The security industry doesn’t have a great reputation for honesty.

Whether it’s unscrupulous door-to-door “sales”, aggressive sales practices, outright deception, misleading advertising or simply the fact that most alarm monitoring services could best be described as ‘incomplete’ the security industry hasn’t earned a very good reputation. It’s too bad because there are certainly many alarm companies in North America who provide great (and honest) service and are working hard to improve our industry.

As is the case in every industry, their will always be shady operators, but it’s frustrating when some of the biggest players, who are in a position to lead in a positive manner, do things that only add to the mistrust and bad reputation that the security industry has.

Case in point: Broadview Security (formerly Brinks Home Security) television commercials. They are ridiculous.

Being ridiculous wouldn’t be so bad if the message  they’re  selling wasn’t so serious.  In my opinion, their new commercials represent the worst kind of fear-based marketing.  More importantly, the ads are very misleading. The vast, vast majority of alarms simply do not work the way they are portrayed in the commercials (and certainly none of the $99.00 systems work that way).

Click below to watch the first ad, called “The Ex”…

Unfortunately, many people do not know how the alarm industry actually works… let alone what happens when an alarm trips. Rather than perpetuating false stereotypes about alarm systems, Broadview Security is doing the entire alarm industry a disservice with these reprehensible advertisements. As a Security company owner, these ads are simply embarrassing to watch. As an average consumer who doesn’t know how alarm monitoring service works, they could be very dangerous.

Beyond simply being offensive in general, here are a few specific reasons why this commercial should be pulled:

1. When the angry ex-boyfriend kicks in the door, the alarm instantly sounds.

Given that the woman had just armed the alarm less than a second before, the exit delay would have still been counting down.

The ‘exit delay’ is the time between when you arm the alarm, and the time that it actually ’sets’. This delay is in place to allow you to arm your alarm and then get out of your home & lock your door without creating a false alarm every time.

The ‘exit delay’ can be customized, but in most cases it’s set for between 45 and 60 seconds.

With the way that almost every single alarm system that I have ever encountered in my career, if the scenario played out in the commercial happened in real-life, there likely would have been about 30 seconds left in the ‘countdown’ before the alarm was actually set… let alone triggered.

As a result, in the commercial when the ex-boyfriend broke in, the alarm would still have been counting down & no alarm would be tripped until the countdown was finished and the alarm was actually armed. Even then, most alarms are configured to send what’s called an ‘Entry/Exit’ alarm which treats alarms created within a very short time of the system being armed differently than an alarm that is tripped hours later.

Either way, with or without an exit delay time, the alarm simply doesn’t work that fast.

2. Once the alarm gets triggered the phone starts ringing immediately.

In fact, before the woman even has a chance to make it halfway up the stairs, the phone inside the house is ringing and it’s Broadview Security on the line wanting to know if everything is ok.

Once an alarm is tripped, it will still take AT LEAST 30 seconds for the alarm signal to be sent to the central monitoring station using the telephone line. The alarm needs this time to seize the phone line, dial the long distance number for the central monitoring station, connect with the receivers there and then transmit the alarm data. This process, using a telephone line, takes at least 30 seconds. Once the alarm signal is received, it will take more time for the signal to be presented to an operator who will then make a call back to the premises.

In addition, the alarm uses the telephone line to communicate with the central station. For as long as the signal is being sent, usually at least  30 seconds, the phone line is not available to call in or out.

Unless the woman in the commercial has two telephone lines, she won’t be able to use the phone right away…  either to receive a phone or make her own emergency call to 911 because the alarm system will be using the line to send the alarm signals.

The bottom line is that alarms simply do not work this way. A properly designed alarm can be a very important part of your overall security plan, but it is not a cure-all solution. A $99.00 (or any)  alarm will not save you from a stalker who is motivated and committed to breaking into your home.

