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4. Obtain and Evaluate
Crime Statistics and Maintain Records:
Maintaining a record of applicable statistics can assist in
evaluating the need to upgrade security and can significantly
minimize exposure in premises liability litigation since it shows
the jury that apartment management was actively monitoring the
changing crime climate on an ongoing basis.
The local library or police department should be able to provide a
copy of the Uniform Crime Statistics prepared each year by the FBI.
In Major cities, statistics are often available for areas or patrol
car sectors.
It's a good idea to research these reports for the previous five
years, or more, to determine whether risks in the community are
increasing or decreasing--and to compare your community's statistics
against other familiar cities.
Trends indicating increases in relevant categories might indicate
the need for considering upgrading security. If this is the case,
appropriate upgrading should occur.
In some areas, police departments are able to retrieve statistics by
address or address sequence. In these cases, it is sometimes
possible to determine how your apartment complex stacks up against
the community as a whole.
To do this, you simply divide the number of crimes in the community
as a whole into the population. Then, divide the number of crimes
reported in your complex into the number of residents.
Example:
City Population 100,000, divided by 10,000 Total Modified Indexed
Crimes reported in the city = Risk Factor 10.
Apartment Complex Population 1,000 divided by 50 Total Modified
Indexed Crimes reported in the apartment complex = Risk Factor 20.
In this example, statistically, community residents have a one in
ten chance of being a crime victim each year, while statistically
the apartment residents have a one in twenty chance. In other words,
statistically the residents of the apartment complex are only half
as likely to be crime victims as residents of the community as a
whole.
(I should note that the only difference in the Total Indexed Crimes
and Total Modified Index Crimes is that the latter includes arson.)
There are exceptions here of course. There are some contract
security services that provide a variety of other services including
professional consulting by a staff CPP. In most of these cases
a fee would be charged for the survey, but in some cases, legitimate
objective security surveys might be provided gratis for a regular
client. In one unusual case, Loss Prevention Concepts, Ltd.
was employed by a contract guard service to conduct comprehensive
and objective security surveys at several locations of one of its
major clients. The guard service paid for this service and
their objective was to improve the overall security at their
client's facilities and improve their relationship with the client. |
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