Apartment Security Solutions to Keep Your Community Safe
Apartment Security Solutions to Keep Your Community Safe
No one wants to live in the midst of crime. For property managers, apartment security is foundational to giving residents peace of mind and protecting the reputation of the property.
Apartment Security Solutions
A reputation for high rates of crime is a red flag for potential residents. Filling units may become more difficult, and turnover will be higher than preferred. Ultimately, this pattern could lead to a drop in rental prices in the area, which limits the property manager’s overall margin.
The Cost of Tenant Turnover
If tenants experience high crime rates and a lost sense of well-being in their community, they’re less likely to stay once their lease ends.
Between administrative and marketing expenses, cleaning and repairs, and refilling vacancies, the cost of tenant turnover can be as high as $1,000 to $5,000 per unit.
While crime can impact any community, apartment complexes can take measures to help residents feel safer.
Laws often require property managers to provide a baseline of security and crime prevention for those living in apartments. Yet, some tools can help you achieve these goals and go above and beyond the bare minimum.
You can provide tenants with a truly safe environment that will lead to higher retention, increased ROI, and positive word-of-mouth that helps keep units occupied.
Common solutions such as gates, CCTV cameras, alarms, and on-site personnel can each play an important role in your apartment security strategy. Unfortunately, these tools are often lacking a critical piece of evidence police need to solve crimes—a license plate number.
Only license plate reader cameras capture the actionable evidence of license plate information and other vehicle details when a crime occurs.
Why License Plates Matter
Law enforcement recognizes that a license plate is one of the most critical pieces of evidence needed to make an arrest.
Statistics show that 80% of property crimes go unsolved due to a lack of actionable evidence, yet 70% of crimes involve a vehicle, according to the International Association of Police Chiefs. License plate reader cameras can help alert authorities when a vehicle listed as stolen in police databases is identified.
License plate reader cameras take the guesswork out of identifying vehicles involved in alleged criminal activity. These cameras can capture high volumes of plate and vehicle data in and around your apartment complex without police needing to scroll through hours of CCTV footage for the chance of a usable image.
Flock license plate reader cameras provide a proactive approach to apartment security, capturing the key evidence of a license plate number and other identifying vehicle details needed to prevent and solve crimes.
Here’s how Flock cameras enhance your other security solutions and keep your community safe.
Considering Your Apartment Security Options
When deciding which apartment security solutions to invest in, it’s important to consider cost versus the potential increase in resident safety and crime reduction.
Ideally, your security tools will provide the results you want while providing police the evidence they need to prevent crime and take action should one occur on your property.
Here’s what you should consider when evaluating your options.
Actionable Evidence
When a crime occurs in your complex or on your property, your security system should be able to provide evidence law enforcement can act on.
Without a clear ID on a suspect or a vehicle associated with a crime, filmed footage and eyewitness accounts often aren’t enough for police to pursue a lead.
Law enforcement agencies need evidence that is clear and concrete enough to provide law enforcement with the information needed to begin an investigation and ultimately make an arrest.
Proactive Crime Prevention
Many security solutions don’t enable a proactive security approach. They can capture evidence that a crime is happening or has taken place, but this only allows you to react to a crime.
The best apartment security solutions don’t just capture actionable evidence when crimes happen, but they also proactively prevent crimes in the first place.
When you’re able to help law enforcement identify stolen vehicles, stolen tags, or vehicles associated with other crimes, they can take action before the suspect does.
Costs
Costs can add up when factoring apartment security solutions into your budget. It’s critical to know what you’re paying versus the results these solutions provide.
There are several angles from which to consider these costs.
Upfront costs include what you pay when you initially invest in a solution. These costs include the cost of purchasing the solution, having it installed in your apartment community, integrating it into your existing infrastructure, and hiring the necessary personnel.
Ongoing costs happen when security systems break down, require regular maintenance, or need upgrades to function properly. This includes maintaining these systems over time, whether through the vendor or another party, as well as additional cost considerations, such as increased utility costs. Systems that aren’t functioning to their full capacity won’t produce the evidence police need to take action.
Time Commitment
More time spent managing security solutions means less time to keep up with the myriad responsibilities a property manager faces daily.
Reliable systems that aren’t constantly in need of repairs and maintenance provide a more user-friendly experience, especially when a vendor handles these tasks promptly as part of your service agreement.
Time is also valuable in the sense that when a crime occurs, police need actionable evidence as quickly as possible. Being able to give law enforcement concrete evidence right away allows them a greater chance of making an arrest or recovering stolen items.
Curb Appeal
Maintaining the curb appeal of your apartment community can have a meaningful impact on attracting new tenants and retaining current ones.
When it comes to safety, perception matters. Overly-obvious security implementations may imply that crime actually is a problem on your property.
The best apartment security solutions offer a subtle design that won’t make your apartments less appealing while still effectively collecting actionable evidence and lowering crime rates.
These considerations can be applied to any apartment security solution. Here are several common options when it comes to protecting your tenants and properties.
Commonly Used Apartment Security Options
No single security solution can solve all potential vulnerabilities. Whatever investments you make should work in tandem with other tools in your security system. When adding new solutions to your toolkit, you should choose options that fill in the gaps left by other tools.
Flock license plate reader cameras were built to be affordable and flexible, delivering maximum return on your investment and complementing other apartment security tools like these:
Security Gates
Millions of residents prefer gated communities, which provide automatic entry and exit gates that can be accessed only by residents and people who are explicitly allowed into the community.
Gates and perimeter fencing have a clear appeal to many and can be effective in reducing crime. For instance, one study shows a 33% reduction in burglaries in homes in gated communities versus those in non-gated communities.
While gates provide peace of mind and can help deter suspects looking for the easiest fare possible, they don’t provide much evidence if a crime does occur.
When paired with Flock, you can add the element of license plate detection to the entrances and exits to your property, so you can know exactly who was on your property at what time.
Apartment Security Personnel
Hiring on-site security staff can boost safety and cut down on potential crimes in and around your property. After all, security guards are usually highly skilled in locating and identifying potential criminal activity, and they can make themselves immediately available to tenants when they need to report suspicious or criminal activity.