While it is certainly possible to speed up how fast an alarm can send a signal (for example, by using BLINK monitoring) or minimizing the risk of dead phone lines by having a dedicated line for your alarm, none of these options are available for anything close to $99.00

This commercial is akin to seeing a car advertisement for a beautiful new car with every conceivable option (plus a couple that don’t exist at all) for an incredibly low price. But when you go to the dealership to pick up that new car you bought based on the ad you saw, you’re given an old bicycle with a flat tire and cracked frame. When you complain that the bike looks and operates a lot differently than that car in the commercial, you’re told that everything you saw on TV is actually not included in the pricing that was mentioned. Car companies aren’t allowed to do that. In fact, in every car ad I’ve seen the small print on the screen makes it clear that they are showing a specific model with specific options. Why doesn’t the security industry point out that the images you see have little or no relevance to the price that is advertised?

If you have a specific security threat/risk, like the character in the commercial, a $99.00 alarm is not going to do anything for you other than cost you money. To suggest that it will provide protection against a motivated criminal who is targeting you is irresponsible and simply wrong. Broadview Security knows this… they’re just hoping that most North Americans won’t.

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In the spirit of belaboring the point just a little longer, it’s not like this is the only commercial that Broadview/Brinks has run like this. Far from it, in fact, it’s more of a specific formula that they use in most of their ads in order to terrify people into shelling out $99.00 plus a monthly monitoring fee.

Here’s a selection of some of their other TV spots vying for the ‘Most Offensive’ title:

This one is called ‘Backyard’ and shows a mother with her daughter going in for lunch… and instant arming the second that they do. Like “The Ex” the bad-guy breaks in a second after they’ve gotten into the house but takes off as soon as he hears the alarm sound. Broadview makes the magically quick call to assure the woman that they’ll get right on to calling someone else to help.

This one’s called “New Home”, and preys on the fear of a night-time burglary when everyone is asleep… despite the fact that the vast majority of residential burglaries happen mid-day … and after an attempt to verify that the house is empty…

Or this one, called “Wrong Door”. Not sure why the burglar would spend so long trying the door knob, I suppose just for dramatic effect…

Or this one, called ‘Treadmill’ where the alarm scares off the two burglars (dressed like they just got off of a set where they were playing burglars in a movie) who again are targeting a woman, alone in her home at night…

Or this beauty, that shows the same bad-guy, all dressed in black who sees the family inside and then decides to smash out a large window with a crowbar before running off at the sound of the alarm…

Here’s another black leather jacket clad burglar smashing a window while a young mother and her kids are alone at home…

This one is called “montage”… and plays like the trailer for a really bad horror movie…

If this is what one of the largest, and most successful alarm companies puts out, it’s no wonder that so many others in the industry figure it’s ok to mislead people.

Here are a few links to other posts that I’ve written that fit in with this topic…

10 Reasons Why Most Home Alarms are Useless (and what you should do about it)

“The Alarm Industry is a Parasite on the Police”

Why Police Response to Burglar Alarms Doesn’t Work

Fox 12 in Portland reported a story today about a pair of burglars who Police believe may be posing as door-to-door Window Salesmen.

The video clip of the story implies that the impostors never got inside of the victim’s home, but a couple of days after their visit, a Portland homeowner had his safe targeted in a burglary.

Irrespective of who actually committed the burglary, the notable part of the story was the fact that the victim was keeping $13,000.00 cash in a safe that he had bolted down in his master bedroom closet.

Here’s an excerpt from the story…

On Tuesday, Lee said he found his home trashed. Thieves stole rare coins, jewelry and $13,000 from his safe. Lee said the burglars broke in through a door and used tools from his garage to break into his safe.

“I had it bolted to the floor,” he said. “Evidently, it wasn’t as safe as I thought it was.”

There are few lessons from this story… the first two are the same as in my post about the Apple Store in New Jersey getting emptied in 31 seconds:

(1) You CANNOT make it physically impossible for someone to break in; and

(2) Five-Minute Proofing is the most important security tactic.

Of course, the most fundamental lesson is that you should not keep large amounts of cash in your home… put it in the bank. If you decide that you want to keep cash at home, by all means, put it in a safe and bolt it down. But, if you do not have a monitored alarm that will alert responders that someone is trying to get at your safe… they can take as much time as it takes to remove it.

The time that it takes to remove a safe is a lot less than most people think. Safes, even really, really heavy safes, are only difficult to move around when you are trying to be careful not to damage the walls (or anything else). If you don’t care about making a mess or breaking anything, moving a safe isn’t that hard. Just ask Lindsay Lohan.

