At about 2:30am yesterday morning (Wednesday) a home in Kerrisdale was burglarized (the homeowners were out of town at the time). The crook(s) gained entry by throwing a baseball sized rock through a double paned window at the back of the house.
Once inside, the crooks went straight to the master bedroom and opened up the bedside table drawers, then into the closet where they rifled through everything looking for cash and jewellery. Once again, the burglary closely followed the pattern described in my post about the typical burglary (other than the time of day).
While the client had one side gate locked securely, it appears as if entry to the backyard was gained through a second,
unlocked gate that led to the neighbours back yard.
The first zone that tripped was an interior motion detector that went off once the crook(s) was/were able to climb through the hole smashed in the window.
In this case, Provident only provided response service (rather than full monitoring and response service) as the monitoring of the alarm was provided by a different company.
The alarm company did not follow the procedures that the client had asked them to follow in the case of an alarm; namely to call Provident immediately upon receipt of any alarm signal. Instead, the company followed their typical alarm procedure (which is typical to pretty much 99% of alarm companies North America wide) which is to call the premises first to check if the alarm is false before dispatching anyone else (click here to learn how we dispatch).
The company went a little further and actually called the premises three times before finally calling us a full 2 ½ minutes after the first signal was received at their station. Our first responder got to the alarm in a little over 2 minutes from that call, but unfortunately just missed being able to get a description of the crook(s). (from the alarm reports, it would appear that we missed the crook(s) by little more than a
minute)
In this incident, the difference between being able to interrupt the burglary while it was still in progress (and as a result being able to call 911 to report a true crime in progress) was a combination of the slow dispatch from the client’s alarm company as well as the absence of glassbreak detectors.
From my own look at the broken glass, it appears as if it took at least a couple of throws before the glass broke enough to allow for someone to enter. Had a glassbreak detector been installed, a signal would have been sent much sooner. It’s possible that the early detection could have spooked the crook(s) enough to take off rather than keep trying to get into the house. In the event that the crook(s) would have decided to carry through with the burglary anyways, it would be very likely that we would have been able to interrupt the burglary had this earlier detection been possible… even with the slow dispatch time.
When the client found out about the time delay in dispatching us, he asked us to take over the monitoring and upgrade his system to include glassbreak detectors in every room with accessible windows. By the end of the day, the client’s alarm was re-programmed so that it is now monitored through our Operations Centre here in Kerrisdale.
Lessons to be learned?
If you are only using Provident as your response provider, we strongly suggest that you review the instructions that your alarm company has on file in the event of an alarm. In our experience, the vast majority of alarm companies do not follow the written instructions given to them when Provident was signed up to provide response. As a result, their dispatch instructions still indicate that the premises should be called first before Provident. To eliminate this possibility, many of our clients have changed their premises number to be our dispatch line so that it is impossible to make a mistake. Please call our office at 604.664.1087 if you are concerned about this potential issue.
Consider having glassbreak detectors installed in your home. We can install both hardwired and wireless versions. As mentioned in previous posts, glassbreak detectors are the only alarm devices that we can install inside of your home that will trip an alarm while the crook is still standing outside.
Is your alarm more than 3 years old? If yes, please call us to book an appointment with one of our security consultants who can provide a complete review of your home and talk about solutions for potential weakspots.
Provident is a full service security company with our own state of the art central monitoring station. If we have only been providing response services, give us a call to talk about what would be required to transfer your monitoring to us. We have implemented state of the art monitoring automation software that will ensure that your alarm is responded to without delay.
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