9
Dec
2015
By Calvin at 17:54 GMT, 10 years ago
This week, wearing my security consultant hat, I visited a small office building located in a very pleasant refurbished Victorian street in Hackney. The office manager told me that they’d recently had a bicycle stolen from the hallway by someone who had managed to get in through the accessed controlled entrance door. Because this suspect was trespassing at the time the crime was, in fact, a burglary.
When I examined the door I noticed straightaway that the door closer had been removed. This meant that people using the door – and that was about sixty staff members – were having to push the door closed on entry and pull it closed on exit; a difficult thing to do as there was no handle on the door to pull it closed with. Inevitably the door got left open on some occasions!
It transpired that the door closer had been faulty and had been slamming the door closed and making a very loud din. The people in the neighbouring office complained about the noise so the door closer was taken off – problem solved!
But, of course, doing this led to unexpected consequences, which was an opportunity to steal via the open door.
The correct solution to deal with the complaint should have been to adjust the door closer so it operated correctly or have a new one fitted if the original one had worn out.
Had they done this it is quite possible that the burglary would not have happened and therefore my services would not have been required. It was a good thing that I was called in though as I discovered other problems, which they perhaps would not have thought about otherwise. Every cloud!