Relying on a safe, just like relying on an alarm, often provides a false sense of security. Your security is in your redundancy. It’s all about putting multiple steps/tactics/measures in place.

If you have a safe, but do not have it monitored, you might want to think about how important the things that you have inside of it are. You might be better off spreading your valuables all over your home rather than keeping them all together in one easily movable box.

SIDE NOTE: In the video, the reporter mentions that the homeowner thinks that the impostors were looking for “window burglar alarm tape” on the windows. That’s fairly unlikely given that foil is rarely part of an alarm system that has been installed in the past 25 years.

If they were looking at the windows, it’s much more likely that they were simply looking through them in order to see if there was anything of obvious value that was easily reachable inside.

If they were savvy enough to look for alarm equipment, they would have simply cut the telephone lines.

Police in Marlton, New Jersey are looking for five suspects that broke into an Apple Store and made off with a few dozen Macbooks.

Click below to watch a news clip showing the brazen smash & grab that took just 31 seconds for the thieves to clean the store out of almost every display model.

Although the store had a Security Guard on duty, the crooks were able to smash the front glass doors and each took an ‘aisle’ in the store to grab every MacBook on display. Apparently, one of the crooks motioned to the Guard that he had a gun… forcing the Guard to back-off and not try to intervene at all.

As pointed out by the (incredibly annoying) reporter in the newsstory, the CCTV system in the store did not offer any deterrent value as the thieves simply covered their faces while they were in sight of the cameras.

Beyond the reminder that a CCTV system is not a deterrent, this smash & grab offers a few lessons:

1. You cannot make it physically impossible for someone to break in

If someone wants to try and break into your home or business, there is very little that you can do to make it physically impossible. If they want in, they’ll get in eventually. The trick is to put appropriate security measures in place that help make it easy for a potential burglar to make a decision not to bother with your place.

If you have a full-time security guard, extensive camera system or a big dog in your house, if a crook decides that he wants to try to get in anyways… he will. It’s the combination of the appropriate security measures that provide real security.

Your goal is to create enough perceived hassle for a crook that they make up their own mind that your store, or home, is not worth the effort.

2. Five-Minute Proofing is the most important security tactic

Five-Minute Proofing is the single most effective security tactic that you can implement in your home or business. Simply put, Five-Minute Proofing means that you ensure that, from the point at which the alarm is tripped, it would take a crook at least five minutes to get to what you are trying to protect.

In the case of this particular Apple Store, the store should have been equipped with glassbreak detectors near the front doors. More importantly, the glass panels themselves should have been laminated glass… or at least had security film on them, so that they wouldn’t smash so easily.

That way, when the crooks made their first attempt to smash the glass, the glassbreak detectors (if they were installed correctly) would hear the sound of the glass being attacked and trip the alarm. Alternatively, the camera system could have been set-up to trip an alarm due to someone standing at the front door for too long after-hours.

By designing the alarm to trip while the crooks are still outside, the Police could have been immediately called by the Security Guard to report what was happening and the alarm monitoring company would also be immediately able to assist. If the alarm monitoring company were monitoring the camera system, they could also relay the suspects exact descriptions, in real time, to the Police.

Beyond the front glass, there should be a second layer of physical security inside the store to help slow the crooks down. Expanding gates are often used for this purpose and are best installed several feet away from the front of the store. That way, if the crooks were able to eventually break through the glass to get in the store, they would then need to contend with getting around the expanding gates. Your security is in your redundancy.

Going a step further, each of the MacBooks could easily be locked down… not to make them impossible to steal, but ensuring that noone could simply grab a couple dozen of them in half a minute.

It’s not about making it physically impossible to get in… it’s about putting enough impediments into a potential crooks’ way that he is (or they are) unable to get to your valuables quickly.

If those three (the alarm, laminated glass and an expanding gate) Five Minute Proofing measures had been in place in this particular Apple Store, both the Security Guard and Alarm Monitoring company would have had a reasonable chance to call 911 and report a crime in progress.

The store would have had a damaged front door, but they would not have risked the safety of the security guard or had to worry about five crooks who learned how easy it is to break into their store and clean them out.

