A highly successful restaurant along waterfront had walkway outside with dome lights, approximately 8” high, grey color, directly on sidewalk. This was a tripping hazard for any inattentive guest walking in a group or talking over their shoulder. We recommended that a railing be installed above the series of lights to guard against this.
Computers cannot readily distinguish between an employee legitimately handling inventory and tools or stealing them. But certain patterns may emerge such as an employee driving their car or truck to the loading dock or the employee entering an exit door or loading a pallet onto an inbound truck at a dock or the employee walking to the employee parking lot at odd times or odd times of entry. Computers can detect these.
After installation of electronic surveillance, initially the internal thefts may resume in a tentative way and the thieves will feel that the cameras are “fake” or that they have figured out how to dodge them or game the system. They haven’t. We can have our central security officers do remote, invisible “look-downs” at random or selected times. Now a human can see in detail what is happening and control a PTZ camera or use the high-resolution IQTrack™ automatic digital zoom and track system on the VideoIQ dome camera to observe and record theft. For example inventory going into a pocket. The company can distribute employee policy rules stating that no inventory is to be transported in pockets or personal containers of any type. This makes firing/ enforcement easier.
Once the first thief is caught on camera then we can dispatch a detective to come in and interrogate him. The interview goes as follows. “You are fired and you will be prosecuted. You never have to see anyone here again. Depending on your cooperation right now we can ask the district attorney to agree to the most liberal plea bargain or we can insist on the maximum prosecution and no bargains. Anyone else that has been stealing will be caught by our system in short time just as you were. But to save time we want you to give us their names right now. If so, you may end up with no jail time and just probation. If not, things will go worse. That’s the deal. What are the names?”
Once the arrest is made the company can publicize to the workforce that the system worked and the thief has been arrested. A police crime prevention officer can address the workers to talk about the job security that results from crime-free workplaces. Having the police crime prevention officer address the assembled workers positively reinforces the sense that the police are there and there could be serious consequences to “petty” thefts or to accepting recruitment into the thieves’ ring. By encouraging solidarity amongst the honest employees, the position of thief ringleaders is weakened. Installing a locked anonymous suggestion box and explaining to workers that their collective future and the company’s is threatened by employee thieves, this provides a mechanism for honest employees to communicate information and tips about the employee thief underground. Of course such tips are not conclusive and could be false reports resulting from personal grudges, but a pattern of corroboration may evolve and certainly the central monitoring officers can watch the suspects more closely via the video surveillance look-downs.