Have Your Alarm Systems Helped Apprehend Intruders?
Since I’ve started working for SECURITY SALES & INTEGRATION, I’ve become quite well versed in social media. Whereas I formerly was not a big fan of Twitter, I have come to realize that it does have some benefits. For example, every now and again a company will tweet about how it assisted in apprehending a criminal, which is always a good thing.
Apprehension stories are some of my favorite topics to report about because it not only shows the world that the electronic security industry is on its job, but it really highlights that alarm companies truly value protecting their customers. So, when I stumbled upon a discussion in SSI‘s LinkedIn group page, started by Kerry Goodwin of Sonitrol Pacific, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. He simply asked, “Has anyone had success at actually having burglars arrested from your dispatches? I’d like to hear the details if you have.”
I was quite inspired after reading the experiences, so I thought I’d share them with you. Listed below are a few comments from that conversation:
“Had a bunch back when I worked with Sonitrol Corp. If you look around, you may be able to dig up some old voice recordings. I can remember hearing police dogs keeping burglars at bay in a high school restroom (great acoustics). Also, I remember another in which you could hear the burglars in a retail store saying, ‘Oh s***, here come the cops.’”
—SSI‘s Tech Talk Columnist Bob Dolph
“We have had some in Nashville using Sonitrol Audio and a few using verified video by OzVision. The last one caught a group that had been hitting all the local electrical distributors until they hit one with Sonitrol audio and got caught. We could even hear the cell phone ring of one of the burglars and him answer saying, ‘We’re here now.’ When the monitoring personnel are awake it works well.”
—Stanley CSS Sonitrol Specialist Tim Evey
“We monitor a ton of video, including Videofied. It used to be a celebration when a capture occurred in the wholesale monitoring world. Now, it’s almost a daily occurrence and sometimes twice on Sundays. I have more video of bad guys going in with everything from crowbars to guns and coming out in cuffs then you can shake a stick at. At the end of the day, catching bad guys is fun. It’s rewarding but most of all it’s starting to rebuild our relationships with law enforcement which is something we need to keep working on.”
—Mace CSSS Vice President and General Manager Morgan Hertel
“I’ve been called in for customers needing evidence from either cloud or on site storage, with officers at bay. Some incredibly stupid people, often customers’ very own employees. The trick is unit placement and concealment. Note: the ‘incredibly stupid people’ phrase was directed at the criminals caught on video.”
—Security Executive Rob Bayless
Now that you’ve read a few, I would like to hear from you. Do you have any apprehension experiences that you would like to share? If so, leave them in the comment section below.
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