Click the video below to watch an excerpt from a recent ‘Preventing Burglary’ seminar where I explain Five Minute Proofing and give a few other examples.

Click below to watch a short clip from the CTV News last night regarding an initiative by the Vancouver Public Space Network to count the number of surveillance cameras in Downtown Vancouver. According to the VPSN website, the purpose of the count is to “inform the public, and to discuss surveillance issues with city hall and the police. We will also use the maps to create an art installation sometime in the fall..”

I’m quite confident that whatever number that they end up with, it will still be much lower than the actual number.

The image quality of most new surveillance cameras is increasing almost as fast as equipment costs are coming down. As a result, the number of cameras in both public and private spaces will only increase. With or without the 2010 Olympics, there will be many more cameras in Vancouver by this time next year. The vast majority of them will be installed on private property, but will be viewing (at least partially) public spaces. I don’t see any reason why this trend will not continue.

the ‘privacy’ issue

In terms of the privacy concerns, I believe that the law is already pretty clear. You cannot film someone where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Therefore, no filming in washrooms, changing rooms, staffrooms or other similar places. Anyone who gets caught violating people’s privacy in that way can face some serious consequences. “Privacy” in a public space… like a sidewalk or storefront is a very different matter and hasn’t existed in a very long time.

The real question is how is all of this technology is being used… and, most importantly, is it offering any real value in preventing crime.

I’ve posted on this blog before about why the vast majority of CCTV installations do not provide a deterrent to crime. The reality is that most CCTV systems simply provide a really frustrating video recording of your stuff being stolen… which you’ll watch hours after the crime occurred.

In the CTV clip below, I demonstrate how using video analytics can help turn a ‘regular’ CCTV system into a much more effective crime prevention tool by analyzing suspicious behaviour. By doing so, the CCTV system stops being a passive recorder of activity and, instead, becomes a pro-active tool that alerts responders to criminal activity just as it’s starting… not simply providing a record of it hours after it’s over.

We use this technology for many of our residential and commercial clients. In the example shown in the CTV clip, the system is programmed to detect someone standing right up against our showroom windows. Anytime this happens, the system creates an alarm (in the same manner that a motion detector or glassbreak sensor would trip an alarm on the inside) and a signal is sent to our 24/7 Operations Centre where our team can immediately review the live video and determine if a response is required.

We have this technology set up on clients property to create alarms whenever someone climbs over a fence, in retail stores when someone is standing for too long in front of the door after-hours as well as in office towers to detect unusual activity in hallways when the building is supposed to be empty.

Without question, the technology allows us to offer a much higher level of security for our clients and eliminates the need for a human being to sit and watch hours of live video footage in the hopes of watching a crime transpire.

Of course, like most other technology, it’s all about the human response.

Unless someone is set-up to provide immediate response to what has been detected, it’s of little value. That’s where our guaranteed five minute response comes in. Video analytics can be a very important part of your overall security system… often, using analytics allows us to respond to an alarm while a crook is still thinking of breaking in rather than after he has already successfully gained access.

On Wednesday morning, a Westside business learned the hard way why Police response does not work.

At about 3:45am, crooks smashed a pane of glass and forced open a set of expandable bars to steal some movies, video games and gaming consoles.

The alarm did not trip until after the bars had been forced open and the burglar(s) walked in front of a motion detector inside the store. When the alarm company received the signal, they followed typical procedures by calling the store and then the emergency contacts.

Because they were unable to get an answer from any of the emergency contacts, they were unable to dispatch the Police to request a response due to the Vancouver City By-Law which does not allow for alarm companies to request Police response until after an emergency contact has been reached.

No contact was reached… so no Police response could be requested.

As a result, the store remained wide open… accessible to the world until someone noticed the broken glass and called Police several hours later.

The store was very lucky… if the crooks who had broken in had been smart, or patient, enough to watch for any response to their initial burglary, they could have easily cleaned out the entire store, displays and all. They certainly would have had enough time to do it.

Unfortunately, incidents like this happen all of the time.

There are several things that could have been done to minimize the loss incurred during this burglary:

1. Get private response

Police response to burglar alarms simply does not work. I’ve written extensively about this issue (click here, here or here for a few examples).

