In the past couple of years, the price of precious metals has increased steadily, making gold, silver, copper, and others a hot commodity. While this news is great for commodities investors, it is having an unexpected side effect. Unfortunately, precious metal theft has drastically increased, proving that investors are not the only ones looking to cash in on global market trends.
According to a report released by the National Insurance Crime Bureau, precious metal theft (96% of which is copper theft) has steadily increased since 2009, posing a serious threat to our nation. Specifically, commercial real estate properties, auto dealers, and city owned property are being targeted among other facilities with outdoor assets. Beyond just being an inconvenience to have items like your catalytic converter taken from you, copper theft causes hundreds of thousands of dollars of property damage.
It seems that especially in areas where no security video monitoring is present, copper thieves will go to absurd lengths to steal the precious metal. There have been incidences of criminals taking the coils out of exposed air conditioners, ripping out the exposed wiring from utility meters, stealing brass plates, and stripping the metal off of rooftops. Often these crimes are committed at great personal risk—people have been electrocuted trying to cut through copper wiring—but the thefts are seemingly lucrative enough for the thieves to persist.
For those commercial businesses that have risk of copper theft and exposed HVAC units it is certainly worthwhile to consider security video monitoring, and Stealth Monitoring is the industry leader in surveillance protection. Stealth can help reduce crime and property damage through a proactive approach to security. Rather than wait for an alarm to be tripped and trying to catch the criminals after the fact, Stealth manages onsite surveillance from a remote Live Video Monitoring control center, which can catch nefarious characters in the act. This control center is staffed not only with IT personnel, but also includes police and military-trained professionals.
Using high-tech video analytics and state-of-the-art surveillance technology, Stealth Monitoring provides virtual surveillance services that can have you resting easy knowing your business is being safely watched over. Each Stealth client provides specific instructions with the control center regarding what to do as if the client is watching the cameras themselves including remotely locking gates to directly informing the police.
The report about the copper thefts is indicative of a dangerous trend that poses a direct and personal threat to everyday people. Do not wait to deal with the aftermath of damage to your commercial property, but rather take the Stealth Monitoring proactive approach to security. Call Stealth at 1-855-783-2584 for more information.
