A special ladder

Today I'm going to describe something that happened during October 2004 in the storehouse of a big retail company in Lima (they have some 10 large retail stores by now in Lima); the storehouse is located in the outskirts southbound of Lima; it was, supposedly, a very secure place to keep thousands of home appliances, clothing, shoes, rugs, and so on. The place has a large square estructure of about 600 feet long each side and some 24 feet high, with a large front entrance and 3 watch towers on each side, each one to be covered by an armed guard; but, as many organizations here, when their economy is not as solid as the management board expect, they start to cut down costs and the security ones are one of the first to be cut, so the board decided to cover only the corner watchtower of each side (leaving the center one of each side unattended).

It happened then that a group of 20 burglars who "worked nearby" took notice of this new "opportunity" (the center watchtower unattended) and, after some days of rigurous "surveillance", they decide to break through one night when there was a strong fog surrounding the place; but they did this in a very imaginative way (take a lok at the ad-hoc- ladder they made up for this case); Please note that though the words in the graphic are in spanish I think it's easy to understand:

The ladder was located over the side of a lonely road aside of the storehouse and its form let one pass over the electric fence over the peripheral wall and locks over the concrete watch tower side!

The fog helped them to be inadverted (of course those "guards" weren't even a little aware at all!); some 4-5 burglars gained entrance this way, caught in surprise the guards one by one, put their own uniforms and took control of the storehouse; then they let in a big truck and left with some 80 thousand dollars values inside. Incredible!

I know it happens anywhere, but is no less acceptable because of it!

Juan

A phony guard's stand in front of a jewelry shop

Well, after some busy days, finally I found some time to continue.

Here I will show you how imaginative burglars you can find "working" in Lima.

Few nights ago, a couple of burglars decided to force their entrance to a jewelry shop located in a suburban area of Lima; the method was really original: simulate that one of them had been hired as a watchman to stand by on a neighborhood to prevent any felony nearby; of course the "new" watchtman came in with his own guardstand! (with some innovative characteristics!) and put it just infront of the small door of their objective: the jewelry.

As soon as these two bandits installed their stand on the neighborhood, one of them "stood on watcht" looking vivaciously for any suspicios person nearby, the other one stayed kneeling at his back, away from the view of anyone protected by the stand walls (as you will see on the graphic I've made my own, ahead) of course he was manipulating the big and strong paddlock that secured the jewelry door and break into the shop!).

But it happened that some neighbors, passing-by, noticed something strange with the newby watchtman, worst of all when they heard some rare noises coming from inside of his stand (the other guy tingling lots of keys and small tools to force his entry to the shop!).

Few minutes later, I don't have to tell much of it, some 20 or 30 neighbors came by and unveiled their secrecy, caught both guys and took them to the police station nearby ending this way their adventure!

Here is the drawing I mentioned (clic over it to enlarge view):

Juan

Major risks in Peru

Amigos:

As a third world republic (although there seems to be by now a light at the end of the tunnel), we still suffer from many limitations, mainly poverty because the lack of job oportunities, that force many people to act against the law and then, street robbery (pickpocketting), kidnap (mostly the "express" type and some typical kidnaps, once in a while), car and car accesories robbery, home intrusions, stores asaults, police and some government corruption and the like are so usual inspite of honest police efforts to combat them; juvenile gangs in some suburban areas in the larger cities are also common.

I will explain typical examples of this risks in the following entries and, hopefully, explain what we do in each case.

It's enough for this my first blog.

Thanks for reading this, let me know anything I should do to improve this my first experience.

Juan

Reasons for this blog

Dear Friends:

I decided to create this blog for various reasons:

• to practice my english (almost forgotten, please collaborate ......),
  
• to illustrate what are the common risks any foreigner should expect to find while visiting my country (Peru), and what we recommend to do to deal with them.
• to find out what is done elswhere in similar cases
• to find some new friends to share this interest.

I will write down my own experience daily (or as soon I get some time to do it) and I offer to answer any questions or inquiries, asap.

Feel free to ask me anything about security business here in Perú(I mean protective and phisical) areas (no IT please).

So, done this, I'll start now.

Juan