OT - I live in an area that has relatively low crime, compared to surrounding communities, but we are seeing rapid increases (started during Covid) of locked door businesses where you have to call in to unlock the door and enter. This has been explained as being due to risk of squatters entering buildings and refusing to leave. In some cases the business incorporates double electric lock doors, a long narrow entry passage, and cameras as an isolation enhancement. There has been a rapid rise in discussion of this security trend in the media.

Is this happening in your area? Are your organizations encountering any people who enter the property and refuse to leave?

PC

I think it's more about staffing. The biggest crime is that it's murder to find good staff these days for a sensible wage, because of the weird boombust economy, the Great Resignation and fear of COVID, wage growth due to that, both causing and being caused by inflation.

So how is a business supposed to work if there's not front desk with a greeter that's always-staffed? We got to find out in 2020 during lockdowns when actual walk-ups became very much the outlier. And I think a lot of businesses realized "y'know, delivery and customer contacts on the Internet worked really well for us, so we can just go all-in with that, and let the occasional walk-in just call ahead or ring the bell".

Just look at ghost kitchens - they were kind of a fringe thing back in the day, but now they're really mainstreamed with COVID, to where if you just hop on a food delivery app like DoorDash or Grubhub and choose a restaurant that's new to you, it'll be a ghost kitchen. That's absolutely not due to crime; it's because it's cheaper.