Security staff can’t take the place of the police. In fact, they are most effective when they work in tight conjunction with the authorities. They can aid law enforcement by providing first-hand accounts, along with any direct, actionable evidence such as video, audio, or other material captured by on-site security tools. However, their ability to respond quickly to a criminal incident can be greatly hampered by the manual work of searching through footage or gathering eyewitness accounts.
When paired with Flock, security personnel can respond quickly. Flock evidence is searchable by time, vehicle, and other factors, so staff won’t spend hours trawling footage.
CCTV Cameras
Businesses and property owners often invest in CCTV cameras. These cameras can help record specific areas and spot when something is amiss, and your security staff can monitor your cameras in real-time. CCTV cameras can provide police with a specific time and place a crime occurred and sometimes capture evidence such as a suspect’s face or vehicle, within a limited frame of view.
When paired with Flock, CCTV cameras can layer on top of license plate evidence to provide a fuller picture of the incident. Together, these two forms of evidence are massively powerful in positioning authorities to pursue leads effectively and efficiently.
Lighting
Common areas, roads and sidewalks, parking decks, stairwells, and entryways are all areas that require adequate lighting. This ensures that residents can feel safer traveling through these areas at night and avoid injury from tripping over unseen obstacles. Providing adequate lighting can be a key component of your broader security strategy.
When paired with Flock, you can extend security to places that are difficult to light—parking decks, for example. Flock cameras can obtain crystal-clear license plate photos even in total darkness. Running on solar power and their own independent network, Flock’s wireless cameras are flexible enough to set up in most places on your property without incurring heavy infrastructure costs.
Individual Unit Security
You may already be legally required to provide certain security features for individual units, such as deadbolt locks and peepholes in doors. Some renters also have alarm systems, doorbell cameras, and other security features installed in their units.
However, there may be limitations to these measures and restrictions dictating when and where they can be installed. You also don’t want tenants having to rely on their own alarms and cameras because their apartment security solutions fall short of their expectations.
Due to the limitations of individual unit security, these measures work best in conjunction with property-wide security controls rather than as a primary tool to stop crime in apartment complexes.
When paired with Flock, doorbell camera footage can be used to plot out criminal activity as it traverses the individual units and the common areas of your property. This can offer authorities a comprehensive, unbiased view of the entire incident.
Flock Safety License Plate Reader Cameras
Flock Safety license plate reader cameras can capture license plates and other identifying details of moving vehicles, even in areas with high volumes of traffic.
Flock’s cameras offer a unique Vehicle Fingerprint technology that lets you capture license plate numbers as well as other vehicle characteristics, such as:
- Partial, missing, or covered plates
- Make and model
- Vehicle color
- Aftermarket alterations, such as body kits
- Specific details, such as the presence of bumper stickers
This captured information can give police actionable evidence to connect a vehicle to the suspect of a crime that happened within your property.
Flock cameras automatically categorize license plate and vehicle data so that they’re easily searchable and accessible. If a license plate for a vehicle listed as stolen in police databases is captured, Flock cameras can automatically alert law enforcement.
Flock Cameras for Apartment Security
Flock license plate reader cameras fit seamlessly into your existing apartment security infrastructure. They work with and augment your existing security features to proactively prevent crime.
Flock cameras are easy to install anywhere within an apartment complex since they are solar and LTE powered and don’t require you to run heavy cables or other infrastructure to operate. Security gates don’t have to be manned at all hours when Flock cameras can capture vehicle data for traffic entering and exiting the community 24/7.
Security patrols, CCTV and doorbell cameras, and alarms can all play a pivotal role in crime reduction, but Flock cameras enhance these solutions by providing the actionable evidence of a license plate number police need to reduce crime.
Tenants don’t have to worry about privacy concerns because the data captured by Flock cameras is secure and encrypted. The data is 100% owned by you and is deleted after 30 days. If tenants don’t want their vehicle data captured by Flock cameras, they can opt out by adding their vehicles to the safe list as residents.
Flock cameras offer busy property managers a low-maintenance solution. Cameras are leased, and tasks such as system updates or replacing stolen or damaged cameras are handled directly by Flock.
Flock Safety cameras provide a subtle design that won’t detract from your apartment complex’s curb appeal—while still capturing the evidence needed to reduce crime rates in your community.
Being able to have objective evidence outside of the other normal means is very assistive
Chief Jeffrey Norman, Milwaukee Police Department
Flock Cameras Proven to Make Communities Safer
Across the country, apartment communities that use Flock license plate reader cameras have seen reduced crime and increased safety.
For instance, by installing Flock cameras, Prominent Realty Group of Georgia was able to reduce crime in their Nashville apartment complex to zero incidents within six weeks.
“A huge help for bringing down crime in my properties is having a plate reader,” said Prominent Realty Group of Georgia President Doug Foppe. “When we used Flock’s system in Nashville, we put the camera at the front of our property together with their yard signs that read, ‘Monitored 24/7.’”
Before installing Flock cameras, the complex suffered as many as three incidents of crime per week, including car burglaries and assaults. These crimes occurred despite the complex using CCTV cameras and security personnel.
Local police reported that a Detroit apartment complex had seen 110 assaults, 41 burglaries, 16 weapon offenses, and over 1,000 911 calls in just over a year. ROCCO Real Estate decided to invest in Flock license plate reader cameras to help reduce crime on their property.
“I instantly realized that Flock was the right fit for the property,” said Justin Whitney, director of procurement for ROCCO.
Using Flock cameras, they were able to capture a breaking and entering incident within weeks of installation, allowing police to apprehend the suspect.
Noting a high level of crime at several apartment complexes in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Tulsa Police Department decided to use Flock license plate reader cameras to combat crime.
One particular feature of Flock cameras Tulsa PD found to be critical to their efforts was the ability to integrate their Flock system with national databases like the FBI National Crime Information Center.
Flock cameras offer 24/7 protection for your tenants and properties and capture unbiased, actionable evidence to help police prevent and solve crimes. Flock cameras are available at a reasonable price point with easy, no-hassle installation and ongoing maintenance upgrades handled entirely by the Flock team. Flock cameras are solar-powered and don’t require you to run any additional infrastructure for them to operate.
---
Flock Safety is a public safety operating system that helps communities and law enforcement in 2000+ cities work together to eliminate crime, protect privacy, and mitigate bias. We build devices that capture objective evidence and use machine learning to create and deliver unbiased investigative leads to law enforcement. Our proprietary devices and cloud-based software reduce crime by +70%. Flock Safety serves 2000 cities in 42+ states and is helping solve hundreds of crimes every day.
