The majority of property crimes occur at night, when criminals and vandals believe they are less likely to be seen. This allows private properties with heavy night-time traffic to be an easy target for possible criminals to break entry gates, vandalize amenities, and most commonly break into resident vehicles.
So how can you deter criminals from your property for good and keep your residents and their assets safe? The first step is investing in a quality video surveillance system that you can rely on to be on and functional during the times you need it to be. Ensure the system you choose uses quality cameras that are placed strategically around your property in the areas that may be prone to criminal activity. Lighting of these areas is key for capturing good video evidence of any incident. Modern cameras work well in both normal and low-light situations individually but not when the two are mixed, meaning a zone that has extremely low-light in the majority of the frame but one area with a bright light shining will not create a good image.
Guarding:
Many people are misled to believing simply having video cameras installed on their property will deter criminal activity because the criminals will not want to get caught on camera. The unfortunate truth is that vandals and criminals simply do not care if they are caught on tape and video cameras alone have very little success at deterring criminal activity according to safety.com. So what is the solution? Many apartment and multifamily communities employ an overnight guard to watch the feed from all the surveillance cameras on a monitor on the property and observe and report on any suspicious activity. Unfortunately these guards are costly due to their guarding expertise and the nature of the job being overnight and presumably dangerous. There is also no way to know how all your properties are doing every night if you manage or own multiple properties and all the guards work separately. These are just some of the downfalls of on-site guarding that have created the need for remote guards and an increased popularity for this solution for multifamily properties across the country.
Remote Guarding as a Solution:
Remote Guards using tailored software that includes intelligent motion tracking and notifications of movement in any camera view provide the ideal remote solution. Not only are remote guards a fraction of the cost for an on-site guard, but they can monitor many more cameras than other guarding solutions as well, making them cheaper and more useful. ControlByNet Cloud Video Surveillance has created a remote guarding solution that is being utilized by multifamily properties across the country for overnight protection of their assets, and their clients are seeing results.
How It Works:
As soon as a motion event occurs, an alert is triggered to make the guard aware of the movement. The guard will then observe the event that triggered the alert and see if it is criminal or suspicious activity. If the event is in fact suspicious or criminal in nature, the guard can then make a call to an on-site courtesy officer to take action, or in more serious cases, call the local authorities and inform them of the crime taking place simultaneously. The artificial intelligence of the camera coupled with the human intelligence of the guard drastically reduces error in false alarms as well as giving the authorities proper reaction time to catch the criminal as the guard is watching them in real-time. The guard will notify the proper authorities of the incident and will help assist and identify the location and description of the individual(s). This solution has been instrumental in the arrest of arsonists, vandals, intruders, and car-jackers all over the country.
Conclusion:
The benefits of using a remote video guard are unbounded. By utilizing this solution you can lower expenses by minimizing on-site guard costs as well as actively deter criminals from your property with the knowledge they are constantly being monitored and will be caught. Remote guards take the hassle out of overnight guarding of multifamily properties and assist in catching the criminals in the act, making the property safer for the future.