Crime & Security

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As the holiday shopping season wanes and daylight hours are minimal, we are reminded of the importance of parking lot safety and the continued need to be vigilant in the coming months. Typically, there’s a spike in reported thefts during and shortly after the holiday season as residents carry merchandise to and from their cars. There are things you can do to minimize the likelihood of crime and accidents in your parking lot, and reduce your liability if a crime or an accident occurs despite your best efforts to prevent it.

It’s essential to keep keys on hand so that you can enter your site’s units in an emergency. But you’re asking for trouble if you don’t keep careful track of the keys you have for this purpose. An intruder might get hold of a unit key and use it to commit a crime, such as robbery or assault, in the unit. And a court might find you liable for that crime.

Methamphetamine (meth) use has crept up the social ladder and now can be found at all social strata. The meth problem is pervasive. Meth-making operations have been uncovered in all 50 states. And according to a nationwide survey of 500 law-enforcement agencies in 45 states by the National Association of Counties (NACO), methamphetamine is the No. 1 drug cops battle today--58 percent said meth is their biggest drug problem, compared with only 19 percent for cocaine, 17 percent for pot, and 3 percent for heroin.

If a crime victim sues your site for negligence, you'll probably be second-guessed for taking inadequate security precautions. If only you had managed things more carefully, the victim's lawyer and expert witnesses will argue, you could have prevented the crime. To justify your actions or inaction and to ward off a potential damage award, you'll have to prove that your security precautions were reasonable under the circumstances.

Drug dealing at assisted sites isn't just a problem for law enforcement. It's also a severe threat to sites' profitability and livability. Drug dealers and their customers often vandalize site security features to ensure ready access to dealers' units or to nonpublic areas where they can do drugs in privacy. And drug users trying to support their habits may commit crimes at your site.

Some may call it an art form, but graffiti does nothing to enhance the beauty of your site. In fact, it has the opposite effect.

“At its core, graffiti is vandalism,” says Chris McGoey, a security consultant based in California. “It's a crime. It creates property damage that management has to spend time and resources to fix.” Found more often around urban sites, graffiti typically is perpetrated by kids, McGoey says, simply to show “I was here.”

A resident reports a broken lock in her unit. It's late in the evening, so you decide to wait until the next morning to have it checked out by maintenance staff. That's a mistake you don't want to make, say security experts. Your failure to repair or replace the lock immediately could make you liable if a break-in attempt or other crime involving that resident or her property occurs.

The Alabama Association of Housing and Redevelopment Authorities (AAHRA) is cracking down on the unwanted presence of drug dealers and those engaging in criminal activity at its public housing sites. In February 2009, the 150-member association of housing authorities in the state revised its Criminal Trespass Policy. According to AAHRA, its members can adopt the model policy to help reduce criminal activity involving drugs and other activity that “threatens the peace and tranquility desired for public housing and its residents.”