Huge Increase in Crime.

About 3 weeks ago we had a car stolen from our security guard , gaurded garage ( that's a different story all together) but a car was stolen.

Two days ago another car was broken into and garage remote stolen. Same night within minutes apart a resident was mugged outside our front door while sitting in his car. He was fine, but they stole his cell phone and wallet.

I man our cctv monitoring device. It is very clear how every single one of these individuals ( except the mugging ) occured. Our own residents have let the criminals in. Often while pulling into the garage and letting someone walk in with them... that is exactly what happened this time and with other thefts in our garage.

Looking for advise on how to not appear to point the finger at the specific residents who have done this. But make sure we as a community are aware we are the one's for the most part letting our own criminals in.

The most recent person let the two criminals in as they pulled in at 1130pm. The two criminals were standing by the garage gate, one wearing a beanie and and a backpack.. seriously? I saw this and thought immediately these are our guys.. and yes, it was! CCTV showed the whole carousing of the place, stealing of remote etc. I left an note not chatising the resident but letting them they let the burglars in, asking them to be aware.

The two cars that have either been stolen or broken into have had remotes inside. We sound like a broken record but this keeps happening. We have asked residents to not do this but it continues. There is NO rules anywhere prohibiting this.

I have asked the board to consider making it against the rules to house a remote in any vehicle. To have the preferred method as keyring or carrying device. How can we enforce it? What kind of penalty if we get another homeowner reporting "I left my remote in the car" issue again.

Our HOA BOD voted AGAINST the use of a guard.. saying that if anyone approaches me I will be telling them so. It's not my own fault our BOD is not extremely proactive.. although I suspect they'd be if their car was stolen.

My community has had a few occurrences but at the end of the day, it is up to each homeowner to protect their property. Cameras are great and as someone has pointed out, they capture and record images of people. The fun part is after the image has been recorded, you typically end up with footage of perpetrators who can't be identified. Of course, you can always turn the images over to the police, but they usually are unable to identify the perpetrators. I have also found that the perpetrators must know this because otherwise why would they commit crimes while knowing they are being videotaped? As far as the mugging, have you had a dialogue with your local law enforcement agency about your concerns? Will they agree to become more of a presence around your community? Sometimes getting a group of neighbors together to have a discussion with the police can be productive.

Fiona,

in 1958 my parents purchased a home that had a garage door opener that worked from a remote. It sounds like your association is trying to combat 21st century crime with 1950's security. If your gate operates from remotes and all remotes are coded the same, the theft of a single remote opens your garage to the bad guys.

There are numerous ways to upgrade your gate opening without spending a ton of money. You can install keypads with a unique code assigned to each resident, or an RFID system that will passively read a fob and open the gate for authorized users, or cards that must be inserted into a reader. Almost everything requires a computer but it allows you to reject stolen codes or hardware.

My experience has been that it is virtually impossible to prevent pedestrians from following someone through a gate.

Hi, Fiona

You might try to create an awareness campaign.

Since you know that remotes are stolen, you know that the garage is not safe. The remotes should be changed with every theft. Find out what the cost it and the board should decide if the penalty should be taken by the whole HOA.

For the awareness campaign, you might see if you can get a police officer to do a security presentation.Depending upon your community, this might be available for free. If not the police, then often women's group will provide this.

I write this because someone wrote that you can't prevent a pedestrian from following a car in. Actually, what awareness training would do would be to make people more aware of what they SHOULD do. What you should do is consider if this person is there to rob you or your car, carjack, etc. In that case, you would NOT open the gate. Your police can advise you on what they think you should do in such a situation such as call 911, go around the block and if the people are still loitering there, call 911 or go to the nearest police station and/or inform someone at the HOA.

If the board is aware of the remote thefts and the security problems and does nothing should there be an attack, then the board could be held liable for doing nothing.