Apartment Security Solutions
A reputation for high rates of crime is a red flag for potential residents. Filling units may become more difficult, and turnover will be higher than preferred. Ultimately, this pattern could lead to a drop in rental prices in the area, which limits the property manager’s overall margin.
The Cost of Tenant Turnover
If tenants experience high crime rates and a lost sense of well-being in their community, they’re less likely to stay once their lease ends.
Between administrative and marketing expenses, cleaning and repairs, and refilling vacancies, the cost of tenant turnover can be as high as $1,000 to $5,000 per unit.
While crime can impact any community, apartment complexes can take measures to help residents feel safer.
Laws often require property managers to provide a baseline of security and crime prevention for those living in apartments. Yet, some tools can help you achieve these goals and go above and beyond the bare minimum.
You can provide tenants with a truly safe environment that will lead to higher retention, increased ROI, and positive word-of-mouth that helps keep units occupied.
Common solutions such as gates, CCTV cameras, alarms, and on-site personnel can each play an important role in your apartment security strategy. Unfortunately, these tools are often lacking a critical piece of evidence police need to solve crimes—a license plate number.
Only license plate reader cameras capture the actionable evidence of license plate information and other vehicle details when a crime occurs.
Why License Plates Matter
Law enforcement recognizes that a license plate is one of the most critical pieces of evidence needed to make an arrest.
Statistics show that 80% of property crimes go unsolved due to a lack of actionable evidence, yet 70% of crimes involve a vehicle, according to the International Association of Police Chiefs. License plate reader cameras can help alert authorities when a vehicle listed as stolen in police databases is identified.
License plate reader cameras take the guesswork out of identifying vehicles involved in alleged criminal activity. These cameras can capture high volumes of plate and vehicle data in and around your apartment complex without police needing to scroll through hours of CCTV footage for the chance of a usable image.
Flock license plate reader cameras provide a proactive approach to apartment security, capturing the key evidence of a license plate number and other identifying vehicle details needed to prevent and solve crimes.
Here’s how Flock cameras enhance your other security solutions and keep your community safe.
Considering Your Apartment Security Options
When deciding which apartment security solutions to invest in, it’s important to consider cost versus the potential increase in resident safety and crime reduction.
Ideally, your security tools will provide the results you want while providing police the evidence they need to prevent crime and take action should one occur on your property.
Here’s what you should consider when evaluating your options.
Actionable Evidence
When a crime occurs in your complex or on your property, your security system should be able to provide evidence law enforcement can act on.
Without a clear ID on a suspect or a vehicle associated with a crime, filmed footage and eyewitness accounts often aren’t enough for police to pursue a lead.
Law enforcement agencies need evidence that is clear and concrete enough to provide law enforcement with the information needed to begin an investigation and ultimately make an arrest.
Proactive Crime Prevention
Many security solutions don’t enable a proactive security approach. They can capture evidence that a crime is happening or has taken place, but this only allows you to react to a crime.
The best apartment security solutions don’t just capture actionable evidence when crimes happen, but they also proactively prevent crimes in the first place.
When you’re able to help law enforcement identify stolen vehicles, stolen tags, or vehicles associated with other crimes, they can take action before the suspect does.
Costs
Costs can add up when factoring apartment security solutions into your budget. It’s critical to know what you’re paying versus the results these solutions provide.
There are several angles from which to consider these costs.
Upfront costs include what you pay when you initially invest in a solution. These costs include the cost of purchasing the solution, having it installed in your apartment community, integrating it into your existing infrastructure, and hiring the necessary personnel.
Ongoing costs happen when security systems break down, require regular maintenance, or need upgrades to function properly. This includes maintaining these systems over time, whether through the vendor or another party, as well as additional cost considerations, such as increased utility costs. Systems that aren’t functioning to their full capacity won’t produce the evidence police need to take action.
Time Commitment
More time spent managing security solutions means less time to keep up with the myriad responsibilities a property manager faces daily.
Reliable systems that aren’t constantly in need of repairs and maintenance provide a more user-friendly experience, especially when a vendor handles these tasks promptly as part of your service agreement.
Time is also valuable in the sense that when a crime occurs, police need actionable evidence as quickly as possible. Being able to give law enforcement concrete evidence right away allows them a greater chance of making an arrest or recovering stolen items.
Curb Appeal
Maintaining the curb appeal of your apartment community can have a meaningful impact on attracting new tenants and retaining current ones.
When it comes to safety, perception matters. Overly-obvious security implementations may imply that crime actually is a problem on your property.
The best apartment security solutions offer a subtle design that won’t make your apartments less appealing while still effectively collecting actionable evidence and lowering crime rates.
These considerations can be applied to any apartment security solution. Here are several common options when it comes to protecting your tenants and properties.
Commonly Used Apartment Security Options
No single security solution can solve all potential vulnerabilities. Whatever investments you make should work in tandem with other tools in your security system. When adding new solutions to your toolkit, you should choose options that fill in the gaps left by other tools.
Flock license plate reader cameras were built to be affordable and flexible, delivering maximum return on your investment and complementing other apartment security tools like these:
Security Gates
Millions of residents prefer gated communities, which provide automatic entry and exit gates that can be accessed only by residents and people who are explicitly allowed into the community.
Gates and perimeter fencing have a clear appeal to many and can be effective in reducing crime. For instance, one study shows a 33% reduction in burglaries in homes in gated communities versus those in non-gated communities.
While gates provide peace of mind and can help deter suspects looking for the easiest fare possible, they don’t provide much evidence if a crime does occur.
When paired with Flock, you can add the element of license plate detection to the entrances and exits to your property, so you can know exactly who was on your property at what time.
Apartment Security Personnel
Hiring on-site security staff can boost safety and cut down on potential crimes in and around your property. After all, security guards are usually highly skilled in locating and identifying potential criminal activity, and they can make themselves immediately available to tenants when they need to report suspicious or criminal activity.
Security staff can’t take the place of the police. In fact, they are most effective when they work in tight conjunction with the authorities. They can aid law enforcement by providing first-hand accounts, along with any direct, actionable evidence such as video, audio, or other material captured by on-site security tools. However, their ability to respond quickly to a criminal incident can be greatly hampered by the manual work of searching through footage or gathering eyewitness accounts.
