You’re out at dinner with the family. Your phone buzzes with a motion alert. You see a grainy figure jumping over your fence.
Naturally, you unlock your phone and open your remote monitoring app to see what is happening. Your live surveillance feed loads, and you are horrified to see a figure breaking into your house. Helplessly, you watch as someone breaks into the house you felt so safe in.
While you wait with bated breath, frantically relaying every detail to the 911 dispatcher, praying that the police arrive in time, you see the robbers leave. By the time you get back to your house, the police are waiting to take a report and give you the paperwork needed to file an insurance claim.
This all too common scenario shows the fundamental flaw in home security systems. In the end, they are a minor deterrent that provides information only, and typically after the crime is completed at that. To truly secure your property, your security needs to actually be able to respond to the incident as it is happening, or before it even occurs. That’s why a human presence is essential.
The Response Gap is that critical time period between when a threat is noticed and when help arrives.
Security cameras, motion sensors, and other surveillance systems are great for recording evidence of a crime in action and providing information for police reports and insurance claims. However, they cannot intervene and prevent a crime in progress on your behalf. On-site agents are what you need to stop a crime before it happens. They work in tandem with cameras to identify suspicious activity and intervene to end it.
In many California cities, police departments are simply overstretched. A residential alarm, more often flagging random motion than a crime in progress, is prioritized lower than confirmed crimes in progress. If it takes the police only 10 minutes to respond, but a criminal is in and out in under 5, they are unfortunately only arriving to take a report.
When it comes to organized groups attempting to rob affluent homes, there is plenty of scouting done to determine whether or not the target is going to be easy or difficult to steal from.
When a scouting crew sees an on-site patrol, the odds are no longer in their favor. The easy score is gone, and they’ll usually just move on to the next place, hoping they don’t have that security team waiting.
Alarm fatigue is a serious problem. When your motion alerts go off for someone in the street for the 15th time in one day, you might stop paying attention to the alerts at all.
On-site agents don’t have this issue. They are trained to monitor these alerts and parse them, filtering out any unnecessary information before it gets to you. You can comfortably continue about your day while knowing your surveillance system is being utilized to its maximum potential thanks to your on-site security guards.
If a threat is real, a camera does nothing but watch. Agents act. From verbal challenges to physically intervening, on-site security is capable of deterring and detaining threats until police can arrive to apprehend them.
Safety isn't just about crime prevention. HNW families face other risks. If a family member suffers a cardiac event or a fire breaks out in the kitchen, many residential security agents are trained first responders. In an emergency, the difference between immediate intervention and a delayed ambulance arrival can be the difference between life and death.
When we discuss on-site security, many clients imagine an unprofessional, unkempt, incompetent guard in a chair. This is not the reality of modern Residential Security Agents (RSAs).
Modern RSAs are often recruited from military or law enforcement backgrounds and then trained specifically for private sector work. They emphasize:
On-site security often doubles as logistical support, adding value to the client's daily life beyond just protection.
We are not suggesting you rip out your cameras. Surveillance systems and on-site guards work best as a combination, with one providing total site visibility and the other the manpower to respond to any incident. Relying solely on technology leaves your home exposed during the critical time when a crime occurs, but even the best guards can’t stop what they can’t see.
Does your current security plan leave you exposed during the "Response Gap"? Contact us today for a comprehensive vulnerability assessment.
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