Central Saanich Police say a man used electric cable cutters to cut a large hole through the chain-link fence at Peninsula Towing at about 4:15 p.m. on Saturday, September 5, then drilled out the deadbolt on the shop door, according to the Peninsula News Review.
Police have since released a detailed description of the suspect and asked the public to help identify him. He arrived in a white hoodie. After he left, he changed into a black cut-off muscle shirt.
That is solid investigative work, and anyone who recognizes him should call.
But from the property owner’s perspective, the hard lesson is obvious: by the time anyone was looking for this man, the fence was already cut open, the lock was already drilled out, and he was long gone.
The fence was the first alarm, and nobody saw it getting cut
A chain-link fence is a perimeter. It is not a detector.
Cutting a hole large enough to walk through is not instant work.
Every one of those steps was a signal. A man at the fence. A man crossing the property. A man attacking a door.
On a conventional alarm, the fence line does not exist. The system is designed to notice the door, and only after the door has already lost.
Your fence is part of your perimeter. If nothing is watching it, it is a speed bump with a gate.
Why a door contact starts the clock too late
Here is how virtually every other alarm system protects a shop like this: a contact on the door, and maybe a motion sensor inside.
That design assumes the problem begins at the door.
It does not. This one began at the fence.
And even when a door contact does trip, what reaches a conventional, unverified monitoring centre is a zone number. Door open. No context. It could be an employee who forgot the code. It could be a burglar with a drill or a pry bar.
Police triage that kind of call accordingly, and they are right to. The U.S. Department of Justice has put industry false alarm rates at 94 to 98 percent. That is arithmetic, and arithmetic decides which queue an unverified alarm joins.
That is not a police problem. It is an alarm industry problem.
Daylight is not a deterrent
Most owners picture a break-in at 3 a.m. This one happened at 4:15 on a Saturday afternoon.
Think about what that says. The man with the cable cutters was not worried about being seen.
Owners lean on visibility more than they admit. Maybe the yard faces a road. People drive past. Somebody would notice.
Somebody might. Reporting is not a verified dispatch with a location and a description attached.
A thief who works in daylight has already done that math, and they like their odds. They know an unverified alarm never gets Priority ONE dispatch. They know employees likely are not coming, and if they are, it will be long after the thief has left.
What verified perimeter detection changes
Verified security starts where the attack starts.
With Sonavision Monitored Cameras covering the fence line and the yard, a live operator can see a man cutting through chain-link and confirm it while it is happening. That call does not go to police as “zone 3.” It goes as a verified break-in in progress, at this address, with a description of the person doing it.
Verified alarms receive Priority ONE police response. Sonitrol’s documented average police response time is 3.5 minutes.
Now compare that with the time it takes to cut a hole in a fence, cross a yard, and drill out a deadbolt.
One version ends with a public appeal for help identifying a suspect. The other ends with officers arriving while the drill is still running.
The first produces a record. The second produces a criminal apprehension and incarceration.
Sonitrol-protected sites have produced 188,000 apprehensions since 1977. Thieves get caught.
We explain in more detail why a chain-link fence does not stop a break-in at a commercial yard on its own.
Criminal apprehensions send criminals to their Criminal Masters Course at the local penitentiary, where they are taught to stay away from Sonitrol. Break into a Sonitrol site and you will get caught. Break into a site protected by any other alarm company and you will never get caught. So stay away from Sonitrol.
This is why you buy a security system: deterrence. No cut fence or drilled lock to repair. No stolen property. No insurance claim, and no increase in your premiums.
What yard and shop owners should do now
If you run a towing company, an equipment yard, a contractor compound, or any fenced commercial property, start here:
- walk your fence line and ask what would happen if someone cut it right now;
- find out whether anything on your property detects activity before a door is opened;
- check what your monitoring centre actually receives when an alarm trips: a zone number, or a verified description of what is happening;
- treat evenings, weekends and quiet afternoons as exposed hours, not protected ones;
- confirm your cameras are monitored live, not just recording to a hard drive nobody checks until Monday;
None of this is exotic. It is the difference between a perimeter and a decoration.
Final Thoughts
A fence buys time. A deadbolt buys a little more.
Neither one calls anybody.
This thief needed electric cable cutters, a drill, and enough uninterrupted time to use both. He got all three.
The police will do their part. Your security system has to do its part first, at the fence, while it still matters.
So here is the question every owner of a fenced property should answer this week: if someone started cutting your fence at 4:15 tomorrow afternoon, who would know?
Start at the fence line. That is where this break-in started.
Client Login
.svg){kind=small}
