The Art of Catching a Thief
Protecting Your Business 101.
First of all, if you are in business, you will be burglarized, robbed or vandalized. Let me be clear, there is a 100% chance that your business will be a target. If you have already been hit, you will be hit again. Maybe you think you have done everything possible by signing up with an alarm company and installing security cameras. But I am very sure that all you have to show for your investment is a video of criminals breaking in and taking whatever they want. Will you get your stuff back, will they be caught? Not likely. You probably feel more vulnerable, less safe and more frustrated than ever before. Just wait, with the economy in the dump, there will be a lot more competition for what you have. To protect your business, you have to be prepared and you have to act.
Create an Early Warning System
Professional hoodlums ARE prepared, even if you are not. They wear hoods, masks and gloves. They rarely work alone, they have look-outs with cell phones and getaway cars. They even cover their license plates. But time is their enemy; they want to get in, get what they want and get out as quickly as possible. To catch these “slime balls”, you need as much warning as possible, even if it is only a few seconds.
Visually Verified Response
So, if you are serious about your security and business operations, then become a NetVision1 customer. If a NetVision1 customer gets a call from an alarm company, he or she can easily look online using a PC (or cell phone!!) to see what is actually happening at his business and then determine the safest, most appropriate response.
Predators will circle their prey or lie in wait before they charge. An element of surprise is an important tactic; it reduces the time their victim has to react and to defend. So, we have to do everything in our power to be ready and to become aware, as early as possible, that something bad is about to take place.
A burglar needs transportation. So there will always be at least one car or van close by, either parked or driven around. Smart thieves will usually drive by and scope out the place before making a hit. How do they know where your business is located and whether you have anything they want, if they have never been to your place. The criminals even come inside during work hours to check things out; note the date and time of suspicious people. Your cameras WILL have recorded their face at some point in time and possibly a picture of their car. It might be the association with the car that will help you put a face on a masked criminal.
So here is what we suggest you do:
– Place weatherproof infra-red motion detectors pointing outward from your vulnerable entrances.
– Put a high resolution area camera at each entrance to catch the make and model of cars and people that patronize your business.
– Install a weatherproof license plate camera focused at a pinch-point, e.g., a driveway entrance. If you are lucky, you will get the license plate of the getaway car; either during a scouting run or during the burglary or robbery.
Outside cameras should record when activated by an infra-red motion detector. And your DVR should be able to provide you with a time-stamped motion activated recording list (it will save you hours and hours of time trying to find relevant video).
For outside motion detection, do not use the motion detection built into the cameras and DVRs; they determine motion and sensitivity by the percent of total pixels changed in the camera’s image sensor. That is fine when your environment is stable (normally indoors). But outside, there are many events that will trigger motion activated recordings, regardless of the sensitivity settings. Even when you specify certain areas of the camera’s view for motion detection, there will be many undesirable recordings. To name just a few: rain, lightening, wind (moving branches, flags and the camera itself), shadows, birds, rabbits, spiders (building a web across your lens), traffic, headlights and reflections, etc. You want to initiate a process which will catch a thief, not a moth flying around a light. False alarms and response to these alarms quickly fall prey to the boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome; first responders quit responding.
Buy High Resolution Video Surveillance Cameras
Buy quality, high resolution (not necessarily megapixel) cameras; you will never regret it. But armed with two adjectives “quality and high resolution” will not necessarily ensure that you will get a good camera. There are thousands of Chinese and South Korean companies selling cameras. The point is to know what you don’t know. So, if you don’t know cameras, go to a reputable security store that will stand behind the performance of their products. However, NetVision1’s video network, DVR and iViewAnywhere software are essential; they allow you access to your cameras from any PC and cell phone connected to the Internet.
If you are thinking cheap, buy a junk-yard dog, let it roam the premises during off-hours and hope it doesn’t eat anyone. However, there may be some liability issues with that idea; ya think?
Alarm Company
I am sure you have seen the ludicrous alarm monitoring commercials on T.V. The bad guy kicks in the door, the sound of an alarm scares him away and then a concerned security agent in a starched white shirt calls immediately to see if the potential victim is ok. The woman will also conveniently have phone close by. If you think having someone call your phone after or during an emergency situation makes you safe, sign up today.
Business owners and store managers do not live at their place of business. How does the owner or manager know if everything is ok when called. Both they and the alarm company are blind; they can’t see and they don’t know how to respond except to call the police.
95%-99% of alarms are false. If the police respond to a false alarm, chances are the business will be charged. After being woken up several times with false alarms, a store manage will most likely tell an Alarm Monitoring Agent to forget it. Criminals know this. But just to make sure, the burglars will set off alarms at a place of business they are targeting and then wait to see what the response will be. After a couple of false alarms, the police will quit showing up, and the burglars are then safe to literally steal you blind.
There is another scenario that is more dangerous than a burglary: the armed robbery. You don’t want the alarm company calling the store manager at his place of business, because if there is a call during the robbery, the criminals will then know that someone inside the store set off an alarm. A call from an Alarm Monitoring Company will endanger everyone. So, being blind is not good.
But Alarm companies can be useful tools and can help protect your business. Have alarm companies call your cell phone. Then if you get a call, you can easily look online using a PC or your cell phone to see what is happening and then determine the best response.
Call NetVision1 214-245-4665 or check out our website www.netvision1.com.