San Diego Security Companies Find That as Public’s Fears Increase, So Do Sales

SAN DIEGO —  Robert Berlin has been in business for 38 years. Since 1947 he and his company, Morse Signal Devices, have installed security systems in homes. In the aftermath of World War II, Berlin had no notion that the business he had chosen would emerge a gold mine. Sales now double every five years, and in 1985, Berlin said, business has never been better.

Berlin isn’t rejoicing that the FBI now cites 6 million burglaries in American homes each year, but his phone seldom stops ringing.

He doesn’t call it mass hysteria. He calls it practicality.

“Our business is booming,” he said. “There’s a great anxiety on the part of most people (about burglary and crime in general), but even now, and I guess it’s human nature, people wait until something happens.”

Big Sales Increase

Something happened.

Berlin and others who own local security firms saw a massive increase in sales during the killing spree attributed to the Night Stalker. Such a jump in revenue and tension was not entirely welcome.

“During the reign of the Night Stalker we tripled our business,” said Don Guyll, branch manager of Westec Security Systems in San Diego. “We had a tremendous number of inquiries, people offering to pay us twice the value of the system if we could get it installed right away.

“It takes something like the Stalker to make people realize they need something like this. But frankly, it causes problems. So much demand, all at once. People want the damn thing yesterday.”

Guyll, however, can identify with the feeling, and so can Berlin. Both have felt the fear that sometimes threatens to consume. Guyll got into the security business after he and his wife were victimized by a burglar.

‘Control My Destiny’

Berlin knows dozens of clients who tried dozens of methods--from bars on windows to a pistol under the pillow--all with unfortunate consequences. And when he goes home “and turns on the controls, I feel I control my destiny.”

Even if the best of burglars is capable of beating that, it’s at least the feeling of being safe, he said, that makes alarm and security systems so much better than guns, knives or nimble fingers reaching for the phone to dial 911.

Good or bad, the main feeling his industry deals with, Berlin said, is fear. At times, that’s a problem.

Hundreds of calls poured in to San Diego police headquarters during the height of the concern created by the Night Stalker attacks, department spokesman Bill Robinson noted. Most were sightings of men who resembled drawings of the suspect. All were local, and as far as anyone knows, Robinson said, Night Stalker suspect Richard Ramirez was never in San Diego.

Sightings Checked Out

“Before we answered certain dispatched calls, we had an officer check out each sighting,” he said. “That posed only minor delays. We’d rather be safe than sorry--had he really been in San Diego. Such problems (of false reports) are negligible.”

Janice Gaut, branch manager of Honeywell Protection Services in San Diego, said her firm experienced “a big increase in sales” during the Night Stalker episode and concluded that all were “directly attributable” to publicity surrounding the case.

“What we found about the Night Stalker case was really interesting,” Gaut said. “Most of our calls were from people already thinking about security systems. They were people who had looked into it but hadn’t taken steps. The Stalker pushed them over the edge.”

Still, there were problems.

“We could not possibly accommodate everyone who put in an order, at least not immediately,” she said. “We had a backlog created, and the biggest amount of business came just before the suspect was caught. I will say, though, that no one canceled after the arrest.”

She admitted that buying a security system is “an emotional decision, no question about it.” Most people buy after a burglary, or in the midst of a “public scare,” such as the Stalker rampage. Gaut, the businesswoman, isn’t bothered by that.

She thinks everybody should have a system anyway, that it’s the “best weapon” going, much better than--and far more preferable to--guns or windows packed with bars or padlocks four inches thick.

Guyll said some people render themselves prisoners in their own castles. One of the hardest jobs in his business, he said, is designing systems for the individual. Clients “who don’t know what they’re doing” often install “exotic, overprotected” systems that they’re constantly setting off by mistake. After a string of false alarms, they just give up, Guyll said, often on the notion of security in general--until something happens.

Robinson said that one of the biggest problems each year is just that--systems going off accidentally. False alarms trigger responses, from officers whose time would work better elsewhere.

Fines for False Alarms

“The city now has an ordinance that with so many false alarms over a certain period, the owner of the alarm is fined,” Robinson said.

