There was a fair bit of press today about the proposed legislation to regulate the sale of body armour in British Columbia.

The rationale is to give Police an additional charge that they can lay against a gangster wearing a bullet-proof vest, the fashion accessory of choice by most of Vancouver’s gang members it would seem.

I was interviewed by Canadian Security Magazine for a story on the topic… and specifically about the impact of regulation on the private security industry.

In a nutshell, I’m a little skeptical of how successful legislation like this would be in actually deterring criminals from possessing and wearing body armour. I think that we’ve already got more than enough laws in place. What seems to be missing is enough happening once someone has been charged with an offense. If we can’t keep someone in jail long enough after they have been convicted of manslaughter, what are the chances of an ‘illegal use of body armour’ charge being taken seriously?

Insofar as some of the talk in the security industry about mandating that security guards wear body armour, the logic of that escapes me as well. Creating additional rules and regulations, the full costs of which will be passed on to small businesses, seems to be an ineffective strategy if the goal is to impact criminals.

Here’s an excerpt from the magazine article where I’m quoted… (you can read the full article here)

But not everyone agrees with the proposal.

Mike Jagger, founder and president of Vancouver-based security firm Provident Security Corp., says such legislation will probably do little to deter criminals or solve the problem.

“You’re talking about a group of people who make their living importing and distributing illegal drugs and shoot at rival gang members with illegal guns,” he says. “I fail to see how regulating the sale of body armour does anything to impact that other than getting in the way of regular people.”

Creating more laws might look good, but that’s about it, he says. “There are more than enough rules in place right now that they can’t enforce,” Jagger says. “There aren’t enough resources to enforce what already exists, so adding more rules and levels of bureaucracy — I don’t get it.”

It shouldn’t be up to the government to decide who is or is not at risk, he says. It’s obvious that body armour is necessary for some jobs, such as that of armoured car driver or police officer or corrections officer, but often it’s more a matter of how threatened the employee feels.

“It feels to me like legislation created for the purpose of being seen to do something without a lot of thought going into what’s the purpose,” he adds. “I think personal safety is just that — it’s personal, and employees need to be empowered to communicate whether or not they feel safe in a situation and do whatever it takes to be safe. They should never be put at risk, and that’s a combination of having a good company and people being responsible for themselves. If you’re missing one of those things, legislation is not going to have much of an impact.”

Jagger disagrees that body armour should be seen the same way as a helmet or a seatbelt. Treating it as an occupational health and safety issue is just “one of the best of the worst ways” to handle it, he says.

“If it’s really about personal safety, then why not focus on getting that message out to employees to educate them on what they can do to better protect themselves irrespective of who they work for?”

CSIS’s next step is to send the B.C. government a letter outlining the results of the survey.

Provident was quoted in an article in USA Today about the increase in spending on home security for CEO’s.

Here’s an excerpt from the end of the article where we are mentioned…

The price we pay for security

Licensed security guards can be had for $20 an hour, and a typical home electronic security system sold by ADT costs $7,000 to $15,000. But McKinney says ADT installed a $300,000 system for the CEO of an unidentified NFL football team a few years ago, and Provident Security of Vancouver, Canada, recently completed two residential camera systems in the $250,000 range, says company President Michael Jagger.

Kirkpatrick says it’s not difficult to envision a $1 million personal-security price tag for a CEO who has a yacht and more than one home that need to be watched around the clock, and who wants a trained bodyguard, known in the industry as a “close protection specialist.” Most CEOs can walk down any street without being recognized, but some like their close protection specialists nearby and obvious, like the ones who guard movie stars.

For about $700,000, ADT says, it will install a perimeter command center inside a custom home. From there it can monitor long-range infrared cameras, fence detectors, motion sensors and provide visitor access. It would also detect fire, carbon monoxide and flood.

“Security is one of those things where you can always spend more,” says Jagger, who says a big-ticket item is the motion camera system that can detect someone lingering outside a fence for more than a few seconds.

my own addendum…

While it’s true that you can always spend more, it’s about determining what is the appropriate level of security and how best to achieve that. What’s appropriate in one case may be complete overkill in another. At Provident, we’ve been fortunate to have opportunities to work for clients at both ends of the spectrum… families who need just that basics to protect them from the typical residential burglary, up to individuals and families with specific security threats/risks who require 24/7 protection wherever they go… and everything in between.

You can read the full article on USA Today’s site by clicking here.

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.

The Telegraph ran a story today about a recent report commissioned by UK Insurer Legal & General that suggests that the use of social media sites, particularly Twitter and Facebook, could increase the risk of burglary.

Of specific concern in the report is the fact that of the 2,000 social media users polled for the report, two-fifths of them admitted to posting specific details about their holiday plans or times away from home.

