Saturday, August 27, 2022

Jeff Zwern has a very valid concern when it comes to UL allowing Remote Monitoring from operators homes

 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.


 

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