Widower starts push for ATM alert code

Since September, when his wife was killed in a carjacking, Michael Boyd has worked to change the laws that let her attacker go unnoticed, and on Friday he turned his crusading energy toward the banking industry.

Kimberly Boyd, 30, of Acworth was carjacked Sept. 12 by convicted sex offender Brian Clark. She died when Clark crashed her SUV while he was being followed by the civilian who shot Clark to death after the crash. Before the crash, Clark had forced Boyd to withdraw money from an automatic teller machine, and Michael Boyd says that was a missed opportunity for help.

Now Boyd is pushing the General Assembly to pass a law that would require banks to create ATM panic codes that would operate the machine normally, but alert police. Such a silent alarm, available to anyone forced to use his or her ATM card, could have given police a jump on finding his wife, Boyd contends.

His trip to the Capitol on Friday ended in a mixture of success and frustration.

Boyd said his efforts are meeting resistance from bankers. A meeting with the Georgia Banker's Association set for Friday was canceled at the last minute, he said.

"We were supposed to meet at 2, but they canceled after they heard the press would be there," Boyd said. "I told them the meeting wouldn't be recorded and that the press wouldn't be inside, but they said they didn't want to be on TV."

Joe Brannen, president of the Georgia Bankers Association, offered a different explanation. He said the meeting with Boyd was postponed because representatives of the state's credit unions couldn't attend.

"There are three groups that represent all of the state's banks and credit unions, and we wanted to meet with the Boyd family together, so we called and asked if we could postpone," Brannen said. No new meeting date had been set, he said.

Sen. John Wiles (R-Kennesaw) has introduced Senate Bill 379, which would require banks to adopt the special codes. Brannen said he doesn't think the General Assembly has the authority to make such a requirement.

And even if the bill passes, Brannen said, it would apply only to banks chartered in Georgia. That wouldn't include the banking giants that account for a large share of business.

Wiles' bill would require banks to contact police when an ATM user entered an ATM code in reverse.

Brannen said the backward PIN would violate international ATM standards.

"The International Organization for Standardization sets the rules that all banks have to abide by," Brannen said. "I wish I could wave a magic wand and change them, but they have set the four-digit, yes/no answer for codes, and we can't change that."

Boyd's trip to Atlanta wasn't wasted time. He and two experts met with Wiles to discuss their ideas.

"After our meeting, I'm going to go back and meet with the banking community and work toward a resolution," Wiles said. "I'm not a computer expert or a banker. The key thing is that I want to try to prevent what happened to Mr. Boyd's wife."

Boyd has had some success while crusading on his wife's behalf. Now the single parent of three, he has aggressively sought to spur reform of prison policies. Georgia prison officials recently have begun addressing holes in release procedures that allowed Clark, a convicted sex offender, to slip the notice of law enforcement before abducting at least two women, including Kimberly Boyd.

"What was a four-step process that obviously didn't work with Clark is now a nine-step process," Boyd said during a break in meetings at the Capitol. Clark, released from prison June 25, did not register as a sex offender, so police didn't know he was among the sex offenders living in Acworth when another woman was assaulted, abducted and forced to drive to a bank ATM to withdraw money, or when Boyd was kidnapped from her business.

"If they had known he was living there, he would have at least been sought and might have been arrested before that animal took Kim," Boyd said. Now, prison officials register sex offenders with local law enforcement before they are released rather than depending on the offender to register.