When paired with Flock, security personnel can respond quickly. Flock evidence is searchable by time, vehicle, and other factors, so staff won’t spend hours trawling footage.
CCTV Cameras
Businesses and property owners often invest in CCTV cameras. These cameras can help record specific areas and spot when something is amiss, and your security staff can monitor your cameras in real-time. CCTV cameras can provide police with a specific time and place a crime occurred and sometimes capture evidence such as a suspect’s face or vehicle, within a limited frame of view.
When paired with Flock, CCTV cameras can layer on top of license plate evidence to provide a fuller picture of the incident. Together, these two forms of evidence are massively powerful in positioning authorities to pursue leads effectively and efficiently.
Lighting
Common areas, roads and sidewalks, parking decks, stairwells, and entryways are all areas that require adequate lighting. This ensures that residents can feel safer traveling through these areas at night and avoid injury from tripping over unseen obstacles. Providing adequate lighting can be a key component of your broader security strategy.
When paired with Flock, you can extend security to places that are difficult to light—parking decks, for example. Flock cameras can obtain crystal-clear license plate photos even in total darkness. Running on solar power and their own independent network, Flock’s wireless cameras are flexible enough to set up in most places on your property without incurring heavy infrastructure costs.
Individual Unit Security
You may already be legally required to provide certain security features for individual units, such as deadbolt locks and peepholes in doors. Some renters also have alarm systems, doorbell cameras, and other security features installed in their units.
However, there may be limitations to these measures and restrictions dictating when and where they can be installed. You also don’t want tenants having to rely on their own alarms and cameras because their apartment security solutions fall short of their expectations.
Due to the limitations of individual unit security, these measures work best in conjunction with property-wide security controls rather than as a primary tool to stop crime in apartment complexes.
When paired with Flock, doorbell camera footage can be used to plot out criminal activity as it traverses the individual units and the common areas of your property. This can offer authorities a comprehensive, unbiased view of the entire incident.
Flock Safety License Plate Reader Cameras
Flock Safety license plate reader cameras can capture license plates and other identifying details of moving vehicles, even in areas with high volumes of traffic.
Flock’s cameras offer a unique Vehicle Fingerprint technology that lets you capture license plate numbers as well as other vehicle characteristics, such as:
- Partial, missing, or covered plates
- Make and model
- Vehicle color
- Aftermarket alterations, such as body kits
- Specific details, such as the presence of bumper stickers
This captured information can give police actionable evidence to connect a vehicle to the suspect of a crime that happened within your property.
Flock cameras automatically categorize license plate and vehicle data so that they’re easily searchable and accessible. If a license plate for a vehicle listed as stolen in police databases is captured, Flock cameras can automatically alert law enforcement.
Flock Cameras for Apartment Security
Flock license plate reader cameras fit seamlessly into your existing apartment security infrastructure. They work with and augment your existing security features to proactively prevent crime.
Flock cameras are easy to install anywhere within an apartment complex since they are solar and LTE powered and don’t require you to run heavy cables or other infrastructure to operate. Security gates don’t have to be manned at all hours when Flock cameras can capture vehicle data for traffic entering and exiting the community 24/7.
Security patrols, CCTV and doorbell cameras, and alarms can all play a pivotal role in crime reduction, but Flock cameras enhance these solutions by providing the actionable evidence of a license plate number police need to reduce crime.
Tenants don’t have to worry about privacy concerns because the data captured by Flock cameras is secure and encrypted. The data is 100% owned by you and is deleted after 30 days. If tenants don’t want their vehicle data captured by Flock cameras, they can opt out by adding their vehicles to the safe list as residents.
Flock cameras offer busy property managers a low-maintenance solution. Cameras are leased, and tasks such as system updates or replacing stolen or damaged cameras are handled directly by Flock.
Flock Safety cameras provide a subtle design that won’t detract from your apartment complex’s curb appeal—while still capturing the evidence needed to reduce crime rates in your community.
Being able to have objective evidence outside of the other normal means is very assistive
Chief Jeffrey Norman, Milwaukee Police Department
Flock Cameras Proven to Make Communities Safer
Across the country, apartment communities that use Flock license plate reader cameras have seen reduced crime and increased safety.
For instance, by installing Flock cameras, Prominent Realty Group of Georgia was able to reduce crime in their Nashville apartment complex to zero incidents within six weeks.
“A huge help for bringing down crime in my properties is having a plate reader,” said Prominent Realty Group of Georgia President Doug Foppe. “When we used Flock’s system in Nashville, we put the camera at the front of our property together with their yard signs that read, ‘Monitored 24/7.’”
Before installing Flock cameras, the complex suffered as many as three incidents of crime per week, including car burglaries and assaults. These crimes occurred despite the complex using CCTV cameras and security personnel.
Local police reported that a Detroit apartment complex had seen 110 assaults, 41 burglaries, 16 weapon offenses, and over 1,000 911 calls in just over a year. ROCCO Real Estate decided to invest in Flock license plate reader cameras to help reduce crime on their property.
“I instantly realized that Flock was the right fit for the property,” said Justin Whitney, director of procurement for ROCCO.
Using Flock cameras, they were able to capture a breaking and entering incident within weeks of installation, allowing police to apprehend the suspect.
Noting a high level of crime at several apartment complexes in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Tulsa Police Department decided to use Flock license plate reader cameras to combat crime.
One particular feature of Flock cameras Tulsa PD found to be critical to their efforts was the ability to integrate their Flock system with national databases like the FBI National Crime Information Center.
Flock cameras offer 24/7 protection for your tenants and properties and capture unbiased, actionable evidence to help police prevent and solve crimes. Flock cameras are available at a reasonable price point with easy, no-hassle installation and ongoing maintenance upgrades handled entirely by the Flock team. Flock cameras are solar-powered and don’t require you to run any additional infrastructure for them to operate.
---
Flock Safety is a public safety operating system that helps communities and law enforcement in 2000+ cities work together to eliminate crime, protect privacy, and mitigate bias. We build devices that capture objective evidence and use machine learning to create and deliver unbiased investigative leads to law enforcement. Our proprietary devices and cloud-based software reduce crime by +70%. Flock Safety serves 2000 cities in 42+ states and is helping solve hundreds of crimes every day.