Michael Fraser, who stars in a BBC program called Beat the Burglar, is a former burglar himself and had this to say in the Telegraph article:

“They gain confidence by learning more about them, what they are likely to own and when they are likely to be out of the house.

“I call it ‘internet shopping for burglars’. It is incredibly easy to use social networking sites to target people, and then scope out more information on their actual home using other internet sites like Google Street View, all from the comfort of the sofa.”

Of course, if a burglar wanted to see if you were actually home or not, they could just knock on the door.

If you have a monitored alarm with immediate response… you’re in pretty good shape.

In my experience, most crooks are not very industrious. If they were, they’d have a job. Most are drug addicts who are motivated by the need to score their next ‘hit’… which doesn’t leave a lot of time for planning out the perfect crime.

Instead, most burglars follow a very similar pattern… they will walk down a block, picking out homes that appear to be empty. Next, they will knock on the door to see if anyone is home. If there is no answer, they break in through the front door, go straight to the master bedroom, empty out the bedside table drawers and then into the closet.

Almost every burglar is looking for cash and things (like jewelry) that can be quickly turned into cash. It’s almost textbook. (You can read more about how the typical residential burglary happens by clicking here).

The Telegraph article goes on to explain why the Insurers say they are concerned about social media use:

“Our research shows that 41 per cent of people are divulging personal and private information to complete strangers on Facebook, such as their date of birth, where they worked, where they lived and what they were doing,” he said. “People are boasting about how they are having a fantastic time on a beach in Mexico on a webpage that has their home address.

“Criminals who put together the jigsaw can use it for identity theft or burglary. It is just as dangerous as leaving your windows or doors open at home.”

The report also found that almost half were unconcerned about social networking security. In an experiment, 100 friend requests were issued to random stranger. Nine out of 10 Twitter users accepted the stranger as a friend, with more than one in 10 Facebook users.

While posting that kind of specific information certainly won’t increase your security, it’s a long ways away from posing the same kind of risk as leaving your doors or windows open.

People should be cautious… but not paranoid.

Here’s the quote from the article that makes the most sense to me…

Privacy groups however have said insurance companies will simply use social networking sites to increase premiums.

Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, told The Daily Mail: “This is a disgraceful attempt to leverage yet more from customers.”

Is it a good idea to let the whole world know the specifics of your vacation plans on Twitter? Definitely not. Does it create enough of a new risk to warrant an Insurance premium increase? I don’t think so.

Home security is mostly common sense… it’s the really basic stuff that ends up having the most impact. It’s not so much about trying to imagine what you would do if you were a burglar, it’s about understanding how burglary actually happens in reality.

Ensuring that you remember to arm your alarm, five-minute proof your most valuable possessions and ensure that you’ve got someone to pick up your papers & mail while you’re away will ensure that you’re protected against the vast majority of would-be burglars… with or without a Facebook or Twitter profile.

Channel 4 Action News in Pittsburgh ran a story last night about a burglary attempt in West Deer that was thwarted by a 10 year old boy.

The burglar ended up being 21 year old Brett Kreider, who lives in the same neighbourhood, who is now a suspect in 8 recent burglaries. As is often the case with most burglars, the accused burglar had just gotten out of jail… for burglary.

The M.O. of the burglar is almost exactly as I’ve laid out in previous posts about how the typical residential burglary happens… the fact that it ended up being a single person responsible for a ‘rash’ of burglaries is also typical.

Here are a few quotes from the story… (you can read the full story here)

The intruder ignored a dog, but when a 10-year-old boy spotted him and yelled at him to get out, he fled the scene.

[Police Chief Joe] Lape said the burglar had already broken into two other homes in the same neighborhood that day.Investigators said the burglar, who operates in broad daylight, usually takes pills, money, weapons and anything else of value that is easily carried away. He has also taken a truck from one of the eight homes police believe he’s burglarized

The really important lesson in the story, comes next…

Police said on one occasion the burglar knocked on a front door to see if anyone was home. When the door was answered, the burglar said he was looking for a dog and walked away.

This is what happens in almost every single burglary… before breaking in, the crook will first knock on the door to check if someone is home. If anyone answers, the crook will make up a quick story about why they are there and leave as quickly as possible.

The vast majority of burglars are not violent and are not looking for drama… if they were, they’d be robbing a bank or holding up a convenience store instead.

The most important advice about home security that you can give your kids, nannies, housekeepers or other people in your home is to NEVER IGNORE THE DOOR.

If someone knocks on your door, you should always let them know that someone is inside. Don’t open the door, but talk through it to let them know that the house is not empty. If you believe that the person at the door is in any way suspicious, call 911. If you live in Vancouver, you can also call us at 604.664.1087.

Barking dogs are rarely the deterrent that people think that they are. The fact is that most house pets, despite a good bark, are still house pets… and a motivated burglar can get by them without too much hassle. A human being, on the other hand, is almost always more trouble than they are worth… even if they are only 10 years old. In almost every case, a potential witness is far too much hassle and the potential crook will move on to the next unoccupied home.

