By Pamela Singleton, Sonitrol Pacific Director of Communications
Posted February 12, 2009

Criminals want to work smarter not harder too.

Okay, not all of them. Most burglaries are still a crime of opportunity and little foresight or planning goes into it. However, a small, but effective group of professional criminals know what to look for when considering burglarizing a facility and act in a way that increases their “return on investment” in the criminal enterprise. A few months ago, Sonitrol Pacific detected suspicious activity at a client’s business and Portland Police believe it was actually a wanna-be burglar doing a dry run to test the system.

In the wee small hours of the morning, one of our awesome operators received a system activation signal and listened to audio from the facility to verify the alarm. She heard glass breaking and called police. Officers arrived on scene within minutes to find a broken window and a 2×4 propped against the building next to the broken window. No one ever entered the building. The police investigation determined someone broke the window and staged the scene then hid to determine the response time of the security system and the police. The suspect must have concluded our client’s business was well protected by Sonitrol Pacific and not worth the risk of arrest.