Residential property managers have more than just day-to-day operations to worry about. When you’re busy trying to coordinate leases, tend to resident maintenance requests, and handle rents, the last thing you want to be concerned with is suspicious activity around the property. Fortunately, there are security measures that can be put in place that help reduce and prevent individuals from seeking out the amenities in your properties as a place to hang out.
On a balmy night in Florida, around 11:00 pm, a ECAM security operator noticed some unusual activity in a multi-family residential property’s pool area. Pool hours for the apartment community end at 6:00 pm, but the individual seen on camera wasn’t simply violating the pool curfew. On further review, the person appeared to be either transient or homeless, and was behaving rather strangely. It seemed from the footage that the person was potentially intoxicated or otherwise unwell.
The security professional attempted to deter the individual remotely with a speaker deterrent in place, but they seemed unconcerned. As the property does employ guards, the Stealth professional attempted to contact them to notify them of the pool intruder but were unable to make contact as the phone went unanswered and no voicemail was available. The security operator then contacted local law enforcement. Officers arrived and took the matter into their hands, ultimately handcuffing the trespasser and removing them from the property.
Help Protect Your Property and Residents from Threats
Your residents may have chosen your property for a variety of reasons – and enjoyment of the amenities, like a safe and clean pool area, is likely one of them. Trespassers accessing your pool area present a myriad of potential problems. These can include liability issues should someone manage to injure themselves, threats to residents if a trespasser is aggressive or sets up camp in the area, trash and other potential dangers left behind, like broken bottles or drug paraphernalia, and damage to the area itself.
You can help to prevent and manage these kinds of threats by implementing a proactive solution. Live video monitoring provides both technological security measures, like analytics-based camera feeds, and a human element – our trained monitoring operators watch these feeds directly to help detect suspicious activity and act in the case of suspicious activity that needs to be escalated to the local authorities.
In the case above, our security professional was able to spot the individual accessing the pool after hours and act. First attempting to disperse the threat themselves by sounding a speaker deterrent, then by attempting to notify those on site. When they were unable to reach the guard, they took their concern to the next level, and notified authorities.
One of the primary benefits of live video monitoring is the ability to detect suspicious activity in real time. While the guard may have been patrolling a different area of the property, our security professionals are able to see activity in multiple areas of the property simultaneously and can help detect a disturbance or something out of place quickly. Additionally, because we can see an event is happening in real time, law enforcement can be notified of details immediately, and are made aware that an escalated call isn’t made in error or a false alarm.
Interested in putting our live video monitoring to work for your apartment property? Contact us today and learn more about how we can help deter crime, minimize liability issues, and keep your residents comfortable in shared spaces.
