An employee in a late night food mart was held up at gunpoint and the event is recorded on the store’s overt CCTV surveillance system. As the robbery commenced, the two perpetrators involved in the crime jumped over the counter, demanded the cash in the register and quickly headed out the door for their escape.
An employee in a late night food mart was held up at gunpoint and the event is recorded on the store’s overt CCTV surveillance system. As the robbery commenced, the two perpetrators involved in the crime jumped over the counter, demanded the cash in the register and quickly headed out the door for their escape.
An employee in a late night food mart was held up at gunpoint and the event is recorded on the store’s overt CCTV surveillance system. As the robbery commenced, the two perpetrators involved in the crime jumped over the counter, demanded the cash in the register and quickly headed out the door for their escape.
Panic buttons in commercial premises must always be silent, accessible and
concealed. An employee in a late night food mart was held up at gunpoint and the event is recorded on the stores overt CCTV surveillance system. As the robbery commenced, the two perpetrators involved in the crime jumped over the counter, demanded the cash in the register and quickly headed out the door for their escape. Prior to the robbers leaving, the stores employee secretly pressed a covert hold-up panic button, which was installed in close proximity of the cash register under the counter. Shockingly, after pressing the hold-up panic button, the alarm systems inside siren immediately activated and as the perpetrators fled, one of them angled his gun and fired at the store employee, killing him. As the employee tried to call for help, he slumped over and died before he could even call 911. Importantly, as one views the surveillance tape of this tragic incident, it is abundantly clear that impact of the stores audible alarm blasting in the background, in response to the hold-up panic button being manually activated, was indeed a pivotal reason why the gun was fired in the first place. Indeed, the salient question is, why was the hold-up panic button programmed by the alarm company as an audible zone? For over 25 years, the technical community of the alarm industry has fully acknowledged and recognized the severity and dangers associated with a
commercial hold-up panic button which, upon activation, triggers an audible
alarm, versus one that can be silently and covertly triggered by an employee. Moreover, the last thing anyone wants to do is startle an already nervous robber who is holding him or her at gunpoint. Interestingly, during the forensic investigation of this matter, it was determined that the original configuration of the hold-up panic button for this particular zone was for silent activation. However, subsequent to this time, the owner made a request for emergency service to the alarm company when another of the stores employees left early and closed up for no reason. Strangely, this occurred without any notice to the business owner at all. In other words, the owner was very concerned that this employee would return afterhours and steal merchandise since she had the stores key and alarm code. Therefore, the focus of the service call request to the alarm company was to have the particular employees user code changed immediately. Notably, when service was actually performed on site, a myriad of problems cropped up on the systems keypad that were not an issue at all before internal system programmed was accessed by a technician. Furthermore, the alarm company technician spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to perform a simple user code combination change. Consistent with this persons evident lack of knowledge and competency of the equipment installed is that, before he left, contact was made by him to his dispatch center and a request was noted for another technician to revisit the store the next day because he was unable to rectify problems on the system.
SHOCKINGLY, AFTER PRESSING THE HOLD-UP PANIC BUTTON,
THE ALARM SYSTEMS INSIDE SIREN IMMEDIATELY ACTIVATED. The next day, the responding technician found that problems associated with the alarm system were caused by a multitude of internal programming errors by the previous tech. The service call notes that the programming errors have been corrected and the system was reported to have been tested. And even though this system only had four zones, the second technician testified that he was completely unaware of the under-counter panic button; as such he did not test it. Undoubtedly, had the system been fully tested the improper programming of the hold-up panic zone could have been easily rectified and put back to its original configuration of silent, making the system safe and not unreasonably dangerous. Conversely, the combination of gross incompetence by the first technician, coupled with the second technician not fully testing the system, created a highly dangerous consequence to the unsuspected store employee who pressed the panic with deadly results. I would also like to emphasize that the user code could have been easily changed or deleted over the telephone by a trained technician speaking with the owner. Lastly and most significantly is that the system already had supervised openings and closings programmed into its database, so if a trained technician was not readily available, all one would have to do was to notify the remoter station to immediately dispatch the police on any early or off-time opening signal received, until such time that the proper reprogramming could have occurred.
With this tragic case in mind, it is crucial to only employ technicians that are thoroughly trained and supervised, and never leave a premise until the system is properly tested.