Today’s jobs were again rather poor. A few warrants with nothing for me to do, except a single euro cylinder that fell inside of 5 seconds (and which I thought briefly had gone instantly) and giving some CCTV and general security advice to a business that had been hit for metal recently.
Metal theft is at an all-time high. The police and politicians keep telling us crime is dropping, but at the sharp end, I think it has actually gone up. However, they are ‘victimless’ so they don’t make the news. Steal 21p off someone with a knife, the helicopter will come out, and it makes the papers. Steal 21 tonnes of metal from a stock yard, or cables that supply a neighbourhood with power or phones, and the police and reporters could care less.
Of course, there is a range of victims, but no one person to quote and gain sympathy via the news, and since no person was at risk, the police give it a lower priority than a shed break-in, despite the often tens of thousands of pounds it costs the victim company.
The other thing that amazes me is that most small to medium enterprises won’t spend even £500 on security to protect £10k in stock and tooling. And that is very conservative – imagine a gang filling a large van out your works, and you would easily hit that figure, even without the disruption, loss of earning and fixing the vandalism that so often occurs.
Get a pro out to make some good suggestions are made, and then spend a sensible amount on keeping out those who would empty your business of everything of value.
If you think I might be exaggerating the impact of a successful break-in, here’s an example from a few weeks ago. A club which was destroyed and stripped so completely that not only were the water pipes taken out the walls, but they had ripped down the PIR alarm sensors and stripped the wire for the (frankly tiny amount of) copper in it.
Get professional advise, and try to do it before you are a victim.