Why Police Are Increasingly Relying on Remote Guarding

L.A.-based provider partners to help authorities make retail crime arrests.

• By Keith Bushey
• Jan 09, 2024

When done right, collaborative efforts among public law enforcement agencies and private security businesses can profoundly impact crime.

Case in point, Los Angeles-based Elite Interactive Solutions — a leading video surveillance monitoring and response specialist renowned for its remote guarding offering — has met Southern California’s retail theft challenges with a series of tactical and procedural measures that are paying off with additional arrests and more secure locations. Central to this success, and one of the aspects that sets Elite apart from other security solutions providers, is its internal Law Enforcement Advisory Board (LEAB) comprised of tenured and respected law enforcement executives from across the nation.

Advisors Aid in Apprehensions
LEAB routinely meets and exchanges information and thoughts with agency executives, including those from the Los Angeles Police and Sheriff’s departments and California Highway Patrols. Together, they are coordinating efforts to deal with retail thefts, mob smash and grab crimes and, ultimately, receivers of the stolen property. These meetings continue to yield surveillance and equipment adjustments targeted specifically at these types of crimes, which are incorporated into appropriate Elite client accounts.

Among the successes that have emerged from this partnership are a series of successful arrests in the South Bay of Los Angeles County where Sheriff’s Detective Anthony Lopez of the Lomita Station has successfully cleared four separate instances of smash and grab burglaries by flash mob suspects, including arrests, identification of vehicles and additional suspects.

Of particular note has been the successful involvement of Elite’s Security Operations Command Center professionals in the evaluation and coordination of information. This relates not only to the targeted premises but also information gleaned from remote locations based on the proprietary forensic processes Elite has developed for these particular types of crimes.

Det. Lopez, who has received a LEAB commendation, said it best, “Time and again, the Elite personnel have assisted me in the identification of persons and vehicles, by virtue of the state-of-the-art remote guarding system the company has developed. Elite is a pleasure to work with.”

Extending Long Arm of the Law
While other remote guarding companies may have some degree of law enforcement exposure, the LEAB exemplifies the extraordinary measures Elite has taken to strengthen the degree of involvement at all levels. The company’s proprietary combination of 16 leading-edge technologies and methodologies protect premises, eliminate false alarms and verify all suspicious occurrences at those locations.

Elite Founder and CEO Aria Kozak — considered a security industry visionary — has well understood and embraced from the beginning how critical it is to not only serve customers but, just as importantly, to act as a trusted partner to law enforcement nationwide. He personally reached out to engage with police chiefs and agencies, and to identify and attract seasoned and accomplished retired law enforcement execs respected in their areas of expertise to provide crucial input and nurture ongoing jurisdictional relationships.

Meeting weekly, the value the LEAB brings to the table includes chief-level executive skills, dispatch and command center developmental and operational guidance, field operations leadership, personnel richly steeped in procedural processes, and advising computer crimes and automated systems design representatives that are second to none in the nation. The group routinely confers with company engineers and specialists to ensure processes, technologies and procedures are consistent with the needs of a diversified clientele. This dynamic is key to Elite’s unique status as a trusted partner that acts as an eyewitness to crimes in progress, not only aiding in detainments and arrests but also dramatically improving officer safety.

The LEAB is highly focused on the incident alert and report concepts of credible, comprehensive and confirmed. Any alarm company and monitoring center can indicate an intrusion alarm has been triggered, and some today are further able to provide video confirmation that an actual crime may be happening. However, that is still a reactive as opposed to a proactive posture. A remote guarding solutions provider such as Elite takes such a scenario much further — to its crime preventing resolution.

Promoting Power of Partnering
For Elite accounts, the credibility of the company and the information provided is always of paramount concern. Aided by state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and video analytics technologies, Elite command center agents not only advise of an intrusion but report all that’s occurring in real-time, confirm circumstances and if any weapons are evident, provide detailed descriptions of suspects and vehicles, and supply information as to avenues of departure being used by the perpetrators.

That philosophy and those measures are a dynamic process that is continually applied to the changing threats and trends of Elite’s customer accounts. In 2023, the firm directly prevented more than 60,000 crimes and teamed with police for in excess of 1,000 detainments and arrests. Among the most recent and fruitful examples of this success formula is the unique smash and grab aspects of retail thefts.

Elite continues to not only lead the security industry in innovation and technology, but also in demonstrating the power possible when the public and private sectors partner for the greater good.