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Crime Deterrent Camera to Modify Social Activities

Crime Deterrent Camera to Modify Social Activities

During this current National Emergency, cities are having to balance citizen’s rights with maintaining social distancing.  This is a very difficult task to bear. Whether you are a Law Enforcer, a Park’s Director, or Public Works Supervisor, this is not a duty you thought would land on your shoulders.  These are unusual times that require grace and truth. 

Most situations where people are not adhering to social distancing is within parks, beaches, trails and parking lots.  Places your city has worked so hard to give to the community.  Outdoor activities are essential for health, and yet, right now they must be within boundaries.  Playground equipment and benches are touched constantly by little hands that find their way into mouths possibly carrying the Novel Covid-19.

Thankfully, there is a tool to help you with this distasteful task.  It is a Crime Deterrent Camera that modifies social behavior.  This tool that multiplies your presence is usually used for deterring graffiti, vandalism and illegal dumping, but it is very effective at deterring any unwanted activity.

Get the help you need to deter social gatherings with grace and truth! 

The Cost of Nuisance Crimes

The Cost of Nuisance Crimes

Public nuisance crimes include many of the most commonly committed crimes in the U.S. They include criminal wrongs such as graffiti, vandalism, vagrancy, and illegal dumping. Because these are crimes committed against the public at large, it is most often the city that incurs the cost associated with these illegal acts. Besides cleaning and repairing property affected by nuisance crimes, there are other costs associated with these nuisance crimes such as policing and prosecuting individuals.

Vandalism of public property is a crime which can incur huge economic losses. These losses most often include the cost of repair and can total thousands of dollars. A decline in property value can result when these types of crimes are committed more often in a given community. Already strained city budgets and resources are exhausted to repair or deter more of these crimes from happening.

Vagrancy can lead to other public nuisance crimes including illegal dumping. These large-scale encampments can often be found in or on city-owned property with heaps of undisposed trash lying around. Cleaning up these trash sites can take days or months to effectively clear the area. And with limited resources, cities are forced to take money from other budgets to cover the cost of the clean-up.

So What Is Being Done?

Prior to now, most urban neighborhoods have treated public nuisance crimes as simple code violations. A small fine would be the consequence of violating one of these codes. More recently, many cities have begun prosecuting these violations as criminal misconduct and imposing harsher fines and fees in an effort to try to curb these acts from being committed. Cities using Crime Deterrent Cameras are seeing great results in deterring and find them to be very effective when strategically placed.

What is your city doing to prevent nuisance crimes and the costs associated with these crimes in your community?

Metal theft refers to incidents in which goods are stolen and stripped for their value of various types of metal.

Deterring Metal Theft with Behavior Modification

Metal theft refers to incidents in which goods are stolen and stripped for their value of various types of metal.  Metal recycling is lucrative, and thus, the motive behind metal theft.

 

Metal theft takes on numerous forms and there are several applications for which they are used, and the motives for each metal robbery differ depending on both value and risk factor.  Common targets include car lots for their catalytic converters, business centers for their air conditioning units, roofing material for its lead, bronze plaques from graveyards and monuments, and construction sites or stadiums for their copper wiring and cables.  Each metal target has its own marketplace value, as well as its own risk factor depending on its level of vulnerability and its surrounding security.

 

For the valuable metals that have the security risk-factor added to its theft prospect, there is evidence that a specific type of security that involves the intervention of catching the metal thief in the act, may serve as a type of behavioral modification by altering their thoughts toward changing their behavior.  This is due to the negative reinforcement or by the “warning” they’ve just encountered.  As humans, we are wired as such to alter our thinking and therefore change our behavior based on both positive and negative outcomes. Behavior modification is just that, a reversal of one’s decisions built on a known outcome.

 

There is a multitude of research in benefits surrounding behavior modification. Its therapeutic techniques first became popular in the 1970s, and it is used for countless behavioral breakthroughs today. One study presented children with ADHD in a behavior modification group turned out to have 50% less felony arrests later in life then the children who were not in behavior therapy. The reason it works is because its purpose is practical—the use of thought intervention begets a halt and modification in behavior.

 

Bringing us back to our theory on how the application of behavior modification in security may stop a metal thief from finalizing their treachery, a sudden interruption in metal thievery and the prospect of recycling stolen metal for cash suddenly becomes the prospect of jail time.  Most people, even thieves, do not like the possibility of a negative outcome.  A crime-deterrent camera system serves the use of crime intervention by warning the criminal that they are on camera and prosecution is around the corner.  This is the security technique of the future… using behavior modification as a deterrent for metal theft.

 

Metal theft is the stealing of scrap metals

How to Stop Metal Theft

Metal theft is the stealing of scrap metals such as: copper, aluminum, nickel, stainless steel and scrap iron, which are usually an essential element to a finished product.

For quick financial gain, scrap metal is usually obtained from various articles such as bicycles, vehicles, and playground equipment. Common favorite beleaguered sites are vacant houses, scrap dealer businesses and construction sites. Metal thieves have also been known to steal from railway sites, power plant sites, and well-lit sites like baseball and soccer fields. Sadly, thieves have even targeted metal from historic statues and the roof fixtures of churches and cemeteries.

Metal thieves mark areas that usually have a high amount of valuable metal. Places with plumbing fixtures or a high amount of copper wiring on light fixtures are potential victims to this growing problem. When the market crashed in 2008, there was an abundance of foreclosed houses and abandoned construction sites, which may have helped the recent rise in scrap metal theft. Metal theft has become a rising problem in the country, especially after the recession.

Cities face huge economic consequences due to metal theft. According to the Center for Problem- Oriented Policing “the cost of repairing damaged transformers or substations can run anywhere from $500,000 to $11 million”.

This crime is motived by the draw to the fast fix of cash. Drug users and organized thieves are prime motivators for metal theft.  However, the damage these thieves cause cost the cities more than the value of the metal they steal.  Organizations and government agencies should be seeking new ways to stop scrap metal theft.

Since the metal is less valuable than the fixtures or articles that contain the metal, deterrence is the most logical cost saving answer.  Stopping the crime before it happens.  Standard video surveillance and lighting will not stop the perpetrators.  Only specialized vandal resistance deterrent cameras can help stop the needless repairs metal theft causes.