Ever since Covid 19 UL has allowed for Remote Central Station Operator monitoring from their homes .
He has very valid concerns back in 1986 a elderly couple montoired alarms and did police disatch from
their home and below is article I wrote about how they where attacked in their home
If you ever saw the Clint Eastwood movie Thunderbolt & Light Foot
it is about a group of criminals planing and executing a big bank
robbery by way of a home invasion to tie up the bank president so he
can not notify police and distracting and then tieing up the guy
monitoring the alarms at a central monitoring station as well.
Well a very similar plot played on in spring of 1986 in Burgettstown. except with an interesting twist.
An elderly couple who happen to monitor panic buttons etc for the Mellon
bank in their home also happen to be the radio dispatchers for the
Burgettstown and several other small town Police are invaded and tied
up and then the Mellon bank in Burgettstown is sacked and thieves and
money is gone never to be traced a total cold case. In what the time was
a very rural area till it started being developed in 90's.
So the question who pulled it off obliviously some one had to know the couple where doing the monitoring
so was it a town resident involved? or town resident who may have been
arrested and talked about how easy the pickings would be while in
prison?
How about the people who serviced the radios or the alarms ? Or could it
even have been a well organized nationally traveling ring of criminals
who looked for these opportunity's ?
Of course the first question is why where this elderly couple doing
dispatching and monitoring alarms in there home in the first place?
Well before massive UL Listed Central Stations with fortifications and
security systems in place where popular many unusual places served and
still serve as monitoring points including Telephone Answering
Services and even Gas Stations out west .
Most very soft targets and criminals knew it and took advantage of it
and these crimes where carefully kept from the press and TV when they
where attacked. When I first was involved with alarms and had other
dealers monitoring my accounts I thought they had hardened facility's
they did not they where using answering services with no protection
needless to say I found out how easy it was to just walk in and take a
place over and now use a very good UL listed service
Today attacking a Central station is futile with back up systems in
place and fully supervised communications and alternative central
station set ups at the flip of a switch . But there are still plenty of
the small soft targets out there if you know where to look. But
criminals have gotten much more sophisticated when it comes to eluding
capture and why risk getting your plan blown when dealing with 2 sites
when you can hit one be on an interstate in 5 minutes and be gone.
Some one some where knows what went on in Burgettsown that day and some
one may eventually pay for the crime but the clock is ticking away.
