders the lobby of the bank, brandishing what appears to be a gun, while another suspect jumps over the counter. At least two tellers drop to the floor as the robber behind the counter opens drawers, using his shirt in an apparent bid to avoid leaving behind fingerprints. 
 
 One teller gets up to open a drawer that requires a key, and the robber fills a bag with what appears to be cash before he and the man with the gun run out of the bank. 
 
 "This isn’t amateur hour," Det. Charles Geiger of the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division told NBC Los Angeles. "The next level is people get tied up, maybe somebody gets hurt.”
– It was almost a good idea. Above the Law takes note of a video making the rounds of a bank robbery suspect in Ohio. When an officer finds the alleged note to the teller and dumps it on the hood of the cruiser, the man eats it without the cops noticing. Too bad for him, a dashboard cam captured it all. ''He grabbed it in his mouth, just like Pacman,'' an officer tells the Akron Beacon Journal. ''He just ate it right there.'' Lucky for police, they also found a pistol and ink-stained cash in the suspect's car.