By Allan B. Colombo

Apartment houses and high-rise apartment buildings offer burglars, rapists and other criminals a multiple of crime opportunities. In every case, an apartment tenant becomes an unwilling victim. That is why these structures must be equipped with quality locks, intercoms, and access control systems to stop or at least slow down a criminal's entry. At the same time, these systems must remain friendly to the people who live and work there.

Stopping criminals while being user friendly is a tall order for any integrated security program. In fact, it becomes a balancing act during which compromises are often required. Building owners and managers usually realize this, but tenants do not always understand the compromises that often are made for the sake of safety.

For example, a quality deadbolt on the entry door to a small 16-apartment unit would seem safer than a mere knob-and- key lock. But for the sake of convenience to the tenants who live there, building owners usually rely on a know-and-key lock. The reason for this centers around the use of intercom/access control systems that allow a tenant to identify his/her visitors and then to allow them enty by pressing a button inside their apartment.

Although this is convenience could be dispensed with, tenants like it because it saves them steps to the main door of a complex. A deadbolt lock, however, would require tenants to leave their apartments and walk to the main entrance to allow their visitor access. Compromise in this apartment unit means a more user-friendly atmosphere.

Other safety features may include quality metal doors and good window and door locks. This often includes the installation of quality sliding glass doors, especially in first and second floor apartments.

Although these measures will stop or slow down some burglars, they are no match for cunning, determined criminals. That's why it is so important that foot traffic be controlled into and throughout a facility. This includes interior access control to retard the progress of criminals through a facility after they've found a way into a building.

For example, swimming pools, change and shower rooms, weight rooms, locker rooms, laundry areas, and vending rooms should be protected from criminals. This is usually done by installing quality know-and-key locks that are mastered so only tenants and employees have user-friendly access. This measure will sometimes discourage a criminal from remaining in a building because there's no place to hide.

Apartment Intercom Systems

Communication between tentants in an apartment house and high-rise apartment building is also important, especially in the absence of security guards and closed-circuit television systems. This is usually the norm and not the exception, however, because apartment building owners may not always have the funds available to have a full regiment of security guards, security kiosk or expensive camera equipment installed.

Apartment intercoms are made up of five basic components: a suit station inside each apartment, a directory that contains a list of tenants and ring buttons that correspond to each one, a directory speaker, a central amplifier controller, and some kind of electrically-controlled lock at one or two doors leading into an apartment unit or highrise building.

These communication systems serve two functions:

1. Tenants can communicate with their visitors.
2. Tenants do not have to physically open a door to allow their visitors to enter. All they have to do is press a button inside their apartment.

By contrast, door-bell-button systems alone only notify tenants when someone is outside the facility. Tenants then have to physically open the door to the complex to let them in. Apartment intercom systems, however, allow them to screen their callers. Then they can let them in by simply activating an electric door strike or electromagnetic lock on the main door.

There are two basic kinds of apartment intercom systems, full-duplex and half-duplex intercoms. Full-duplex systems feature two-way communication between a directory speaker outside the entrance door and either a suite station in each apartment or a conventional telephone. Electric door locks or electromagnetic locks are controlled using spring-loaded buttons on the front of a suite station or a predetermined button on a tenant's conventional telephone.

Half-duplex systems feature one-way communication between tenants and their visitors. In this system, tenants control all communications using a talk/listen button on the front of an apartment suite station. When a visitor rings a particular tenant's director ring (doorbell) button, the tenant must initiate a conversation with the visitor by pressing the "talk" button.

To hear the visitor's reply, the tenant them must release the "talk" button and presse the "listen" button. Then, if the tenant wants the visitor to enter the complex, he or she must press the "door" button to unlock the entrance door.

Directories in both systems are typically mounted next to an entrance door. This makes it easy for visitors to locate tenants and get their attention by pressing a ring button. Directories in full-duplex systems have two speakers and half- duplex systems have only one.

Systems that require the use of conventional telephones either operate using the telephone company's outside telephone network or a dedicated control unit located inside the apartment complex. This unit automatically rings a tenant's telephone and then switches it to the outside directory whenever a visitor rings a particular tenant's ring button. This method eliminates the need for a separate telephone line, which also eliminates the monthly cost of a dial-up phone line.

Pressing a ring button on an outside apartment directory, in a dial-up system prompts the KSU to dial a particular tenant's telephone number. The phone number is either stored in a matrix circuit or electronic memory inside the KSU. The outside telephone network then connects the caller to a tenant's telephone through another telephone wire that enters the apartment building. In a dedicated KSU system, the KSU rings the tenant's telephone after disconnecting it from the telephone company's outside telephone network.

In either system, after the tenant has identified his caller, he can allow them to enter by pressing a predetermined button on the telephone. Either type of KSU will then activate the electric lock on the outside entrance door.

