The Best Policy Is your line security still secure?

Alarm companies are being forced to make changes in the way your system works.

Jeweler Stan Zanite opened his store on Monday morning anticipating another successful week in the jewelry business.  Those expectations changed dramatically when he saw the debris on the floor of his back room – chunks of ceiling tile, loose insulation, and damaged electronic equipment strewn about.  But the most sobering part of Stan’s discovery was when he recognized that his two safes . . .  were completely gone!

That previous Saturday, Stan had loaded his now non-existent safes with all of his customers’ goods, the memo diamonds he had just received to show a customer, and the majority of his inventory including all of his diamond goods.  Now there was only a large vacant spot where the safes had stood – and an unlocked back door which had apparently been the thieves’ means of egress.

Stan had a UL certificated alarm system and he had been at home all weekend.  Why had he not received a call from the alarm company?  He remembered that a technician had recently serviced his alarm system and it had been working fine in the meantime.  At the service call, it was explained to Stan that the alarm company needed to change out some of the equipment – something to do with the way it communicated data to the central station monitoring facility.  Instead of the two-way radio back-up system, it needed to be changed to cellular back-up.

That seemingly minor change in his system couldn’t be the reason that his safes were now gone . . . could it?

Fact #1 - Roof-top burglaries are on an increase.

Over the past few decades, safe burglaries were relatively rare in comparison to other forms of jewelry crime such as theft and armed robbery.  Most burglaries have been of the “smash, grab, and run” variety, where the unsophisticated thieves break in through a window, smash showcases with jewelry in them, and then flee before the cops come (aka “three-minute burglaries,” except that they usually took much less time than that.)  Neither intelligence nor experience on the part of the crook are necessary – the good thing is that prevention simply involves securing as much property as possible and leaving nothing in showcases to draw the thieves in.

But more serious forms of burglary began occurring in the South a couple of years ago, and they’re spreading rapidly across the country.  Thieves simply hide on the roof of the jewelry store with all of their equipment until the time is right to begin the attack – through an air duct, or by just cutting directly through the structure.  If for some reason the building is checked, thieves know that they almost never check the roof.

Occurring just as frequently are burglaries where the thieves enter the jewelry store from adjacent premises – through sheetrock partition walls, or even solid masonry construction.  In 2009, burglars systematically worked their way through a series of three business in order to reach their target – a jewelry store; none of the neighboring businesses had alarm systems.