If you live in a community or have a homeowners’ association (HOA), consider hiring a dedicated 24/7 patrol service. Even having a decoy patrol car parked in a highly visible part of the development can deter criminals. The adage “see something, say something” goes a long way in deterring suspicious activity and preventing attacks, especially in communities or business areas with established connections such as an HOA or neighborhood watch. When individuals report who, what, when, and where there is an out-of-place occurrence and can tell law enforcement why is suspicious to them, those agencies are better able to stop crime. If you are uncertain of what looks suspicious, hire someone who can tell you. AEGIS offers both patrol services with physical security officers — check us out.
AEGIS Security & Investigations is a Los Angeles based security company that is licensed and insured in the State of California to provide high-end armed and unarmed security officers who are trained to observe, report, and ensure the safety of you and your property.
In essence, hiring a security professional or team for patrol can be critical to your community, whether it is for a private home, HOA, campus, or a corporate office building. At AEGIS, we value our clients and aim to meet and exceed their expectations. We specialize in high-end, customer service-focused security, investigative, training, and consulting solutions. We are able accomplish our goal of exceeding your expectations by actively utilizing both internal and external active management techniques and focusing our services tuned to our clients’ hierarchy of needs. We value professionalism, reliability and prevention versus reaction, and we implement field-tested steps to avert incidents before they occur. AEGIS is fully insured and is licensed by the State of California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services.
Decoy patrol cars are not new on the security and law enforcement scene. In fact, experiments using this method of crime deterrence have been found to effective for quite some time with large studies in the last decade revealing that the appearance of security can cut crime rates in most locations. In Los Angeles, the initiative has been in place since the new millennium.
Why does parking a decoy patrol unit work? Think of your own home. When you are going on vacation, leaving lights off, not having your car out front, or letting mail and newspaper clutter build up are all signals that the house is open to burglary. However, if you leave a car in the driveway or have an automatic light system come on for a few hours in the evening, it appears that someone is home, decreasing the likelihood of burglary. It’s the same thing with a decoy patrol car.
Potential criminals are looking for signs that they can get away with the crime. They don’t want to put up a fight, and seeing a sign that security is either on-site or easily accessible acts as a quick deterrent. See how one large city is using their retired vehicles as decoy patrol cars.
A patrol car is a clear sign that a security officer is nearby and on-call (even if that’s not so). And at a lower rate than having an active on-site security guard or dedicated security patrol service, parking a decoy patrol car in front of your business can save you money. Because the only costs incurred is with the patrol car as opposed to an officer, AEGIS is able to offer our security decoy patrol cars at discount with long term contracts.
AEGIS Security & Investigations offers clients use of the patrol car as a decoy mechanism on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. With our decoy security patrol car service, you are guaranteed a clean patrol car that is clearly marked as a security vehicle parked in a place of your liking that is ready for use should your needs grow to include a dedicated patrol route.
Additional safety elements you and your community may want to consider include the following:
- Start a neighborhood watch.
- Check in with neighbors if you suspect there has been a problem with their home safety.
- Inform neighbors if you are having a large gathering that will mean a lot of new cars are parked along the street.
- Inform your city representatives and power company when street lights are not working to have it fixed quickly.
AEGIS Security & Investigations is a Los Angeles region company that is licensed and insured in the State of California to provide high-end armed and unarmed regular and temporary off-duty police officers, bodyguards, security officers, loss prevention agents, and event staff. We provide a broad spectrum of home security consulting services. Additionally, we offer services for private investigation, consultation, people tracing, and background investigation. Our trainings and workshops in the field of security licensure and counter-terrorism have been featured in news media and are renowned for their efficacy. For more information or to contact us, visit www.aegis.com.
By Chelsea Turner & Jeff Zisner
