Kerrisdale Days are here again… the sidewalk sale is on Thursday, August 27th and Friday, August 28th while the main event will be held on Saturday, August 29th between 9:00am and 5:00pm.

One of the big events is the annual Kerrisdale Idol competition that will be happening on the main stage between Starbucks and Shoppers Drug Mart. There is a $1,000 prize to the winner … but only 30 spots are available. Registration is first-come-first-served and will be happening at 8:30am in front of the stage.

This year will mark Provident’s 13th year of participating in Kerrisdale Days as a Business Association member and Sponsor (and security provider)… with Kerrisdale Carnival Days in April and Kerrisdale Days in August, this will be our 26th event on the street!

As always, we’ll be set-up on Yew Street between TD Canada Trust and RBC with our giant inflatable slide. We’ll have the slide set-up by 9:00am and will be giving out balloons all day long.

One of the most common questions that we get about the slide, once people see how big it is in real-life, is “how do you move that thing around and set it up?” … we filmed a short video that answers that question…

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.

Double click on each of the maps below to see the reported instances of Residential & commercial burglaries, as well as theft from, and of, auto in Vancouver between the 5th and 11th of August…

These heat maps are provided by the Vancouver Police Department.

Residential Burglaries

Commercial Burglaries…

Theft from Auto…

Theft of Auto…

Click below to watch a clip of a Vancouver thief attempting to break into a Bentley parked in a downtown parking lot.

The video demonstrates a few things…

1. CCTV is very rarely a deterrent to crime;
2. the real effort in any theft from auto or burglary is getting in.

Here’s what the car looked like afterwards…

What could have helped catch this crook?

Using video analytics could have helped catch this guy in the act… video analytics allow a camera to act as an intelligent motion detector. In this case, a CCTV system with analytics could have created an alarm by recognizing the suspicious activity of the thief… such as the fact that he walked from car to car, stood too long in one place as well as the fact that he was in the parkade at all during a specific timeframe.

The system could then send an alarm signal, along with a live video feed, that an operator could view in real-time… allowing them to dispatch security and the Police to respond and apprehend the offender.

We’ve got a live demonstration of this technology set-up in our Kerrisdale showroom… give us a call if you’d like to come by and get a demo.

Provident was featured in a Vancouver Sun story about Google’s announcement today that they are launching their own operating system to compete with Windows.

I was quoted in the article because Provident switched earlier this year from Microsoft Outlook (& Microsoft Office in general) to Google Apps.

Here’s an excerpt from the article… (or you can read the entire story here)

… Vancouver’s Provident Security is one. Founder and CEO Mike Jagger said dropping Microsoft Office in favour of Google apps is saving the company some $60,000 this year in hardware, software and maintenance costs. It is also streamlining applications making them much easier for company employees to use and offering added benefits such ease in uploading videos that can go on a company-only secure site for training and other information purposes.

“We were using Office before and we were using Word, Excel – the big one was the Exchange server and Outlook,” said Jagger. “The original impetus was to move off Outlook.

“Once we started seeing the benefits of having things web-based we started migrating everything over.

“It has had a huge impact. It is so much simpler to administer. “

Jagger said along with the software and server costs, there was significant investment in employee time keeping the old system working and ironing out employees’ problems with it.

“We have really skilled programmers and they were getting harassed to do really basic network stuff, we were wasting time, wasting talent and spending money on things that were just silly,” he said. “This is much better.”…

click here to read the full story

I’ll be speaking at the next Vancouver Construction Industry Meetup, being held on July 15th at Toby’s Pub & Grill which is at 2733 Commercial Drive (between 11th & 12th).

I’ll be presenting about burglary prevention, five-minute proofing as well as talk about integrating security considerations into the design process.

It will be different from our regular ‘Preventing Burglary’ seminars that we host every month in our showroom in that this talk will be geared more towards contractors, designers, integrators and homeowners about to undertake a renovation project.

If you’d like to attend, click here to RSVP… everyone is welcome.

In this month’s Today’s Parent magazine, a ‘quiz’ asks How Secure is Your Home?

