Property and community managers must deal with the responsibility of keeping their properties safe and protecting their tenants.

This is no simple task.

Apartment security is a pressing concern for many communities across the United States. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, apartment renters–especially those in smaller apartment complexes–are more likely to experience crime.

Many apartment complexes choose to implement common security measures to combat the threat of crime, such as security guards and CCTV cameras. Gate systems and key access controls help communities to limit access to residents and their guests.

However, the fact remains that 7 million property crimes occur every year, and 80% go unsolved because they lack the key piece of evidence law enforcement needs to pursue an investigation—a license plate for the suspect vehicle.

Flock License Plate Reader (LPR) Cameras Can Help

Because 70% of crime involves a vehicle, partnering LPR cameras with other security measures helps provide missing evidence by identifying vehicles and license plates associated with crimes.

Flock cameras capture actionable evidence to solve crimes, are easy to install and maintain, and provide a proactive approach to preventing crimes in your apartment complex. Combined with your existing security solutions, Flock cameras can help drastically reduce crime for you and your tenants.

Let’s take a closer look at Flock Safety LPR cameras’ benefits for property managers looking to keep their communities safe.  

Benefit One: Actionable Evidence to Solve Crimes

“I instantly realized that Flock was the right fit for the property. We’re hopeful that this is a big part of the solution to our problem.” -Justin Whitney, ROCO Real Estate Director of Procurement

Apartment security is most effective when it provides evidence law enforcement can use to solve and prevent crimes.

Flock’s LPR cameras use patented Vehicle Fingerprint™ technology, which captures details of cars coming into the complex, such as make, model, color, and other vehicle characteristics like aftermarket alterations and whether the plate is paper or not. Flock will even capture information about vehicles with partial or missing license plates.

Property managers can bolster apartment security by using Flock cameras because they provide actionable evidence police need to make an arrest in the event of a crime in the community.

LPR cameras like Flock protect your community and your tenants. Flock cameras have proven to be a critical apartment security tool for many communities, including one Detroit complex that was struggling to combat high rates of violent crime prior to installing Flock cameras.

Detroit area apartment complex Warren Manor saw eight robberies, 110 assaults and domestics, 41 burglaries, 16 weapon offenses, and upwards of 1,000 calls to 911 over a year-and-a-half period, according to the Warren Police Department.

ROCO Real Estate, which owns the 500+ unit Warren Manor community, decided to take action and invest in Flock cameras.

Within weeks of installing Flock LPR cameras, a unit at Warren Manor was broken into and damaged. One of the community’s security cameras captured a blurry image of a vehicle at the time of the incident. Unfortunately, it didn’t capture the license plate information that could lead to an arrest.

Using the vehicle recognition and search capabilities of the Flock system, law enforcement matched the image to previous Flock footage of that vehicle entering the complex. By doing so, police could identify the license plate, which allowed them to detain the suspect.

Benefit Two: Quick Install and Easy Maintenance

“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.’ We found that over the last six weeks, we went from an average of three incidents a week to zero.” -Douglas Foppe, Prominent Realty Group of Georgia President

Spending time improving apartment security measures can be difficult to balance with the multiple other responsibilities property managers must attend to every day.

Apartment communities can lease Flock cameras at an affordable price point with minimal maintenance. The annual fee includes installation, maintenance, and customer support, and Flock will replace damaged or stolen cameras.

Flock cameras are solar-powered and LTE connected, and they don’t require you to run additional infrastructure. Because of this, Flock cameras can be installed in your community and have an impact on reducing crime quickly.

Prominent Realty Group of Georgia experienced the positive impact of Flock cameras after getting fed up with growing crime across its multiple properties, which was making residents feel unsafe and eating into company profits.

Although traditional security cameras helped to some degree, they didn’t seem to capture that key piece of evidence—a license plate number—that police needed to solve crimes on the properties.

The company’s president, Douglas Foppe, decided to drastically change their approach to apartment security and invest in Flock cameras.

Prominent Realty Group of Georgia was able to have Flock cameras installed quickly and easily. This produced the fast results Douglas and his residents needed. Within just six weeks, a Nashville property saw a total reduction of three crimes per week to zero.

Benefit Three: Proactive Alerts and Evidence to Prevent Crimes

“If we have a Flock camera in this area either past the scene or before the scene and you have a good vehicle description—even if it’s just partial plate, not a full license plate on the vehicle—we’ve got a good chance of identifying the vehicle that’s involved (in a hit-and-run crash).” -Woonsocket Police Chief Thomas Oates

Along with your existing apartment security solutions, Flock cameras can help once a crime has been committed. However, Flock cameras also offer a uniquely proactive approach to preventing crime—before it ever reaches your residents’ doorsteps.

For instance, if a license plate or vehicle that is stolen, associated with a crime, or related to an AMBER alert enters your property, Flock will send a real-time alert to local police, so you don’t need to call 911. This helps to prevent crimes before they happen on your property.

Flock cameras protect your property 24/7, so residents can sleep easily.

Woonsocket Police Department in Rhode Island is among many law enforcement agencies recognizing the benefits of Flock’s proactive approach to crime prevention.

Flock’s Hot List allows police to receive alerts about stolen vehicles or license plates, wanted suspects, and more, and it’s connected to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database.

Woonsocket PD reports that they have installed 13 Flock cameras around the city and plan to add several more in the next year. They’ve already seen positive results, including “11 arrests for stolen vehicles, four warrants on offenses such as fraud, child molestation, felony assault and battery, vandalism, reckless operation, and leaving the scene of an accident with injuries,” according to ABC6 News.

According to internal Flock data, as of October 2022, Woonsocket’s Flock cameras have alerted police of 608 hotlist hits of captured vehicles in just the last 30 days.

These numbers come as a direct result of Flock’s proactive approach to crime.

Flock’s Bottom Line for Apartment Security

Flock’s LPR cameras provide a uniquely proactive approach to preventing and solving crimes within apartment communities. By capturing a license plate number and other identifying vehicle details, Flock cameras give police the evidence they need to act.

Protecting resident privacy is a top concern for Flock Safety. That’s why Flock cameras limit secure access of captured footage to the customers themselves, and data is deleted after 30 days and never shared with third parties.

Residents can also be added to a Safe List that allows footage of their vehicles to be automatically deleted.

Want to learn more about how Flock can help improve your apartment security and cut crime down on your property?

If you are the owner or manager of a multi-family property concerned about the safety of your tenants and assets, schedule a consultation today to learn more about how to reduce crime using Flock Safety cameras.

By providing law enforcement with actionable evidence, you can reduce crime rates, protect your investment, and give your residents peace of mind.

Flock Safety is a public safety operating system that helps communities and law enforcement in 2500+ 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 2500 cities in 42+ states and is helping solve hundreds of crimes every day.