The down side to allowing K9's to train on your property, and they find drugs, you may find your storage place in the newspaper the next day with pictures of the police arresting your tenant.

Better, we have 2 K9 officers in our city, one was our tenant and the other is currently our tenant. I love their dogs, but I'd rather have the officers just as tenants.

Also, since the officers have keys to the Knox box (to enter and exit our property for emergencies, we encourage them to use our restrooms while on patrol, 24 hours a day.

Well there are two sides to a coin... I feel if they did find drugs on the property and arested the person. Even on the news or in print it shows that we care about our lawabing citzens and NOT the criminals.I feel more people would rent from us knowing we don't allow criminal activity on site.

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Proud Karate Mom

Amen to that!!

I have several fire and sheriff storing here and that is great as it gets us quick service, but just image the headlines

Drug ring busted by self storage manager!

You can't buy advertising like that!

Just my $20.00

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Wayne
All American Self Storage
Palmdale, CA.
webmaster@all-americanselfstorage.com

Going beyond the department, you can always offer incentives for officers to store personal belongings on the property. Doesn't hurt to let tenants know that cops are among the clientele, sort of like having a deputy or police officer living on your block. Just knowing law enforcement is present or nearby can deter crime and provide some peace of mind to tenants.

Anytime any employee is working by them self we have them make a copy of a customers drivers license and fax it to our corporate office before showing a unit. I have been in some violent robberies here is a few pointers. If someone enters your store and locks the door behind them, hit the panic alarm. If they enter and close the blinds or drapes hit the panic alarm. Never keep more than $100, if your robbed for allot of money they will come back and rob you again. We always tell everyone my mom lives with us or my brother and his wife are in town staying with us.

When we started running our sites, we stopped taking cash. Check or money order only. We don't do credit cards, though we would if it was up to us. We also don't have an online presence, again, we would if it was up to us. We have signs that clearly state we do not take cash and we repeat it several times over the phone during conversations with potential clients. But, we do have some people who either don't hear or don't listen. They are the ones who get to get back in their car and head on over to Walmart for a money order. Once or twice, they haven't come back. And you know what, we rented that unit to someone else within a day or two.

As far as keeping the tenants property safe, we don't have ANY type of security cameras, entry pads, key pads or anything like that - not even a fake video camera. We asked the owner for cameras when we first started, as we were afraid with the high cost of copper someone would mess with the air conditioning unit. He wanted to 'think' about it. Guess what. Last fall during a nice cool day. Someone stole the entire unit from the back of the building. We didn't have it on and so didn't notice until we were doing our mid-day walk. It cost the owner almost 3000 for a new unit - and guess what, we still don't have a security camera. We have not had one break-in since we started, not one. We are friendly with the local police force and we walk the properties several times a day and in the early morning for exercise. The police even refer our unit to people who call asking for the safest self storage in the area. That feels good.

I can only think of once or twice I felt nervous about just one of us being in the office. In those cases, we simply called out to the other and asked them to file such and such piece of paper. That always seemed to even the energy in the room.

Speaking of safety, I have to relate a funny story. When we first took over at our new location about four months ago, a group of young men came in to rent a truck. My husband was looking after them, and I was on the phone with a customer, so I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to them. As soon as I got off the phone, I noticed that my husband was motioning me into the side office where we do our truck rentals. He whispered to me, "Call the police, one of them has a gun!" Being a gun-phobe, I nearly had a heart attack! I snuck out the back door and called the police from my cell. When the police arrived, they determined that the gun my husband thought he saw was a cell phone that one of them stuck down the front of his pants. We can laugh about it now, but it was very scary at the time.

But joking aside, I think every manager needs to be aware of their personal safety at all times. If a male comes in to look a unit, I get my husband to show it if at all possible. But even if I'm showing one to a female customer, I just open the door; I never step inside the unit itself. We have a big property (750 units) with RV parking, and there's a lot of places our cameras don't pick up. Better safe than sorry!

That seems an awfully bold roll of the dice and not just because I work for a security vendor. On the other hand, from a purely business perspective, your owner is leaving money on the table. Security gives you the rationale for raising rates, for having a tiered structure based on different levels of security, for having a log of activity on your property which will be the first thing the cops will ask for should a break-in occur. He sees security as an expense when, in fact, it is a revenue source.

One last thought - never, ever use a fake camera. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.