Monitored CCTV Gives Your Business Santa Vision

It’s Christmas morning. Your family is gathered in the family room to exchange presents, but you are fixated on the 25 people coming to dinner in eight hours.

Suddenly the Christmas tree goes dark. The power is out, and news reports say it will be days before it’s back on. All the food, all that fun, ruined. Must be something with the weather, right?

Not necessarily. Over the past several years, a growing number of power outages have been attributed to something much more frustrating than Mother Nature: copper thieves.

On Christmas Day in 2014 in Renton, Washington, thieves stole hundreds of feet of copper wire cables from an outdoor holiday light display, cutting power to several sections of the local grid. The theft added insult to injury, on the heels of a string of copper thefts that cost the small town over $80,000.

In a similar story from Polk County, Florida, approximately 4,000 people were without power after thieves stripped copper wire from a transformer at an electrical utility company. The company lost an estimated $500,000 and gained countless customer headaches

According to the FBI, the black-market price for copper increased 500 percent between 2001 to 2008, and although the price has fallen this year, copper wire is still viewed by thieves as an easy and widely-available source of cash. Power plants and cell towers are particularly vulnerable, especially during times like the holidays, when criminals’ financial stress is high and on-site staff levels might be low.

But security directors and business owners can enjoy the holiday season with a little more peace of mind when they know their properties, assets and people are protected by a monitored CCTV system.

Although the presence of cameras is enough to deter some criminals, there are still many brazen enough to approach a fence line, wall or door with criminal intent. However, voicedown warnings have a proven track record in stopping this type of activity.

Keeping the power and communication hub up through the holidays is a top priority for any utility or communications company. And certainly, no power provider wants to kick off the New Year labeled as “that company that let the lights go out on Christmas.” Smart ones can minimize their risk and protect their brand by letting potential thieves know that it’s not only Santa who knows if they’ve been naughty or nice — Viewpoint is watching too.