Unfortunately, the article/quiz offers some suspect advice… specifically, the third question in the quiz asks:

3. A home security system with an alarm is:

a. Essential;

b. nice to have, but only if you can afford it; or

c. unnecessary

According to them, and Cst. Tom McKay from the Peel Regional Police who helped them with the quiz, the answer is ‘C’ “unnecessary”. The balance of the quiz includes a lot of the typical, and overly simplistic ‘security tips’ such as cutting your hedges and picking up newspapers that seem to make their way into every home security tips list.

It’s frustrating to see such ridiculous advice get published. I wrote a comment in response to the article which I’ve re-posted here below…

Re: Quiz: How Secure is Your Home, June 2009

To suggest that an alarm is ‘unnecessary’ is irresponsible.

While alarms are no longer the deterrent to burglars that they once were, an alarm can be a very important part of a home or business’s overall security ‘system’… the problem arises when people believe that a simple alarm is, in and of itself, a security system.

The reason that most alarms are not useful is because of the way that they are sold and installed. For example, most home alarms are sold at a very low price point and rely on motion detectors inside… ensuring that by the time the alarm actually trips, the burglary is almost over.

Couple that with the fact that very few alarms in Canada utilize private response service and instead ‘rely’ on Police response that averages over two hours in most cities (in Vancouver, it’s 2 hours and 6 minutes) a strong case can be made to say that most alarms are not providing any real security.

However, that is a judgement on those particular (and unfortunately, the majority) alarms… not alarms as an entire category.

The most important reason for having a monitored alarm system is to generate an immediate response. However, contrary to what your article states, there are companies who respond fast enough to a burglary.

Our firm, Provident Security guarantees a five minute response time to our clients alarms.

The goal for a properly designed alarm is to detect someone while they are still trying to break-in rather than after they are already inside. Coupling an alarm with several easy to implement physical security tactics is where security is maximized.

The most important of those security tactics is ‘five-minute-proofing’. ‘Five-minute-proofing’ means that, from the point at which your alarm trips, it would take a crook at least 5 minutes to get to whatever it is that you are trying to protect. It’s a combination of early detection by your alarm and slowing a crook down so that he cannot find (or remove) whatever it is that you are trying to protect.

In your article, the first tip suggests using a hockey stick to prevent a sliding glass door from being opened. The mistake most people make with this tip is that they make the stick the same size as the rail that it will be laying in. Instead, apply a ‘five-minute-proofing’ strategy by ensuring that the stick is cut so that it is about two inches shorter than the door. This way, when a crook tries to pry the door, it will open enough for the alarm to trip, while still keeping him outside.

‘Five-minute-proofing’ can be applied to every single item in your home. It’s simply a matter of identifying which items you need to protect and applying the same strategy.

Some other simple ‘five-minute-proofing’ strategies include:

• In almost every residential burglary, thieves will head straight to the master bedroom and pull open the bedside table drawers, then rifle through the closet. Do not leave your family jewelry there. Either put the jewelry you do not wear into a safety deposit box at the bank or put it in another room in your home;
• Consider putting a lock on your master bedroom door. It’s almost always the first place crooks go… a lock, even a really cheap one, will slow them down;
• Use a bicycle chain to keep your LCD or plasma screen TV connected to it’s wall bracket;
• couple window film with a properly installed glassbreak detector (monitored by your alarm)… that way, when the crook tries to smash the glass and can’t on the first attempt, the alarm will trip while he’s still standing outside;
• Screw a washer that is a little wider than your sliding glass door near the top of the door so that it cannot be lifted out of its track (but again, leave enough distance between the top of the door and the track so that the door will move enough to trip the alarm before hitting the washer).
• If you want to get a safe, ensure that it gets professionally installed and bolted into concrete. An 800lb safe is much easier to move than most people think… if it’s not bolted down, it’s not ‘five-minute-proofed’.

Contrary to the advice in your article, I recommend against canceling your newspaper, milk or other deliveries. The fewer people that know that you are away, the better. Ask a trusted friend or neighbour to pick up any deliveries for you in your absence. (or, if you’re a Provident client, book a HomeWatch) The goal is to try and keep your home looking just as busy when you are gone as when you’re home.

We’ll be livestreaming tonight’s Preventing Burglary seminar again at www.communitysecuritytv.com

The presentation will start at 7:00pm PST

There is no need to register or login to watch the seminar, but if you would like to be able to use the chat feature and ask any questions, you will need to have a UStream.tv username & password which you can get by going to www.ustream.tv and clicking on the ’signup’ link at the top of the page