By assuming that all alarms are false until proven otherwise completely eliminates any real value that an alarm can offer. Having a private and immediate response service in place would have at least ensured that someone was going to be responsible for attending to the alarm and make sure that the store would not be left wide open for hours;

2. Detect the ‘break’ not the ‘enter’

The alarm should have been configured to trip the second that the glass was broken. Instead, because the alarm system relied on an interior motion detector as the first detection point, the alarm did not trip until after the glass was broken and the bars had been disabled.

A properly installed glassbreak detector would have ensured that an alarm signal was sent while the crooks were still standing outside… which may have been enough to encourage them to change their plans. All of the effort required to break into a premises occurs while the crook is still standing OUTSIDE… the alarm must be configured to detect that. Once they are inside, they are moving quickly and it is very unlikely that response will be fast enough to catch them in the act. Detect the ‘break’ not the ‘enter’.

Burglaries like this do not need to happen.

Your security is in your redundancy. Installing bars is not good enough. Neither is an alarm. In fact, just about anything by itself isn’t going to be very effective… your security comes from building multiple levels of detection & security so that your different security measures work together to create actual security. The individual components on their own are almost never good enough. It doesn’t need to be expensive… but it does need to be well thought out. In this case, a bit of extra money spent on private response as well as one glassbreak detector would have saved a significant loss from occurring.

We had another full showroom last night for our ‘Preventing Burglary’ seminar. We’ve received a lot of great feedback from people about the seminar…. but up until today, we’ve never had a video testimonial from someone who attended.

Ian Watt is a Vancouver Realtor focused on the Downtown Condo market who has become famous for his daily video blog posts that he films while driving around Vancouver. Ian attended last week’s seminar and we’re glad that he had good things to say about us (because as anyone who has watched any of Ian’s videos will attest, we’re pretty sure that he’d happily film a video saying he hated it if he felt that way).

Provident Security Seminar Keeping Vancouver Townhouse Owners Safe from Ian Watt Vancouver Condo on Vimeo.

Our next home security seminar will be held on Tuesday, January 13th in our Kerrisdale Showroom … please come by around 6:45pm for some wine and cheese… the presentation will begin at 7:00pm.

Click here to read some comments from past attendees.

Every seminar that we have held over the past few months has sold out early… although it’s free to attend, we do have limited space.

If you’d like to attend, please click here to RSVP.

The Seattle Police Department recently announced that, effective January 1st, they will become one of the largest major police departments to mandate that alarm companies must place two verification calls to customers before contacting police.

From the SPD release…

Alarm companies are also required to use enhanced call verification (ECV) for all burglary alarms.  ECV is a monitoring procedure requiring that the alarm company, prior to making an alarm dispatch request, make a minimum of two phone calls.  This is done by calling the location of the alarm first and then a secondary number determined by the subscriber, often a cell phone number.  ECV is only required for burglary alarms, not hold-up or panic alarms. Beginning January 1, 2009, the Seattle Police Department will not respond to requests from alarm companies to dispatch officers to a monitored burglary alarm when the alarm company has not utilized ECV.

Given that just about every alarm is false, this policy makes a lot of sense for the police… unfortunately, it doesn’t offer anything to alarm owners other than serving to make their monitored alarm systems even less effective.

The branding of the two-call verification as ‘Enhanced’ allows alarm companies to try and hoodwink customers into believing that the practice is somehow an improvement, or at least in their favour. The reality is, ECV all but ensures that in the event of an actual burglary, noone will be able to respond in a meaningful amount of time to have any impact.

Using ECV, or doing anything between the time an alarm signal is received and the time someone is dispatched to attend, is a waste. While ECV will further reduce the number of false dispatches to the SPD (which is great for Seattle taxpayers) it still allows the alarm industry to continue the misleading practice of promoting ECV as something that is good for them.

The SPD should adopt a non-response policy.

Rather than making a policy change which helps (inadvertently) facilitate deceptive sales practices, why not just come out and say that because 98% of alarms are false, the police will no longer respond unless an alarm has been verified to be real?

Alarm companies would be forced to be much more honest with their clients about what will happen when the alarm trips. More importantly, the ability to get away with selling an incomplete service will dry up.

