At some point, package theft has affected more than 40% of Americans resulting in an average loss of $106 per household. When this amount is applied to the Census total of U.S. households, in the past year, the estimated value of stolen goods is $7.4 billion. ECAM’s live video surveillance solution, customized for apartment communities, can proactively help to deter such loss at your multifamily community.
During late night hours, one of Stealth’s trained security operators saw a female with a white plastic bag enter a multifamily community’s mail room. Packages were strewn on the floor. The individual placed a box inside the plastic bag. Our operator sounded the onsite warning, but the thief ignored it. Our operator then contacted the guard, but the call was routed to voicemail. Ultimately, our operator contacted local police dispatch to report the potential crime in progress.
The thief walked around the corner to find even more boxes on the floor and also inside four large cartons. The thief dug through one of the cartons, pulled out a package and placed it inside the bag. She reached over onto the floor and into an opened cardboard box filled with shipping envelopes. She placed the envelopes into the bag.
The thief continued to dig through the other three cartons, picking and choosing packages and placing them inside the plastic bag. When the bag was full, she placed a parcel under her arm. With the bag in her left hand and continued to steal other packages with her right hand.
Once the thief could carry no more, she made her way to the elevator and boarded with all the packages.
Our operator switched to an outdoor camera and saw the individual lugging the packages toward what looked like a parking garage. A security guard entered the camera’s view and was seen interacting with a police officer who carried a black plastic bag.
The officer and guard entered the community’s mail center. The police officer dumped out the contents of his bag, which were the packages he retrieved from the thief.
Police notified Stealth that the individual was placed under arrest.
Ownership and Management Take on Responsibility to Help Keep Resident’s Packages Safe and Secure
C+R Research recently surveyed 2,000 consumers who reported they shopped online at least once within the last 12 months. The data was gathered into the 2021 Package Theft Statistics Report. From the survey, 60% of the people revealed they knew someone who has had a package stolen during the holiday season and about half of the respondents believe delivery companies are not doing enough to prevent package theft. For multifamily communities, this places the burden on ownership and management.
Sometimes residents aren’t home when their ordered packages are delivered. Other times, delivery services won’t deliver to individual apartment homes. However, the delivery must be made, so many multifamily communities will accept packages on behalf of their residents.
These packages may be stored in locked closets and can only be picked up during office hours. Other communities choose to have packages delivered to the mail facility so that residents can retrieve their packages at any time. Whatever your method, helping to deter package and other mail-related theft is a needed part of your community’s overall amenity security strategy to help further encourage residents that safety and security is high priority.
Stealth’s live video monitoring watches for real-time activity with our advanced video analytics. Simply detecting motion is not proactive. It’s just saying something or someone is moving in front of a video surveillance camera and does not allow for immediate intervention.
Our solution is proactive. Our advanced video analytics actively filter through our live video streams and detect certain activities that the analytics are pre-programmed to distinguish. This happens automatically and does not need human interaction to perform this function.
When an activity needs human intervention, however, the technology alerts a highly trained Stealth security monitoring operator who analyzes the situation and determines the best next steps in how to deter the in-progress activity.
With the above video, our operator was able to sound an onsite warning, contact the community’s security guard as well as contact police, who arrived at the community in time to intercept and arrest the package thief. If our solution only detected motion, our operator would not have the ability to see the situation in progress. This would prevent the operator from helping to deter the unwanted activity based on the package thief’s behaviors and actions.
Contact our experienced team of multifamily specialists today to discuss live video monitoring to help keep your community’s mail facility, and other amenities, safe and secure for residents.