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Apartment Security Solutions to Keep Your Community Safe
No one wants to live in the midst of crime. For property managers, apartment security is foundational to giving residents peace of mind and protecting the reputation of the property.
Apartment Security Solutions
A reputation for high rates of crime is a red flag for potential residents. Filling units may become more difficult, and turnover will be higher than preferred. Ultimately, this pattern could lead to a drop in rental prices in the area, which limits the property manager’s overall margin.
The Cost of Tenant Turnover
If tenants experience high crime rates and a lost sense of well-being in their community, they’re less likely to stay once their lease ends.
Between administrative and marketing expenses, cleaning and repairs, and refilling vacancies, the cost of tenant turnover can be as high as $1,000 to $5,000 per unit.
While crime can impact any community, apartment complexes can take measures to help residents feel safer.
Laws often require property managers to provide a baseline of security and crime prevention for those living in apartments. Yet, some tools can help you achieve these goals and go above and beyond the bare minimum.
You can provide tenants with a truly safe environment that will lead to higher retention, increased ROI, and positive word-of-mouth that helps keep units occupied.
Common solutions such as gates, CCTV cameras, alarms, and on-site personnel can each play an important role in your apartment security strategy. Unfortunately, these tools are often lacking a critical piece of evidence police need to solve crimes—a license plate number.
Only license plate reader cameras capture the actionable evidence of license plate information and other vehicle details when a crime occurs.
Why License Plates Matter
Law enforcement recognizes that a license plate is one of the most critical pieces of evidence needed to make an arrest.
Statistics show that 80% of property crimes go unsolved due to a lack of actionable evidence, yet 70% of crimes involve a vehicle, according to the International Association of Police Chiefs. License plate reader cameras can help alert authorities when a vehicle listed as stolen in police databases is identified.
License plate reader cameras take the guesswork out of identifying vehicles involved in alleged criminal activity. These cameras can capture high volumes of plate and vehicle data in and around your apartment complex without police needing to scroll through hours of CCTV footage for the chance of a usable image.
Flock license plate reader cameras provide a proactive approach to apartment security, capturing the key evidence of a license plate number and other identifying vehicle details needed to prevent and solve crimes.
Here’s how Flock cameras enhance your other security solutions and keep your community safe.
Considering Your Apartment Security Options
When deciding which apartment security solutions to invest in, it’s important to consider cost versus the potential increase in resident safety and crime reduction.
Ideally, your security tools will provide the results you want while providing police the evidence they need to prevent crime and take action should one occur on your property.
Here’s what you should consider when evaluating your options.
Actionable Evidence
When a crime occurs in your complex or on your property, your security system should be able to provide evidence law enforcement can act on.
Without a clear ID on a suspect or a vehicle associated with a crime, filmed footage and eyewitness accounts often aren’t enough for police to pursue a lead.
Law enforcement agencies need evidence that is clear and concrete enough to provide law enforcement with the information needed to begin an investigation and ultimately make an arrest.
Proactive Crime Prevention
Many security solutions don’t enable a proactive security approach. They can capture evidence that a crime is happening or has taken place, but this only allows you to react to a crime.
The best apartment security solutions don’t just capture actionable evidence when crimes happen, but they also proactively prevent crimes in the first place.
When you’re able to help law enforcement identify stolen vehicles, stolen tags, or vehicles associated with other crimes, they can take action before the suspect does.
Costs
Costs can add up when factoring apartment security solutions into your budget. It’s critical to know what you’re paying versus the results these solutions provide.
There are several angles from which to consider these costs.
Upfront costs include what you pay when you initially invest in a solution. These costs include the cost of purchasing the solution, having it installed in your apartment community, integrating it into your existing infrastructure, and hiring the necessary personnel.
Ongoing costs happen when security systems break down, require regular maintenance, or need upgrades to function properly. This includes maintaining these systems over time, whether through the vendor or another party, as well as additional cost considerations, such as increased utility costs. Systems that aren’t functioning to their full capacity won’t produce the evidence police need to take action.
Time Commitment
More time spent managing security solutions means less time to keep up with the myriad responsibilities a property manager faces daily.
Reliable systems that aren’t constantly in need of repairs and maintenance provide a more user-friendly experience, especially when a vendor handles these tasks promptly as part of your service agreement.
Time is also valuable in the sense that when a crime occurs, police need actionable evidence as quickly as possible. Being able to give law enforcement concrete evidence right away allows them a greater chance of making an arrest or recovering stolen items.
Curb Appeal
Maintaining the curb appeal of your apartment community can have a meaningful impact on attracting new tenants and retaining current ones.
When it comes to safety, perception matters. Overly-obvious security implementations may imply that crime actually is a problem on your property.
The best apartment security solutions offer a subtle design that won’t make your apartments less appealing while still effectively collecting actionable evidence and lowering crime rates.
These considerations can be applied to any apartment security solution. Here are several common options when it comes to protecting your tenants and properties.
Commonly Used Apartment Security Options
No single security solution can solve all potential vulnerabilities. Whatever investments you make should work in tandem with other tools in your security system. When adding new solutions to your toolkit, you should choose options that fill in the gaps left by other tools.
Flock license plate reader cameras were built to be affordable and flexible, delivering maximum return on your investment and complementing other apartment security tools like these:
Security Gates
Millions of residents prefer gated communities, which provide automatic entry and exit gates that can be accessed only by residents and people who are explicitly allowed into the community.
Gates and perimeter fencing have a clear appeal to many and can be effective in reducing crime. For instance, one study shows a 33% reduction in burglaries in homes in gated communities versus those in non-gated communities.
While gates provide peace of mind and can help deter suspects looking for the easiest fare possible, they don’t provide much evidence if a crime does occur.
When paired with Flock, you can add the element of license plate detection to the entrances and exits to your property, so you can know exactly who was on your property at what time.
Apartment Security Personnel
Hiring on-site security staff can boost safety and cut down on potential crimes in and around your property. After all, security guards are usually highly skilled in locating and identifying potential criminal activity, and they can make themselves immediately available to tenants when they need to report suspicious or criminal activity.
Security staff can’t take the place of the police. In fact, they are most effective when they work in tight conjunction with the authorities. They can aid law enforcement by providing first-hand accounts, along with any direct, actionable evidence such as video, audio, or other material captured by on-site security tools. However, their ability to respond quickly to a criminal incident can be greatly hampered by the manual work of searching through footage or gathering eyewitness accounts.
