This week whilst doing the odd random patrol around our neighborhood due to a increase in break ins I may have found the cause. The night time guard at the main gate has been sleeping on the job and tends to be nicely tucked up fast asleep between 1am and 4am. The problem is he is leaving the side pedestrian gate wide open and is oblivious if anyone is coming in or out.
They say you are only as strong as your weakest link and here we ae paying for a non existent security service. I blame the security company for this lapse in service as they should be monitoring their guards. There are cameras dotted around, but amazingly not one is facing the guard hut. The security company knew break ins were taking place, but never bothered to double check their guards were doing the job. I also blame the community who never bothered to check they were doing their jobs as we as the community employ their services.
For those of us who spent time in the army you knew when doing guard duty sleeping was never an option knowing full well you could t any time receive a visit from someone checking up on you. The punishment would be horrendous and at my base would involve chopping railway sleepers with an axe with no gloves every night for a month.
I know exactly what the graveyard shift is like as I have ever forgotten this even though this was over 30 years ago. I can only imagine what this must be like as your career, but a job is a job and now this guard is unemployed and has been dismissed.
Our community is now taking over the security ourselves with one of the residents who owns a security firm supplying the guards. The guards will know the owner stays down the road and we all expect that this security breach will now be fixed. There will be 6 of us who will now have access to the multiple security cameras which will be owned by the community. Up till now we rented them on a monthly fee controlled by the security company and going forward having total control will be far better.
I had an instance at work where we had theft only to find out the cameras we were paying for being controlled by the security company were not working and had been out of action for longer than 6 months. They were still taking the rental fee though and why you have to control your own cameras.
This has been a rough few weeks for myself as I have been the only one walking around between 2am-4am monitoring what the problem is with the hope I stumbled into our thief. The community has had no more break ins which is a good sign and it points towards sleeping on the job being our security weakness. Many including myself believed it was an internal problem because it did make no sense and now knowing the facts we should have no more worries.
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