215-947-2338 (local)

866-633-3813 (toll-free)

Limitations of Human Guards, Guard-Assisted Crimes and Cutting Costs of Guard Forces 

Limitations of human security guards
Try staring at this for eight hours a day….

A guard is supposed to watch 100,000 square feet of storage and operations as well as monitor who enters and exits the property. He has to tour on foot around the premises. The thieves watch him begin his tour and head towards the area he has just left. Rain, snow, darkness — all these things affect him and his ability to watch a video monitor. Given that he is human, he has to visit the rest room at times. Some days he may be out sick. Video Analytic software can watch all 100,000 square feet at once without ever blinking an eye.  It can see things no human could pick up. It then alerts a central monitoring professional who takes over watching and reacting, while the analytics continue to automatically target and identify the suspicious person or trespasser. This is a tremendous advancement.

Not for $10/hr. and not for $30/hr. will a guard stare at those split screen monitors vigilantly. It is not humanly possible. If the video system uses the popular motion-detectors to alert the guard, then he gets constant false alerts of things like shadows from clouds, litter or debris blowing along the ground, birds flying by, and so on. He learns to disregard the alerts. If he glances at the screen he will often see images such as these. Namely, he will miss the actual intrusion.

The above is based on an honest guard doing his best. On the other hand we should never assume that all guards are honest. According to insurance industry statistics 40% of thefts from industry are guard assisted. Namely, they took payoffs to look the other way or otherwise assisted. By instead having a computer spot the intruders and rule-violations, and having it report to a central monitoring officer who is offsite at the other end of the state, this possibility of compromised security is eliminated.

Companies have been able to reduce the size of their costly existing guard staff by utilizing video analytic systems. Personnel formerly employed in the guard function can be reassigned to production or maintenance work or to greeting customers or to other profit-generating activities.