Home sweet fortress?

By David Colker

Sept. 2, 2007 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Another way the rich are different: They can afford elaborate home security systems.

That makes it all the more frustrating when burglars get in.

“We’ve had cases where people came home and saw the red light” still glowing on their alarm systems, said Lt. Ray Lombardo, head of the Los Angeles Police Department task force investigating burglaries in the Bel-Air area. “It was like nothing was wrong.

“Then they go in and see the place was ransacked.”

The majority of upscale Westside homes that were hit in a recent rash of burglaries -- netting thieves nearly $8 million in cash and jewelry, according to victim reports -- had alarm systems.

Those systems were often inadequate or outdated, Lombardo said. And even if they were relatively extensive and new, thieves found ways around them.

“We are dealing with modern-day, sophisticated burglars,” Lombardo said. “Professional burglars know alarm systems and have the ability to bypass them.”

Last week, movie director William Friedkin and former Paramount Studios chief Sherry Lansing sued the nation’s largest home security company, ADT Security Services Inc., charging it with negligence in connection with a burglary of their Bel-Air home in December. Thieves got in, even though the home had a $25,000 system, according to the suit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

ADT spokeswoman Ann Lindstrom said the company did not comment on pending litigation.

At best, experts say, an alarm system should be viewed as only one aspect of home security -- and maybe not the most important part.

“When I do a security survey of a house, I first make recommendations that are relatively inexpensive,” said Lauralee Asch, a crime prevention coordinator for the city of Santa Monica. The city offers the surveys free for residents.

Her suggestions focus on matters such as proper locks, exterior lighting and keeping shrubs cut low. She normally doesn’t suggest an alarm unless the resident brings up the topic.

“I advocate alarms when people really want them, when it gives them a good sense of security,” she said.

For those who take the electronic alarm route, Asch suggests making a lot of noise.

“The ‘silent’ type of alarm will just send a signal to a monitoring station,” she said.

“But if an alarm is also audible, there is a better chance a neighbor might look out and get a description that might aid the police.”

One thing to watch out for: Loud false alarms can also bring unwelcome visits from the police and even fines in some jurisdictions.

Prices for electronic alarm systems offered by national home security companies often start at $99, plus a monthly monitoring fee of about $35.

That buys a couple of deadbolt lock sensors and a control pad at ADT. The package includes nothing for windows, often a thief’s preferred point of entry.

The door sensors, designed to activate an alarm if someone forces a door without opening the lock, are at least simple to use. Unlike more advanced systems, no keypad codes are required to arm or disarm the alarm function.

“It’s especially effective for the elderly, who might forget codes,” said ADT spokeswoman Lindstrom.

The $99 package sold by rival company Brink’s Home Security Inc. is a bit more versatile. It includes two contact sensors that can be used on doors or windows to determine whether they’ve been opened. That way, you could arm, say, one door and one window.

The package also includes a single motion detector, which can certainly help, but only if correctly situated.

Moving beyond that level of security adds to the cost, of course. Consumers can expect to pay about $2,000, plus the monthly monitoring fee, for an alarm system for 12 entry points (doors plus windows), said Al Radi, who founded Los Angeles-based ACS Security in 1982.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking a window might be out of reach of thieves.

“In a lot of homes with two stories, the owners will not alarm the windows on the second floor,” Lombardo said. “The burglars know that.”

Getting up there is sometimes all too easy. Homeowners have been known to leave ladders in accessible places. And enterprising thieves use whatever’s at hand.

“At one place,” Lombardo said, “they put a lawn chair on top of a patio table to boost them up to the second floor.”

If you can protect only one room thoroughly, make it the master bedroom. “That’s where the professional thieves will hit 99% of the time,” Radi said. “That bedroom and closet is where people keep valuables.”

Protection from professionals calls for more than just contact sensors. That’s because modern burglars can get into a house without opening so much as a door or window. Their method is crude but effective.

“They just break the glass,” Lombardo said.

If they enter and leave through the same window, contact alarms aren’t activated. Sometimes, to accommodate their haul, they enter though the window but leave by a door.

“They don’t care so much if they set off the alarm at that point,” Lombardo said.

When an alarm -- silent or not -- monitored by a national company is activated, a signal goes to an office that might be hundreds or thousands of miles away. For example, there are no monitoring stations used by ADT in California. The closest one to the Los Angeles area is in Aurora, Colo., near Denver.

Lindstrom said distance wasn’t a drawback in an era of high-speed communications. “That’s like saying the telephone operator isn’t down the block anymore,” she said.

The monitoring station’s basic function in case of an alarm activation is to make phone calls -- first to the homeowner to determine whether a genuine emergency is at hand and then to the local police.

The process could take several minutes to complete. And the police have to make their way to the address.

“The thieves,” Lombardo said, “could get a 20- or 25-minute head start.”

Interrupting a thief before valuables are taken is the preferred strategy. As usual, more protection requires more money.

Lombardo said motion sensors, if placed correctly, can detect the vibration of a window being broken.

More effective, Radi said, are audio sensors finely configured to pick up the frequency of breaking glass.

“They can tell the difference between a spoon dropping and glass shattering,” Radi said.

Security cameras can sometimes help get a description of thieves. ADT last month introduced a line of camera systems with prices that range from $700 to $1,700 depending on the number of cameras and additional equipment. The cameras can also be used for keeping visual tabs on a home via the Internet.

Lombardo said that for identification purposes, consumers should make sure a security camera functions well at night.

“Sometimes the resolution of the picture is so bad, a burglar could look right at the camera and still you could not tell if he is white, black or Hispanic,” he said.

Especially valuable to the police, he said, are camera systems so extensive that they provide street views of car license plates “The pros often wear masks and gloves,” he said. “Getting a car plate is gold to us. It could lead us to a burglar.”

The ultimate systems include so many different types of sensors covering a property that a would-be burglar is detected before he or she enters a home. ACS specializes in this kind of expensive, custom protection.

The lowest-priced system the company, which has its own patrol fleet, has installed in recent years was about $7,000. The highest, about $125,000.

“This is not for the average homeowner who might be concerned just about the home computer and the TV,” Radi said. “We have customers with a lot of art.”

Still, extensive systems are no guarantee, even for the rich.

No system, Lombardo said, is foolproof. “If the bad guys want to get in bad enough,” he said, “they will.

“Let’s make it tough for them.”

A key protection is the most basic alarm suggestion of them all: Turn the system on, even if leaving the house for only a few hours.

“The sad thing in some of these robberies was that the system was not on,” Lombardo said. “People figure they are just going out for a couple hours for dinner.”

david.colker@latimes.com

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

$100

to install a basic alarm system, including two hard-wired entry sensors for doors or windows

$500

for an alarm with two wireless entry sensors, motion detector and audible alarm

$35

a month for service monitoring your alarm system

$700

and up for a video-camera system that can be monitored over the Internet

$2,000

for a sensor system covering 12 windows or doors