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Deadly outcome was preventable

Panic buttons in commercial premises must always be silent, accessible and


concealed.
An employee in a late night food mart was held up at gunpoint and the
event is recorded on the stores overt CCTV surveillance system. As the robbery
commenced, the two perpetrators involved in the crime jumped over the counter,
demanded the cash in the register and quickly headed out the door for their
escape.
Prior to the robbers leaving, the stores employee secretly pressed a
covert hold-up panic button, which was installed in close proximity of the cash
register under the counter. Shockingly, after pressing the hold-up panic button,
the alarm systems inside siren immediately activated and as the perpetrators
fled, one of them angled his gun and fired at the store employee, killing him. As
the employee tried to call for help, he slumped over and died before he could
even call 911.
Importantly, as one views the surveillance tape of this tragic incident, it is
abundantly clear that impact of the stores audible alarm blasting in the
background, in response to the hold-up panic button being manually activated,
was indeed a pivotal reason why the gun was fired in the first place. Indeed, the
salient question is, why was the hold-up panic button programmed by the alarm
company as an audible zone?
For over 25 years, the technical community of the alarm industry has fully
acknowledged and recognized the severity and dangers associated with a

commercial hold-up panic button which, upon activation, triggers an audible


alarm, versus one that can be silently and covertly triggered by an employee.
Moreover, the last thing anyone wants to do is startle an already nervous robber
who is holding him or her at gunpoint.
Interestingly, during the forensic investigation of this matter, it was
determined that the original configuration of the hold-up panic button for this
particular zone was for silent activation. However, subsequent to this time, the
owner made a request for emergency service to the alarm company when
another of the stores employees left early and closed up for no reason.
Strangely, this occurred without any notice to the business owner at all. In other
words, the owner was very concerned that this employee would return afterhours
and steal merchandise since she had the stores key and alarm code. Therefore,
the focus of the service call request to the alarm company was to have the
particular employees user code changed immediately.
Notably, when service was actually performed on site, a myriad of
problems cropped up on the systems keypad that were not an issue at all before
internal system programmed was accessed by a technician. Furthermore, the
alarm company technician spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to
perform a simple user code combination change. Consistent with this persons
evident lack of knowledge and competency of the equipment installed is that,
before he left, contact was made by him to his dispatch center and a request was
noted for another technician to revisit the store the next day because he was
unable to rectify problems on the system.

SHOCKINGLY, AFTER PRESSING THE HOLD-UP PANIC BUTTON,


THE ALARM SYSTEMS INSIDE SIREN IMMEDIATELY ACTIVATED.
The next day, the responding technician found that problems associated
with the alarm system were caused by a multitude of internal programming errors
by the previous tech. The service call notes that the programming errors have
been corrected and the system was reported to have been tested.
And even though this system only had four zones, the second technician
testified that he was completely unaware of the under-counter panic button; as
such he did not test it. Undoubtedly, had the system been fully tested the
improper programming of the hold-up panic zone could have been easily rectified
and put back to its original configuration of silent, making the system safe and
not unreasonably dangerous. Conversely, the combination of gross
incompetence by the first technician, coupled with the second technician not fully
testing the system, created a highly dangerous consequence to the unsuspected
store employee who pressed the panic with deadly results.
I would also like to emphasize that the user code could have been easily
changed or deleted over the telephone by a trained technician speaking with the
owner. Lastly and most significantly is that the system already had supervised
openings and closings programmed into its database, so if a trained technician
was not readily available, all one would have to do was to notify the remoter
station to immediately dispatch the police on any early or off-time opening signal
received, until such time that the proper reprogramming could have occurred.

With this tragic case in mind, it is crucial to only employ technicians that
are thoroughly trained and supervised, and never leave a premise until the
system is properly tested.

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