Burglar alarms and security systems are part of the high-tech revolution spanning cities as far apart as Tokyo and El Cajon. As with any modern equipment, complexity often breeds confusion--a client not knowing how to buy, use or repair the elaborate gizmos available. Prices of today’s systems can run as high as $5,000. Many are dependent on computers and, as anyone skilled in their ways knows, they’re wonderful when they work, maddening when they don’t. In the worst scenario, a system aimed to ward off a criminal like the Night Stalker is, if it fails, no system at all.

Gaut of Honeywell Protection Services said that although it may sound like a business cliche, customers get just what they pay for. A system that isn’t a “cheapie,” bought from a company with a track record, is, she said, usually the best way to go.

A lot of times, she said, “user error” is the reason for a foul-up. But, one might ask, how can the user be blamed? Isn’t it a company’s job to educate and test? It is, Gaut said, adding that most of the best systems carry hours of on-site instruction. Her view of security systems is, however, over what goes right.

Even a Backup System

She talks of wireless units that don’t mar home decor; wireless necklace units that allow an invalid to radio in a medical emergency call; even of computers that tell a homeowner which, of any, locks and windows are open and unfastened. She’s proudest of a backup system in which a thief, thinking he has disarmed the alarm, is rattled by a second he never knew existed. Even the most sophisticated crooks are, she said confidently, no match for modern technology.

Guyll of Westec said maybe that’s true--if it works. He pointed out that San Diego now has 115 security companies selling everything from the simplest alarm to the most elaborate signals in which police, fire and paramedic squads are radioed as soon as an intruder crosses the dust of your property.

Guyll sees security systems as a much saner proposition than guns, which harm homeowners as often as assailants, or bars on windows, which pose Herculean paroblems during fires.

He’s also aware of fear (citizens being too worried) or ignorance (not worried enough). At one time, he lazily fit the latter group. That’s why he works where he does.

He was keeping his doors and windows open in the midst of a Santa Ana. Someone broke in and took his money but left him and his wife unharmed. “I started looking for security systems right then,” he said, “and not long after went to work for Westec.”

Robinson said ignorance--lack of education and awareness--is a bigger problem than overreaction, hysterical or otherwise. The devastating Normal Heights fire on the southern rim of San Diego’s Mission Valley last summer was a good example, many say, of the worst in preparation and execution.

One local company, headed by a former security-system chief, saw a boom in its business after the fire. Guard Alert is described by Tom Studler, its president, as the opposite of the 911 emergency system. That number is a telephone link to police, fire and paramedic outlets. It’s controlled by computer, meaning that if a 911 caller can’t give an address, a computer codes it and tracks it and feeds it on the spot to the proper source.

Tries to Reach Citizen

Guard Alert, Studler said, tries to reach the citizen in the wake of emergencies. He offered the following example: If a subscriber living in Normal Heights had been away on vacation during the fire, Guard Alert would have known the location of sprinklers and hoses and how to turn them on; whether or not pets were inside and how many; ways of telephoning the client in minutes.

Guard Alert costs $15 every six months and acts as an information bank for clients in distress (even when they’re not aware they are), Studler said. Facts about a person’s home, medical history and children are kept on confidential computer files. Anonymity is ensured, he said, by the use of code numbers, not names. If a child turns up injured at a hospital and no one knows his name, a Guard Alert patch (sewn to the child’s clothing) could tell a doctor everything from blood type to the parent’s work number, Studler said.

He admitted that such events as the Normal Heights fire add clients to a business like his.

“Though it is a service that is desperately needed,” he said. “Normal Heights is a great example of how it can and should work. If more of those folks had been members, they’d have had a way to communicate immediately. They could have called us, using Guard Alert as a base. Even relatives could use it. We’re a 24-hour hot-line message center.”

Concept Called ‘Sound’

“While policy prohibits my endorsing them as a company, the (Guard Alert) concept is sound,” Robinson of the San Diego Police Department said. “I’ve been on calls where commercial and residential establishments have been burglarized but the owners or proprietors can’t be found. We all agree this type of program--and it’s one-of-a-kind in the country--could be used to excellent advantage in San Diego.”

Even so, part of the reason it works, part of the reason supporters say it’s needed, is the same thinking that fattens the bankrolls of security companies: Fear.

But fear, Studler said, is a way of life.

“I want it most for protection of children,” said Cindy Sloan Hardt, Studler’s Guard Alert partner. “There’s no such thing as caring too much for a child. The missing-children problem brings that home with a vengeance. Nowadays, there’s no such thing as being overprotective. Reality has made that a thing of the past.”