When paired with Flock, security personnel can respond quickly. Flock evidence is searchable by time, vehicle, and other factors, so staff won’t spend hours trawling footage.
CCTV Cameras
Businesses and property owners often invest in CCTV cameras. These cameras can help record specific areas and spot when something is amiss, and your security staff can monitor your cameras in real-time. CCTV cameras can provide police with a specific time and place a crime occurred and sometimes capture evidence such as a suspect’s face or vehicle, within a limited frame of view.
When paired with Flock, CCTV cameras can layer on top of license plate evidence to provide a fuller picture of the incident. Together, these two forms of evidence are massively powerful in positioning authorities to pursue leads effectively and efficiently.
Lighting
Common areas, roads and sidewalks, parking decks, stairwells, and entryways are all areas that require adequate lighting. This ensures that residents can feel safer traveling through these areas at night and avoid injury from tripping over unseen obstacles. Providing adequate lighting can be a key component of your broader security strategy.
When paired with Flock, you can extend security to places that are difficult to light—parking decks, for example. Flock cameras can obtain crystal-clear license plate photos even in total darkness. Running on solar power and their own independent network, Flock’s wireless cameras are flexible enough to set up in most places on your property without incurring heavy infrastructure costs.
Individual Unit Security
You may already be legally required to provide certain security features for individual units, such as deadbolt locks and peepholes in doors. Some renters also have alarm systems, doorbell cameras, and other security features installed in their units.
However, there may be limitations to these measures and restrictions dictating when and where they can be installed. You also don’t want tenants having to rely on their own alarms and cameras because their apartment security solutions fall short of their expectations.
Due to the limitations of individual unit security, these measures work best in conjunction with property-wide security controls rather than as a primary tool to stop crime in apartment complexes.
When paired with Flock, doorbell camera footage can be used to plot out criminal activity as it traverses the individual units and the common areas of your property. This can offer authorities a comprehensive, unbiased view of the entire incident.
Flock Safety License Plate Reader Cameras
Flock Safety license plate reader cameras can capture license plates and other identifying details of moving vehicles, even in areas with high volumes of traffic.
Flock’s cameras offer a unique Vehicle Fingerprint technology that lets you capture license plate numbers as well as other vehicle characteristics, such as:
- Partial, missing, or covered plates
- Make and model
- Vehicle color
- Aftermarket alterations, such as body kits
- Specific details, such as the presence of bumper stickers
This captured information can give police actionable evidence to connect a vehicle to the suspect of a crime that happened within your property.
Flock cameras automatically categorize license plate and vehicle data so that they’re easily searchable and accessible. If a license plate for a vehicle listed as stolen in police databases is captured, Flock cameras can automatically alert law enforcement.
Flock Cameras for Apartment Security
Flock license plate reader cameras fit seamlessly into your existing apartment security infrastructure. They work with and augment your existing security features to proactively prevent crime.
Flock cameras are easy to install anywhere within an apartment complex since they are solar and LTE powered and don’t require you to run heavy cables or other infrastructure to operate. Security gates don’t have to be manned at all hours when Flock cameras can capture vehicle data for traffic entering and exiting the community 24/7.
Security patrols, CCTV and doorbell cameras, and alarms can all play a pivotal role in crime reduction, but Flock cameras enhance these solutions by providing the actionable evidence of a license plate number police need to reduce crime.
Tenants don’t have to worry about privacy concerns because the data captured by Flock cameras is secure and encrypted. The data is 100% owned by you and is deleted after 30 days. If tenants don’t want their vehicle data captured by Flock cameras, they can opt out by adding their vehicles to the safe list as residents.
Flock cameras offer busy property managers a low-maintenance solution. Cameras are leased, and tasks such as system updates or replacing stolen or damaged cameras are handled directly by Flock.
Flock Safety cameras provide a subtle design that won’t detract from your apartment complex’s curb appeal—while still capturing the evidence needed to reduce crime rates in your community.
Being able to have objective evidence outside of the other normal means is very assistive
Chief Jeffrey Norman, Milwaukee Police Department
Flock Cameras Proven to Make Communities Safer
Across the country, apartment communities that use Flock license plate reader cameras have seen reduced crime and increased safety.
For instance, by installing Flock cameras, Prominent Realty Group of Georgia was able to reduce crime in their Nashville apartment complex to zero incidents within six weeks.
“A huge help for bringing down crime in my properties is having a plate reader,” said Prominent Realty Group of Georgia President Doug Foppe. “When we used Flock’s system in Nashville, we put the camera at the front of our property together with their yard signs that read, ‘Monitored 24/7.’”
Before installing Flock cameras, the complex suffered as many as three incidents of crime per week, including car burglaries and assaults. These crimes occurred despite the complex using CCTV cameras and security personnel.
Local police reported that a Detroit apartment complex had seen 110 assaults, 41 burglaries, 16 weapon offenses, and over 1,000 911 calls in just over a year. ROCCO Real Estate decided to invest in Flock license plate reader cameras to help reduce crime on their property.
“I instantly realized that Flock was the right fit for the property,” said Justin Whitney, director of procurement for ROCCO.
Using Flock cameras, they were able to capture a breaking and entering incident within weeks of installation, allowing police to apprehend the suspect.
Noting a high level of crime at several apartment complexes in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Tulsa Police Department decided to use Flock license plate reader cameras to combat crime.
One particular feature of Flock cameras Tulsa PD found to be critical to their efforts was the ability to integrate their Flock system with national databases like the FBI National Crime Information Center.
Flock cameras offer 24/7 protection for your tenants and properties and capture unbiased, actionable evidence to help police prevent and solve crimes. Flock cameras are available at a reasonable price point with easy, no-hassle installation and ongoing maintenance upgrades handled entirely by the Flock team. Flock cameras are solar-powered and don’t require you to run any additional infrastructure for them to operate.
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Flock Safety is a public safety operating system that helps communities and law enforcement in 2000+ cities work together to eliminate crime, protect privacy, and mitigate bias. We build devices that capture objective evidence and use machine learning to create and deliver unbiased investigative leads to law enforcement. Our proprietary devices and cloud-based software reduce crime by +70%. Flock Safety serves 2000 cities in 42+ states and is helping solve hundreds of crimes every day.
