Criminals are not always obvious to spot. They don’t just come out at night, carry swag bags, wear stripy tops, don a mask and tip toe around during a burglary.
In reality, it is quite the opposite. They try any trick in the book to fall under the radar. Recently, we received an alarm from a Waste Management client at 9am on a weekday, caused by somebody looking in containers. He was wearing a high visibility vest whilst holding a clipboard.
To an untrained and inexperienced eye, this could have been interpreted as a site surveyor or similar. However, as we invest a lot of time and effort into learning our customer’s needs and operations, we knew the person was unauthorised.
We never make a judgement call based on a few frames of footage. We always use any available resource and take as much time as reasonably necessary to deal with alarms. Adhering to our ‘guilty until proven innocent’ rule, we rewound and reviewed all CCTV camera recordings to identify how he gained entry. This thorough investigation led us to witness the intruder climbing over a fence.
Whilst issuing audio warnings to deter criminal activity, we immediately notified a keyholder who confirmed our suspicions that the person on site was an intruder. Our team immediately notified the police, whilst at the same time, issued further harsher audios to warn the intruder the police were on their way.
Just as criminals do not dress in the stereotypical way, our experienced team do not wear capes on their back or underpants over their tights, but they are every inch a superhero.
