Smile thieves: you’re on candid cameras.
And if you’re in Vancouver, there’s a good chance those cameras are streaming real-time video or audio of your crime to a security command centre in Vancouver or Lowell, Massachusetts.
If that camera is streaming video of your crime to Sonitrol Canada’s command centre in Vancouver, it could also be streaming live into a TV in the nearest police car.
As security hardware and software become increasingly sophisticated, the cat-and-mouse security game has become all about catching thieves in the act – rather than simply trying to scare them off with a blaring alarm.
The heart of a remote surveillance network is its command centre, where workers listen and watch remote audio and video recordings from security systems installed across a network of clients.
Vancouver-headquartered Sonitrol’s main command centre has 35 employees, each of whom monitors security systems at up to 500 clients at a time.
In 2010, Sonitrol’s heat and motion sensors, microphones and night-infrared and color-digital cameras helped catch 227 crooks in the Lower Mainland in the midst of stealing from or robbing one of the company’s clients.
“We catch a thief almost every night in Vancouver,” said Sonitrol CEO Joe Wilson.
The company’s 7,000 clients in Canada, a majority of which are in the Lower Mainland, represent a wide cross-section of businesses, from homebuilders and restaurateurs to jewellers.
The company provides remote surveillance for national businesses such as the Keg, Canadian Tire, Kal Tire, Best Buy, Future Shop and Stuart Olson Dominion Construction.
“The guys who hit the residential construction sites are the tradespeople,” said Wilson. “They steal from each other. In all industries, that’s the way it is.”
Sonitrol was founded in 1962 in Anderson, Indiana, by a former police chief frustrated over the many false alarm calls he received.
Wilson acquired the Canadian rights to the franchise in 1992 after the Toronto police department introduced him to Sonitrol’s technology while he was a director of security for Labatt’s Brewing Co. and Molson Coors Canada.
At the time, he tested Sonitrol’s system at 100 beer stores in Ontario. The stores’ losses dropped to $37,000 from $1.4 million in one year.
“I got a big bonus, and I bought Sonitrol,” said Wilson.
Sonitrol, which has 197,000 customers across North America, is right most of the time: its false alarms represent 3% of all calls.
With its low false-alarm rate, Sonitrol is one of the few security companies in Canada that has priority-calling placement with the RCMP.
About five years ago, the RCMP instituted a policy to ignore alarm calls without “verified dispatch:” it won’t answer alarm calls unless a break-in has been confirmed.
It costs an office similar in size to a video store about $2,000 to install Sonitrol and $75 a month for monitoring.
Wilson said Sonitrol does $300,000 a month in new installations in the Lower Mainland.
“We warranty everything we do, so if we have a miss, we take the hit; we pay,” he said. “We become a client’s insurance policy.”
James Weldon, who owns JTW Consulting, a construction consultancy, said a Sonitrol system helped catch a thief in early February on the site of a social housing renovation project he was supervising in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
“You rely on proven technology rather than the diligence of a night watchman, who may be concentrating on something else or may even be asleep.”
Weldon added that he also used Sonitrol’s systems while he was BC Housing’s director of innovation and standards.
“When security guards are getting $15 an hour, they’re not necessarily motivated.”
He said remote security costs a fraction of what it costs to have an on-site security guard.
“There’s nothing worse than getting a job finished and then going back in the morning and all the copper wire has been ripped out,” said Weldon.
Vancouver-based Paladin Security, which is the largest security provider in B.C., also remotely monitors clients’ businesses from a command centre in Burnaby, which is manned by 50 employees working various shifts.
“Some of our clients operate critical infrastructure,” said Paladin’s COO Leo Knight, “so they always require the latest and greatest in security technology.”
Viewpoint CRM set up shop in Vancouver last October.
Its handful of B.C. clients, the largest of which is Telus Corp. (TSX:T), have security video streamed to Viewpoint’s command centre in Lowell, Massachusetts, which has 70 employees.
“The problem with an alarm is it’s reactive, not proactive,” said Mark Richards, Viewpoint’s vice-president of business development in Canada.
“If somebody breaks into a property, by the time the police or a security guard arrives, they’re gone. We’re proactive; we’re here to stop the burglary from happening, period.”