Apartment Security Solutions
A reputation for high rates of crime is a red flag for potential residents. Filling units may become more difficult, and turnover will be higher than preferred. Ultimately, this pattern could lead to a drop in rental prices in the area, which limits the property manager’s overall margin.
The Cost of Tenant Turnover
If tenants experience high crime rates and a lost sense of well-being in their community, they’re less likely to stay once their lease ends.
Between administrative and marketing expenses, cleaning and repairs, and refilling vacancies, the cost of tenant turnover can be as high as $1,000 to $5,000 per unit.
While crime can impact any community, apartment complexes can take measures to help residents feel safer.
Laws often require property managers to provide a baseline of security and crime prevention for those living in apartments. Yet, some tools can help you achieve these goals and go above and beyond the bare minimum.
You can provide tenants with a truly safe environment that will lead to higher retention, increased ROI, and positive word-of-mouth that helps keep units occupied.
Common solutions such as gates, CCTV cameras, alarms, and on-site personnel can each play an important role in your apartment security strategy. Unfortunately, these tools are often lacking a critical piece of evidence police need to solve crimes—a license plate number.
Only license plate reader cameras capture the actionable evidence of license plate information and other vehicle details when a crime occurs.
Why License Plates Matter
Law enforcement recognizes that a license plate is one of the most critical pieces of evidence needed to make an arrest.
Statistics show that 80% of property crimes go unsolved due to a lack of actionable evidence, yet 70% of crimes involve a vehicle, according to the International Association of Police Chiefs. License plate reader cameras can help alert authorities when a vehicle listed as stolen in police databases is identified.
License plate reader cameras take the guesswork out of identifying vehicles involved in alleged criminal activity. These cameras can capture high volumes of plate and vehicle data in and around your apartment complex without police needing to scroll through hours of CCTV footage for the chance of a usable image.
Flock license plate reader cameras provide a proactive approach to apartment security, capturing the key evidence of a license plate number and other identifying vehicle details needed to prevent and solve crimes.
Here’s how Flock cameras enhance your other security solutions and keep your community safe.
Considering Your Apartment Security Options
When deciding which apartment security solutions to invest in, it’s important to consider cost versus the potential increase in resident safety and crime reduction.
Ideally, your security tools will provide the results you want while providing police the evidence they need to prevent crime and take action should one occur on your property.
Here’s what you should consider when evaluating your options.
Actionable Evidence
When a crime occurs in your complex or on your property, your security system should be able to provide evidence law enforcement can act on.
Without a clear ID on a suspect or a vehicle associated with a crime, filmed footage and eyewitness accounts often aren’t enough for police to pursue a lead.
Law enforcement agencies need evidence that is clear and concrete enough to provide law enforcement with the information needed to begin an investigation and ultimately make an arrest.
Proactive Crime Prevention
Many security solutions don’t enable a proactive security approach. They can capture evidence that a crime is happening or has taken place, but this only allows you to react to a crime.
The best apartment security solutions don’t just capture actionable evidence when crimes happen, but they also proactively prevent crimes in the first place.
When you’re able to help law enforcement identify stolen vehicles, stolen tags, or vehicles associated with other crimes, they can take action before the suspect does.
Costs
Costs can add up when factoring apartment security solutions into your budget. It’s critical to know what you’re paying versus the results these solutions provide.
There are several angles from which to consider these costs.
Upfront costs include what you pay when you initially invest in a solution. These costs include the cost of purchasing the solution, having it installed in your apartment community, integrating it into your existing infrastructure, and hiring the necessary personnel.
Ongoing costs happen when security systems break down, require regular maintenance, or need upgrades to function properly. This includes maintaining these systems over time, whether through the vendor or another party, as well as additional cost considerations, such as increased utility costs. Systems that aren’t functioning to their full capacity won’t produce the evidence police need to take action.
Time Commitment
More time spent managing security solutions means less time to keep up with the myriad responsibilities a property manager faces daily.
Reliable systems that aren’t constantly in need of repairs and maintenance provide a more user-friendly experience, especially when a vendor handles these tasks promptly as part of your service agreement.
Time is also valuable in the sense that when a crime occurs, police need actionable evidence as quickly as possible. Being able to give law enforcement concrete evidence right away allows them a greater chance of making an arrest or recovering stolen items.
Curb Appeal
Maintaining the curb appeal of your apartment community can have a meaningful impact on attracting new tenants and retaining current ones.
When it comes to safety, perception matters. Overly-obvious security implementations may imply that crime actually is a problem on your property.
The best apartment security solutions offer a subtle design that won’t make your apartments less appealing while still effectively collecting actionable evidence and lowering crime rates.
These considerations can be applied to any apartment security solution. Here are several common options when it comes to protecting your tenants and properties.
Commonly Used Apartment Security Options
No single security solution can solve all potential vulnerabilities. Whatever investments you make should work in tandem with other tools in your security system. When adding new solutions to your toolkit, you should choose options that fill in the gaps left by other tools.
Flock license plate reader cameras were built to be affordable and flexible, delivering maximum return on your investment and complementing other apartment security tools like these:
Security Gates
Millions of residents prefer gated communities, which provide automatic entry and exit gates that can be accessed only by residents and people who are explicitly allowed into the community.
Gates and perimeter fencing have a clear appeal to many and can be effective in reducing crime. For instance, one study shows a 33% reduction in burglaries in homes in gated communities versus those in non-gated communities.
While gates provide peace of mind and can help deter suspects looking for the easiest fare possible, they don’t provide much evidence if a crime does occur.
When paired with Flock, you can add the element of license plate detection to the entrances and exits to your property, so you can know exactly who was on your property at what time.
Apartment Security Personnel
Hiring on-site security staff can boost safety and cut down on potential crimes in and around your property. After all, security guards are usually highly skilled in locating and identifying potential criminal activity, and they can make themselves immediately available to tenants when they need to report suspicious or criminal activity.
Security staff can’t take the place of the police. In fact, they are most effective when they work in tight conjunction with the authorities. They can aid law enforcement by providing first-hand accounts, along with any direct, actionable evidence such as video, audio, or other material captured by on-site security tools. However, their ability to respond quickly to a criminal incident can be greatly hampered by the manual work of searching through footage or gathering eyewitness accounts.
