This is a story about apprehending a criminal, courtesy of Marietta, GA Police Chief Dan Flynn. Chief Flynn believes strongly in the public-private partnership effort between law enforcement and the electronic security industry, and wanted to share this story with others.
It happens more than you think, but we don’t publicize it as much as we should: law enforcement and the alarm industry working together to solve crime. Recently, in Marietta, GA, an employee with EyeQMonitoring in the city reached out to police to help them apprehend a suspect in a burglary.
Typically, for those of us in the security industry, we think of the monitoring facility taking a call following an alarm dispatch. In this case, there was a curveball. The employee saw the criminal activity through video actively captured and streamed from the scene, and immediately called the police to report what he’d seen.
It turns out his vision was as good and important as his monitoring training. He saw an individual trying to steal a motorcycle from Mountain Motorsports. Then he placed the call to the Marietta Police Department, giving them active descriptions of the suspect and his movements.
Officers arrived on scene and the suspect hid behind vehicles. The suspect eventually ran and was arrested on scene. The suspect had bolt cutters on him and had cut two fences to get on the property. He arrived in a freshly stolen Dodge Ran 3500 (a $70,000 vehicle out of Gwinnett City), and parked it at the Toyota dealership next door. The suspect was wanted for multiple charges out of Gwinnett and Hall Counties.
EyeQMonitoring specializes in active monitoring and immediate calls to 911 and local law enforcement to catch criminals in the act instead of just reporting issues after they have occurred.
Great work by all involved. The alarm industry and law enforcement working together (along with high technology) to solve crime. We like it. Let’s see and hear more.
A special thanks to Chief Dan Flynn for reaching out and sharing this great example of us all working together. Thanks to those officers who put their lives on the line every day. We do our part, law enforcement does their part, bad guy goes to jail, the community is safer. This is what we do folks, be proud! If you know of similar cooperative efforts, please reach out to Stan Martin at: stan@siacinc.org.