If you repeatedly see suspicious vehicles or people (who are not tenants) near your facility, what's your response?

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John Carlisle
Community Manager, Self-Storage Talk
Online Content Editor, Business Solutions Network
VIRGO
jcarlisle at vpico dot com
480-990-1101, x1214

Call the police, they send a car right out to check it

Pat
High Point, NC

Very noticeably, I go out with a pad of paper and a pen. Then, when they are watching me, I will write down their vehicle license number, a description of their vehicle, and who's in the car.

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James A Mathews
Facility Manager
CBD Indoor Mini Storage

We walk right up to them with that cheerful, friendly customer service mentality and ask; "May I help you? We'd be happy to show you around!" Most times it's a Realtor rep taking photos or something to deal with a refinance and they want pictures of our place. Whew!

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Gina 6k
CochraneStorage dot com
Morgan Hill, California
twitter.com/CochraneStorage

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough!
I am not an attorney, just an experienced manager who is willing to share what I have learned. Your thoughts, practices or opinions may vary and neither of us may be right.

Yes, I have a couple of time's. Being in the location/city that I'm in and in the instances that I've encountered this and by the looks of the people in question I will not endanger myself by physically going up to someone's vehicle, however; I did (do) write down their license plate numbers with vehicle information/occupant descriptions and vehicle description and day/time I saw them. Nothing (thankfully) has ever come of those couple of instances.

I start by walking out and offering assistance - if they give me no real answers I then I have no problem walking out with my camera taking their picture - If they are brave enough to question me I tell them that photographic evidence is better in court then me just writing down their license number - it also helps the Police find the correct vehicle!

Most of the time once I confront them they leave.

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Wayne
Jamestown, ND


All arguments can be resolved ... with high explosives and Humor!!!

I had a car pull in the parking spot and I saw a girl roll down her window and take a picture of the side of the house. I wrote down the license plate number. The next day a storage unit was broken into and the fence cut and a motorcycle stolen from the unit.
I gave the footage and the license to the police the next day. It turned out the tenant had stolen a motorcycle and the person he stole it from stole it back. Then the tenant saw this person and beat him up and went to jail. We later auctioned off his two units.

On Memorial day about 4 in the morning I heard a car door and looked out to see a car parked in the parking spot. I waited about 20 min. and then called police. The police officer came and I watched from inside as he got their id's and then drove off. The people stayed in their car. I finally went out with a flash light and told them they had to leave. They said their transmission was going out and the officer had told them to have it towed. Apparently they chose my two small parking spots to park the car for the night and were sleeping in it. They had the car towed but kept me up for two hours with their arguing and slamming doors.

If someone comes in and starts asking about the security cameras and takes a great interest to how many cameras I have then I make certain to remember the details about them. It usually means trouble.

Have any of you ever asked the police to swing by your facility as part of their regular patrol? If you're in a smaller or suburban community, I'm guessing most departments would be happy to do this.

You could also post a sign: POLICE PATROL REGULARLY -- in addition to SMILE, YOU'RE ON CAMERA!

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John Carlisle
Community Manager, Self-Storage Talk
Online Content Editor, Business Solutions Network
VIRGO
jcarlisle at vpico dot com
480-990-1101, x1214

If we have this happen we go out and confront them and ask them if we can help them .. We had this happen not to long ago , they were just sitting in our parking lot about 10pm , so Jim went out while I stayed inside .. He asked if he could help them ,,, turns out it was the police watching a business down the street.. for drug activity.. a week later they busted them and closed the business.

We feel if the criminals know you are vigilant then they dont want to come here.. Thiefs are cowards or really dumb and want to be sneaky ,they don't want you to know that they are casing your property.
So if you go out each time you see someone in your parking lot or taking a picture of your property, then we go out and take pictures of them across the street too..
The word gets out quickly about you and they pass you by.. We had one come into the facility and ask us why we took a picture of him and I said that same question applies to you,, why are you taking pictures of us.. He was another manager doing a comp study....

Case in point every facility around us is getting multiple break ins,,,, we have never had even one in 14 years.. but we are also the only facility doing criminal background checks and driver license checks on every tenant before they rent.. and if they have a criminal history or fake ID,, we don't rent to them.. When they find out we do this , they don't even try to rent , they pass us by and rent down the street .

I don't have a sign posted that Police Patrol Regularly, but our local Police Dept. have a storage unit out here where they store evidence, so they are in our facility quite often. I love having the police presence here. We are kind of off the beaten path out in the industrial part of town and it get creepy out here, so having a patrol car or two on sight once in a while is good.

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