 
Closing Parking Garage Doors on Sneak Thieves By Frank Fourchalk
It’s late and you’re arriving home at your apartment building.
Your vehicle pulls in front of the overhead garage door leading to the secured parking area. You push the remote on your overhead visor and enter the parkade.
You waste no time driving into your parking spot, darting into the building and up to your suite.
The next morning you’re shocked to hear an intruder somehow got into the parkade and burgled several vehicles before making off with a neighbour’s car.
It never occurred to you, but you may have inadvertently assisted in the building’s violation.
So, let’s review what happened and what could have been done to prevent this oh-so-common scenario.
As you were pulling up to the overhead garage door, you did not check to the left and right of your vehicle before opening the garage door and entering the parkade.
It’s a good idea for your building to install motion lighting on the inside of the parkade. This will illuminate the overhead garage door area on the inside as well as the outside of the building.
Once inside, you broke the rules by ignoring the “stop and watch” area and heading straight to your parking spot.
Once you enter the building, you must honour building rules and police the overhead garage door until it completely descends. This is done by making sure you pull into the parkade far enough to get a good view of the overhead door from your rearview and side mirrors while the door is closing.
If you do not, you could be allowing a perpetrator to sneak into your building.
Sneak thieves like to loiter in the wings of overhead garage doors, waiting for opportunities such as unassuming residents more intent on catching the news than a thief in the middle of a break-in.
Once a sneak thief follows a resident through the overhead door, he or she finds a stealth area to hang out until the resident has cleared the area.
Once the resident is out of sight, the thief jumps into action, taking a quick inventory of vehicles and their possessions.
Because you left the overhead garage door opener on the visor, the perpetrator targets your vehicle first.
To avoid leaving garage door remotes in your vehicle, consider using a key chain remote. This will prevent an opportunity for a thief to exit the building with somebody else’s car.
So, if you are one of those people who can’t wait six seconds for an overhead garage door to close, shame on you – you are inadvertently costing thousands of dollars in ICBC and home insurance claims to your fellow residents.
Don’t turn into a weak link who constantly jeopardizes the building security simply because you can’t follow a few simple rules – a few rules that will save you money.
Upload date:
April 11, 2008 2:38 PM
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