I hate having to use this same post title over and over and over again, but I’ve run out of original titles for this. Last night, we had an attempted robbery at the Keep. I was woken at around 2:30 by Gerald who was calling me through our second-story window at home. When I managed to orient myself, I asked him what was wrong. He told me Sarah (our manager) was at the gate and that there had been a robbery at the Keep. I got dressed, settled Declan back into bed, locked the upstairs “cage”, left Johnson (Gerald’s brother) on the first floor to keep an eye on Declan and headed out to the gate. Sarah told me that she didn’t know much but that Tabu and Andrew (CEPAC employees who live around the Keep) found some “antennas” on the sidewalk and found a thief jumping off the roof. Sarah hadn’t been to the Keep yet, but she suggested we go to the police first instead of showing up at the Keep facing an unknown number of thieves on our own. Personally, I wanted to just get to the Keep, Hisatsu in hand and take my chances, but cooler heads prevailed.
We headed to the police station, sat for the requisite fifteen minutes to prove that we were in fact subjecting ourselves to the authority’s control and then our little posse headed to the Keep. I realized we were only one rifle ahead of the game despite the fact that we had three police officers in tow.
On the drive over, I began dreading what we would find. I knew we had customer computers and electronics on site for repair and frankly that was my biggest worry. In all honesty, we don’t keep much cash on hand at the keep, and there’s nothing portable or valuable enough to easily liquidate.
When we arrived, I found a package of 3G antennas sitting on the sidewalk. These had been pulled through the window bars. Why in the world they were so close to the window remains a mystery but is part of the ongoing investigation. As we made our way around the perimeter, I found all the doors locked (although one door had obviously been beaten on pretty badly) and the windows secure. We opened the front door, and found everything to be intact. The thieves had obviously been scouting a way to get in to the restaurant through the roof, but had been scared off before they could get a plan together.
We were fortunate, but none of the credit can go to our guard who obviously slept through a door bashing occurring literally two feet from his post.
Today was a whirlwind of activity. We implemented several new security measures, including a locked, chained pelican, several steel lock boxes for computer accessories (which appear to be valuable to potential thieves), extra locks for several doors, steel welded reinforcements and cages for all ceiling access doors, steel reinforcement for several doors, and other measures which will remain unmentioned for security reasons. We found out how the thieves had scaled the wall, and found a Keep uniform, several towels, and the thieves sandals waiting just outside the fence where he left them. We also found full sets of perfect muddy fingerprints on the wall the thief had climbed, and we will be fingerprinting our entire staff and the guard to, shall we say, “prove their innocence”. The police have two suspects based on their investigation so far, both employees.
Honestly, that’s the part that sucks the most. Thieves are a reality wherever you live. But when time and time again, you’re getting robbed by peole you’re trying to help, that’s another level of hurt and frustration.
All things said, things could have been much worse. The attempted robbery is costing us a small fortune in extra security measures, money to the police, and rewards to the guys that helped foil the theft, but we would have spent most of that money after a successful attack also.
