Shopping malls and shopping centers need to make crime a priority. If customers feel intimidated or unsafe, they won’t patronize any commercial area. Crime can happen anywhere, but parking areas of shopping centers–ramps and lots–are places where potential customers can feel particularly vulnerable and unprotected.
This can apply even to shoppers in the town of Dothan, Alabama (population 70,000)–not a large city. Nevertheless, police in Dothan responded to a summons to the local shopping center. They received a report of an armed robbery in the parking lot after 4 p.m. on Tuesday, March 10.
When they arrived at the scene, a woman in the parking lot told them that a black male about five feet, seven inches tall had brandished a weapon and took her purse. He immediately fled, she said, but the shaken woman was unable to provide even the direction in which he had left.
The Dothan Police Department is now investigating the armed robbery incident. But with not much information to assist them, the outcome of this case doesn’t look very promising. They need evidence, and there’s no evidence to guide them. Parking lot surveillance was not reported.
The fallout from an armed robbery in a smaller metro area like Dothan could affect revenues of the businesses at that shopping center. Local citizens know a criminal is at large. Having successfully executed a robbery once, what’s likely to deter the perpetrator from another similar, and potentially lucrative, incident?
People will begin staying away from that shopping center…in droves. They won’t feel safe there. And, why should they feel safe? What assurances can the shopping center owners provide them? Without some changes in parking lot surveillance, the implications from just one crime attack can be devastating.
One proven solution is parking lot surveillance cameras that is both promoted on-site and monitored live. It allows tenants and consumers to feel safer and warns criminals away.
This shopping center is not a client of Stealth Monitoring. With Stealth proactive live surveillance an operator could have seen unusual activity such as the armed robbery, activated an audible warning to deter the thieves, and called the local police. Contact us for more information.