There is a pretty major lobby from the security industry to fight a move like that… but it’s the right thing to do.

Incidentally, the Vancouver Police policy actually goes a little further than Seattle in that the Vancouver Security Alarm System Bylaw No.7111 (s.27) says that “Before notifying the Police Department of an alarm incident… an alarm company MUST contact by telephone or other electronic means, in order to establish whether the incident is a false alarm”. The word ‘must’ was recently added to replace the word ‘attempt’.

The subtle difference is that in Seattle, the alarm company only has to attempt to reach a client at two different numbers, whereas in Vancouver the alarm company must reach them.

As the false alarm problem continues to plague police departments and police operating budgets get tighter, the eventual move is to finally adopt a policy that requires verification before the police can be called. That’s not good for the status quo in the alarm industry, but it will be good for pretty much everyone else… most importantly the consumer.

At least then the consumer can make an informed choice about what type of security they want for their home or business and not be under any false impression that the Police will be coming in the event an alarm sounds.

In today’s Courier, a letter from Dave Jones was published in response to last week’s article about the Downtown Ambassador program funding in which I was quoted.

In his letter, Jones points out that he is a former Vancouver Police Inspector. A more relevant part of his resume that he should have mentioned was his current position with the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Area (DVBIA) as a Security Consultant whose primary role is the administration & management of the Downtown Ambassadors Program.

In fact, he is also the chief salesman for the Ambassador program and has played the leading role in expanding it to other BIA’s (who then pay a fee to the DVBIA) as well as lobbying the City to increase funding for it.

He suggests that I have a ‘dilemma’ to resolve in that Provident stands to benefit financially from the program and that he assumes that I “argued for–as a board member, I believe–on behalf of the Kerrisdale Business Improvement Association (KBIA).”

In fact, as Dave knows, I have been completely consistent in my views and criticisms of this program funding since the very beginning. At a meeting with every BIA at the Roundhouse Community Centre on June 2nd I made my argument very clear. With representatives of every BIA in the City, including Dave Jones, as well as a couple City employees, I stated explicitly that I believe that the money would be better spent on increased community policing hours.

When Councilors Suzanne Anton and Kim Capri came to my office months before, I made the same comments to them.

At KBA Board meetings, I have also been vocal, and completely consistent, on my views about the fact that this money could be better spent. Not that it’s a waste of money, just that it could be better spent.

As a business owner who both works and lives in Kerrisdale, coupled with my roles on the Kerrisdale Business Association and as the community security provider, I believe that I have a very clear duty to act in a way that benefits the neighbourhood… not just my own financial interests. It would surely have been a conflict of interest for me to not make my thoughts on the program very clear.

My point is simply that the money that the city is spending on security for public spaces would be better spent on increased, and focused, community policing hours. I did not say that the KBA didn’t need, deserve or intend to make the very best use of the money available. The money will be put to the best possible use given the circumstances… The simple fact is that cleaning up street disorder is most effectively achieved by a Police Officer who has far fewer restrictions than a security guard.

However, to Dave’s suggestion that I ask for the KBA allocated funds be diverted to Policing… first off, it’s not his suggestion, it was mine. To date, everyone involved has told me that that is not possible.

Private security can offer exceptional value and can be paid for by BIA’s, but public funds should support public policing.

If Kerrisdale can opt to have the Ambassador funds redirected into increased community policing hours in the neighbourhood… I’ll be very happy to support that. That was the point of my post in the first place.

… although, to give Dave some credit, his line “When you see someone on such a high horse you have to wonder about the oxygen intake.”… that was awesome.

As a part of the City of Vancouver’s Civil City Initiative, more than $800,000 has been (controversially) allocated for expansion of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Area (DVBIA) Downtown Ambassador program. Initially, the idea was to offer an incentive for other city BIA’s (such as Gastown, Robson Street, Chinatown, Davie Village, etc.) to use the Downtown Ambassadors and for those BIA’s to be eligible to receive city funding to ‘top up’ any BIA money spent on the program.

The initial version of the policy drafted by City Council only allowed for BIA’s to be eligible for funding if they used the Downtown Ambassadors (rather than any existing, or alternate, security provider). Given that the DVBIA also charges an annual ‘licensing’ fee to any other BIA as well as management fees, the program effectively put a non-profit business association into the security business.

