Self Storage- Crime Management

Response to a persons question on Crime management at Self Storage

My Brother wrote the Nuclear, Biological and Chemical warfare manuals for all North American Air Force and Army bases. One California Fire Season he was in charge of the overall operations. When the bridges in Minneapolis fell into the river, he was in charge of assembling the Underwater task force for recovery. I'm saying he's trained to think logically and results oriented. On one visit, since I was on the School Board talked with him on School attacks and shootings.

Explained about our Active Shooter training, school kids training, should teachers have guns, etc, etc, etc.

He asked;
"Do you want to stop the Shooter, or prevent the Shooting?" He said we are all approaching it wrong.

Even if you wanted to stop a Shooting, most of the deaths and wounded occur in the first 1 1/2 minutes. Police response time even in a good situation is 5 minutes or longer. Not their fault. School front office has to verify there truly is a shooter, Notify Police, Police have to come, then they have to locate the shooter, and then they have to change their normal tactics and "Attack" versus "Contain".



So what has this got to do with Self Storage?


1. Prevent versus Stop:
a. Signage- cameras, alarms, Website, etc. Let them know your systems. Be a "Hard" target.
b. Customers- get rid of your troublesome customers. See my post on Bad Customers. I believe an article once said 70% of all Self Storage crimes are by people who rent there.

2. Catch them:
a. It takes the following actions to go through the "Legal" prosecution process.
- Catch them (cameras) both breaking and entering the unit. That unit, not a unit. If you camera shows 15 units, its slanted and you can't tell which unit they went into.
- Get a picture of them. I love people with Tattoos.
- Get a vehicle and license plate, so you can find them.
b. Put an alarm system to your night phone. I wouldn't have it go to Police (false alarms). You can re-act in 15 seconds based on your security system. Won't go into detail.

Forgot, you need to protect your NVR.

Our security guy added a text alarm to my phone should the NVR either go offline or be detached. The best thing is for Offsite backup, but this is expensive.

We already have virtually an Air Raid level megaphone in our Office if you don't type in the code quickly. This literally will force you out of the building if you don't put both hands over your ears.