I’ve written on this topic before on this blog back in 2006 with a post titled Answer the Door and another one in April after a Delta teenager ended up having to call 911 from a bedroom closet after a burglar had broken into her home after she ignored the knocking at the door.

Reuters reported on Monday that Lindsay Lohan was the victim of a second burglary in less than 3 months in her Hollywood Hills home.

Apparently, the most recent burglary was discovered around 3am when Lohan came home to find her safe ripped out of a wall. Lohan’s father suggested the burglary was an inside job due to the fact that the alarm had not been armed by a member of her house staff.

Whether it was an inside job or not, leaving/forgetting to arm your alarm can create a major risk. However, if you are relying on other people to arm your alarm system in your home or business, there are a few things that you can do to minimize the risk of someone forgetting… or forgetting on purpose.

1. Partition your alarm system

Most alarm systems are capable of having at least a couple different ‘partitions’. A partition is a group of zones that can be armed/disarmed independently of other groups of zones (ie. other partitions). Most often, we use this feature to separate a basement suite or garage from the main house…. or a Manager’s office from the rest of a retail store.

In cases where clients have staff working in their homes, particularly when they are not home themselves, sensitive areas such as a home office, master bedroom closet, wine cellar or other similar areas can be armed independently. If a safe has been installed, we can either arm the safe itself, or the closet/room that it is installed in, to it’s own partition. This way, even if the main house alarm is not set, the safe is always armed and will trigger a response anytime that access is attempted. (For more details about security for your safe, click here.)

If it’s artwork that you need to protect, we can install sensors that will trip the alarm (with or without a siren) anytime that a painting, sculpture or anything else you’d like to protect gets moved… whether or not the rest of the alarm system is armed.

I discussed how we use this technology to look after paintings in a Global TV News story that was filmed after the UBC Museum of Anthropology was broken into last year. Click on the link below to watch a 50 second excerpt from that clip. (You can watch the entire clip here.)

2. Set up ‘Supervised’ Openings & Closings

In commercial applications, Provident provides ’supervision’ of the arming and disarming of client’s alarm systems.

The way this service works is that different staff members are assigned different permissions in our monitoring software. For example, while a business owner will be allowed to arm or disarm their business at anytime of the day or night that they please, a junior staff person may only be allowed to use their code between 8:30am and 7:00pm on weekdays. In the event that they attempt to use their code outside of those hours, we can either (1) program the alarm to simply deny access; or (2) allow access and send a silent alarm to the business owner to follow-up.

This service is also used to ensure that an alarm has been armed by a certain time. For example, if the last person out of your business typically leaves by 8:30pm, we can create an alarm that will automatically trip in the event that the alarm has not been armed by 9:00pm. If someone has forgotten to arm the system, we can either respond in person or remotely arm the alarm for you. Either way, the alarm is not left disarmed all night long.

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.

The video below has been making the rounds on the internet… it shows a webcam feed of four burglars breaking into a Boynton Beach, Florida home.

The homeowner was watching the break-in happen from her office in Fort Lauderdale and called the Police… who were able to respond and arrest the suspects.

The crooks gained access to her home by climbing through a dog-door.

When you watch the video, note how much of a deterrent effect the dogs had on the crooks.

Click here to listen to the 911 call the owner made while watching the action live from her office.

Provident was mentioned in a BIV article this week about finding opportunities in the economic downturn. Specifically, the article referenced that we are working to implement lean (aka Toyota Production System) strategies to help ensure that we are operating in the most efficient manner possible.

Here’s an excerpt…

Provident Security CEO Michael Jagger has also instituted strategies to ensure optimal inventory control.

Most of Jagger’s “millions” in revenue come from providing security guard services, but he also sells burglar alarms, cameras and other security products.

He recently re-evaluated all inventory and found that he had too many of some products. He has since recalculated how much of each he needs and implemented a system to identify when to order more.

Instead of going to seminars to reflect on how to spot looming trouble, Jagger decided to split the cost of hiring a consultant with two friends who he knew from the Entrepreneurs Organization.

Jagger teamed up with Nurse Next Door co-founder Ken Sim and Garibaldi Glass co-owner Chris Mobius to hire lean manufacturing expert Jo Suria.

Lean manufacturing abides by the philosophy that spending resources on goals other than creating value for the end customer is wasteful and worth eliminating.

It’s sometimes called Toyotaism, because Japanese carmaker Toyota Motor Corp. has made it an operating mantra.

Metro Vancouver companies such as Delta fireplace manufacturer FPI Fireplace Products International have long used lean manufacturing consultants to ensure optimal productivity.

Said Jagger: “We’re working to engage our team members to understand the philosophy behind this stuff.”

Click here to read the full article.