There are so many conflicts of interest, operational and ethical problems with that particular set-up, it’s hard to know where to start.

A subsequent revision of the program expanded the scope so that any business association in the city could apply for money for either an ‘Ambassador’ program or ‘Ambassador-like’ program expansion. There was a fairly thorough vetting process designed to ensure that these other programs met many specific criteria (such as human rights training) before they could be ‘approved’ for funding. Kerrisdale’s existing security program falls into the category of ‘Ambassador-like’.

As a result, The Kerrisdale Business Association, like many other BIA’s in the city, applied to receive money to expand the existing Kerrisdale security program to add approximately three additional day shifts per week. On September 16th Kerrisdale was approved.

Provident has been providing security for the Kerrisdale Business Association (KBA) since 1997… we were originally hired to address a major burglary problem along West 41st Avenue. Working closely with the merchants and KBA, we dramatically reduced the number of burglaries almost immediately. Since that time, the scope of the security program in Kerrisdale has expanded to include daytime patrols as well to address issues like shoplifting, aggressive panhandling and graffiti. There is no question that the security program works well and has provided tremendous value.

KBA members pay 100% of the cost of the security program, and have since 1997.

To the best of my knowledge, only Chinatown and Gastown have had community security programs in place longer. Since then, most BIA’s in the city have since initiated similar patrol programs… many of which sent delegates to Kerrisdale to learn about the specific ways that we’ve been able to achieve such significant results… one of which was the DVBIA.

Following the lead of many other downtown business associations, the DVBIA opted to create their own branded security program … the Downtown Ambassadors.

The increased security will be good for the KBA and it provides additional value for KBA members as well as the Kerrisdale community.

Without question, if any BIA in the city deserves to be eligible for city funding for security, it’s Kerrisdale. Kerrisdale merchants have spent well over $1 million dollars on security services over the past decade and should be first in line for any financial support from the city. Obviously, Provident also stands to benefit financially from this program.

This is not how taxpayer’s money should be spent…

The City is in a unique position in that it can do what no BIA, or other private business in Vancouver, can do… the City can hire Police Officers. They should.

Rather than funding private security guards, the City should spend money dedicating VPD Constables to specific neighbourhoods.

There is no question that you can hire more security guards than police officers for the same amount of money… but it is a question of impact.

In the case of Kerrisdale, there is one full-time VPD Constable shared between Kerrisdale, Oakridge and Marpole… Cst. Ray Gardner.

The impact this one Community Policing Constable, despite being split between the three areas, has had in our neighbourhood is profound. Beyond the consistent and visible Police presence on the street, it enhances our security program. It gives our team an individual person to liaise with and serves to make the investment that the KBA has made in security have much greater impact. Its great for us, our clients, the neighbourhood and the Police themselves.

We are on patrol in the neighbourhood 24 hours a day… anytime we encounter an urgent situation that requires immediate Police response, we call 911. For the vast majority of other issues where Police attendance would be very helpful, we call the Community Policing Centre, or Cst. Gardner, directly.

Because he has the mandate, interest, and time to focus on our neighbourhood, we receive follow-up and assistance that other patrol Constables are simply too busy to be able to provide.

Whether it is responding to calls from merchants regarding shoplifters, following up with youth caught vandalizing property or tagging, educating merchants or being able to spend enough time to get to the bottom of a ladder theft… community policing really works. Rather than having to wait for a situation to escalate to the point where Police response is the only option, we can work with Cst. Gardner to intervene much earlier in the process … allowing both Provident and the VPD to be much more proactive.

If the city wants to get maximum value for the dollars that they are spending to make Vancouver a safer and more ‘civil’ city, it should focus on spending the money in a way that provides unique and maximum value.

There is no question in my mind that having the KOM Community Policing Centre, and specifically Cst, Ray Gardner, has allowed Provident to be much more effective for the KBA.

If there is $800,000.00 to spend, assigning all of it to additional Constables who would be dedicated to provide service to specific neighbourhoods would have a much more profound impact. It would do a lot of things that BIA’s might be surprised by… like making the money that they are already spending on private security much more effective.