When paired with Flock, security personnel can respond quickly. Flock evidence is searchable by time, vehicle, and other factors, so staff won’t spend hours trawling footage.
CCTV Cameras
Businesses and property owners often invest in CCTV cameras. These cameras can help record specific areas and spot when something is amiss, and your security staff can monitor your cameras in real-time. CCTV cameras can provide police with a specific time and place a crime occurred and sometimes capture evidence such as a suspect’s face or vehicle, within a limited frame of view.
When paired with Flock, CCTV cameras can layer on top of license plate evidence to provide a fuller picture of the incident. Together, these two forms of evidence are massively powerful in positioning authorities to pursue leads effectively and efficiently.
Lighting
Common areas, roads and sidewalks, parking decks, stairwells, and entryways are all areas that require adequate lighting. This ensures that residents can feel safer traveling through these areas at night and avoid injury from tripping over unseen obstacles. Providing adequate lighting can be a key component of your broader security strategy.
When paired with Flock, you can extend security to places that are difficult to light—parking decks, for example. Flock cameras can obtain crystal-clear license plate photos even in total darkness. Running on solar power and their own independent network, Flock’s wireless cameras are flexible enough to set up in most places on your property without incurring heavy infrastructure costs.
Individual Unit Security
You may already be legally required to provide certain security features for individual units, such as deadbolt locks and peepholes in doors. Some renters also have alarm systems, doorbell cameras, and other security features installed in their units.
However, there may be limitations to these measures and restrictions dictating when and where they can be installed. You also don’t want tenants having to rely on their own alarms and cameras because their apartment security solutions fall short of their expectations.
Due to the limitations of individual unit security, these measures work best in conjunction with property-wide security controls rather than as a primary tool to stop crime in apartment complexes.
When paired with Flock, doorbell camera footage can be used to plot out criminal activity as it traverses the individual units and the common areas of your property. This can offer authorities a comprehensive, unbiased view of the entire incident.
Flock Safety License Plate Reader Cameras
Flock Safety license plate reader cameras can capture license plates and other identifying details of moving vehicles, even in areas with high volumes of traffic.
Flock’s cameras offer a unique Vehicle Fingerprint technology that lets you capture license plate numbers as well as other vehicle characteristics, such as:
- Partial, missing, or covered plates
- Make and model
- Vehicle color
- Aftermarket alterations, such as body kits
- Specific details, such as the presence of bumper stickers
This captured information can give police actionable evidence to connect a vehicle to the suspect of a crime that happened within your property.
Flock cameras automatically categorize license plate and vehicle data so that they’re easily searchable and accessible. If a license plate for a vehicle listed as stolen in police databases is captured, Flock cameras can automatically alert law enforcement.
Flock Cameras for Apartment Security
Flock license plate reader cameras fit seamlessly into your existing apartment security infrastructure. They work with and augment your existing security features to proactively prevent crime.
Flock cameras are easy to install anywhere within an apartment complex since they are solar and LTE powered and don’t require you to run heavy cables or other infrastructure to operate. Security gates don’t have to be manned at all hours when Flock cameras can capture vehicle data for traffic entering and exiting the community 24/7.
Security patrols, CCTV and doorbell cameras, and alarms can all play a pivotal role in crime reduction, but Flock cameras enhance these solutions by providing the actionable evidence of a license plate number police need to reduce crime.
Tenants don’t have to worry about privacy concerns because the data captured by Flock cameras is secure and encrypted. The data is 100% owned by you and is deleted after 30 days. If tenants don’t want their vehicle data captured by Flock cameras, they can opt out by adding their vehicles to the safe list as residents.
Flock cameras offer busy property managers a low-maintenance solution. Cameras are leased, and tasks such as system updates or replacing stolen or damaged cameras are handled directly by Flock.
Flock Safety cameras provide a subtle design that won’t detract from your apartment complex’s curb appeal—while still capturing the evidence needed to reduce crime rates in your community.
Being able to have objective evidence outside of the other normal means is very assistive
Chief Jeffrey Norman, Milwaukee Police Department
Flock Cameras Proven to Make Communities Safer
Across the country, apartment communities that use Flock license plate reader cameras have seen reduced crime and increased safety.
For instance, by installing Flock cameras, Prominent Realty Group of Georgia was able to reduce crime in their Nashville apartment complex to zero incidents within six weeks.
“A huge help for bringing down crime in my properties is having a plate reader,” said Prominent Realty Group of Georgia President Doug Foppe. “When we used Flock’s system in Nashville, we put the camera at the front of our property together with their yard signs that read, ‘Monitored 24/7.’”
Before installing Flock cameras, the complex suffered as many as three incidents of crime per week, including car burglaries and assaults. These crimes occurred despite the complex using CCTV cameras and security personnel.
Local police reported that a Detroit apartment complex had seen 110 assaults, 41 burglaries, 16 weapon offenses, and over 1,000 911 calls in just over a year. ROCCO Real Estate decided to invest in Flock license plate reader cameras to help reduce crime on their property.
“I instantly realized that Flock was the right fit for the property,” said Justin Whitney, director of procurement for ROCCO.
Using Flock cameras, they were able to capture a breaking and entering incident within weeks of installation, allowing police to apprehend the suspect.
Noting a high level of crime at several apartment complexes in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Tulsa Police Department decided to use Flock license plate reader cameras to combat crime.
One particular feature of Flock cameras Tulsa PD found to be critical to their efforts was the ability to integrate their Flock system with national databases like the FBI National Crime Information Center.
Flock cameras offer 24/7 protection for your tenants and properties and capture unbiased, actionable evidence to help police prevent and solve crimes. Flock cameras are available at a reasonable price point with easy, no-hassle installation and ongoing maintenance upgrades handled entirely by the Flock team. Flock cameras are solar-powered and don’t require you to run any additional infrastructure for them to operate.
---
Flock Safety is a public safety operating system that helps communities and law enforcement in 2000+ cities work together to eliminate crime, protect privacy, and mitigate bias. We build devices that capture objective evidence and use machine learning to create and deliver unbiased investigative leads to law enforcement. Our proprietary devices and cloud-based software reduce crime by +70%. Flock Safety serves 2000 cities in 42+ states and is helping solve hundreds of crimes every day.