Closed-circuit Television Systems

Because of the emense size of high-rise apartment buildings, the number of outside entrances that lead into them, the large number of tenants who live there, and the limited number of security guards that usually protect them, these facilities are often equipped with closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems.

Cameras are commonly installed overlooking outside entrances, elevator lobbies, and inside stair towers. Cameras at outside entrances, for example, enable security guards to quickly identify unwanted children, trouble makers, and other people who do not belong there. They also allow security personnel to catch tail gaters who try to follow authorized tenants into a building.

Cameras are also installed inside high-rise apartment buildings so security guards can assure the safety of those who live there. They enable personnel to witness acts of violence and other crimes as they occur.

Cameras can either be "fixed" or they can be mounted on motorized pan-and-tilt mechanisms that alow security personnel to move them back and forth, up and down. Fixed cameras, on the other hand, remain only in one position, providing one basic view.

Fixed cameras help assure that security personnel see events that take place at strategic areas inside a high-rise facility. Whereas, cameras mounted on pan-and-tilt mechanisms can easily be aimed at more than one area for viewing multiple scenes. Fixed cameras are commonly aimed at entrance doors, interior hallways, interior doors, and common interior areas.

Although fixed camera installations are usually considered more secure than pan-and-tilt ones, they require more cameras to adequately cover a facility. Pan-and-tilt camera installations, however, require less cameras because each camera can manually or automatically view more than one scene. They can be moved from one entry point or internal area to another.

Another important part of a CCTV system is the "video switcher." This device controls the viewing of camera images, sequentially switching them so they appear, one after the other, on one or several CCTV television-like monitors. Otherwise, each camera would require a dedicated monitor, which would be nearly impossible for one or two security guards to effectively watch.

Switchers also enables a relatively small number of security guards to effectively monitor large high-rise apartment buildings. For example, without a sequential switcher, a 20- camera CCTV system would require 20 television monitors to monitor them. A switcher, however, combines images together, reducing the number of monitors to less than 5. This makes the job of surveillance more manageable.

Time-lapse tape recorders also are a must in an apartment house or high-rise apartment building. In large facilities, these devices document events that take place outside and inside the premises. In smaller apartment buildings whose owners cannot afford full-time security personnel, time-lapse tape recorders are able to document events, including the identify of criminals who enter and leave the facility. These videotapes then are used later by law enforcement authorities after an incident has occured.

"Multiplexers" are also a necessary item to buy when protecting a large high-rise facility. A multiplexer is used to sequentially record each camera onto videotape in such a manner that all camera images are sequentially stored on videotape without the typical interuptions that occur using conventional sequential camera switchers. This device also allows management to call up particular cameras or groups of cameras for rapid viewing at a later time.

Conventional sequential switchers, for example, can only record camera images one at a time. Consequently, the more cameras there are in a closed-circuit television system, the longer the interval during which all but one camera image is viewed/recorded. Multiplexers solve this problem using high- speed image compresion where entire images are rapidly recorded- -one at a time--on videotape.

Protecting Second-Floor Dwellers

People inherently believe that just because they live on the second floor of an apartment building that they're immune to the theft problems that plague first-floor apartment dwellers. Of course, it is true that second-floor dwellers are less vulnerable to attack than their first-floor counterparts, but no one in an apartment building is really safe from attack.

One way for burglars to gain entrance to upper-floor apartments is through an adjacent structure. Apartment buildings, for example, are often built close to other buildlings in large metropolitan areas. This makes it possible for burglars to enter well protected, fortified complexes without being seen breaking in at ground level, which is sometimes a very risky thing to do in highly-populated neighborhoods.

For example, one way to do this is to stretch a solid wood plank from the window ledge of an unprotected building to that of a first-floor-protected apartment building. Another way to access an apartment building is to use the roof of an unprotected building. Then, after the burglar gains access to the roof, all he has to do is to enter the facility using the stairway or by lowering himself through a roof hatch. This enables an enterprising burglar to bypass the security measures in place on the first floor of an apartment complex.

Once a criminal has gained access to an upper floor level, he is free to enter an apartment unit by simply manipulating a door lock.

To protect a second story apartment, be sure to properly secure patio doors and windows with quality locks. Sliding door should be equipped with anti-door removal devices that prevent criminals from lifting and tilting a door out of its track. One way to do this is to install one or two long screws horizontally in the top track above the door.

You can do this by drilling a small horizontal hole through the track rails above the door about 1/4 of the entire width of the sliding door. Then, insert a long self-taping screw and use a screwdriver to secure it all the way into the track.

Criminals who gain access to an upper-floor patio now will not be able to remove a patio door by lifting it out of its track.

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