AS Jamaica’s murderous reputation grows, more homeowners are investing in private security systems, with the demand now trending towards sophisticated electronic gadgetry that include surveillance devices.

Alongside the burglar bars at every door and window and the obligatory guard dog, motion detectors with infrared beams, hidden cameras, remote-controlled panic buttons, and electronic gates are becoming standard issue in certain upper income neighbourhoods.

The more sophisticated systems represent investments of up to half a million dollars, including services that allow a homeowner to monitor his/her property from any point in the world via the internet.

Security for a middle income three-bedroom home is a about one-tenth that cost, at an average $50,000 for a basic system, say security experts.

An electronic gate with intercom system – a service that comes with 24-hour monitoring and emergency response – would add $90,000 or more to the bill.

Last year, Jamaica earned the dubious title of murder capital of the world, having recorded 1,674 homicides in a population of almost 2.7 million. The figure represented a near 14 per cent jump on the 1,471 killings in 2004.

That level of blood-letting has kept the security market robust.

Paranoia, according to security expert John Azar, drives some of the investment.

“We do have some customers that, depending on the nature of their jobs or how paranoid they may be, who literally have everything we offer – automatic gate, panic alarm, fire alarm, medical alarm, alarm on the house, alarm on the yard, camera system covering the yard, camera system inside the house – the whole nine yards,” Azar, managing director of KingAlarm Systems, told the Sunday Observer.

“I wouldn’t say it’s common, but we’re seeing more and more people, presumably as they perceive their risk to be increasing, looking at more sophisticated systems for their home, while systems like this in the past were mainly used for commercial applications.”

The growth in electronic security has seen a decline in people employment industry-wide.

In 2000, Jamaica had 13,744 registered security guards, according to the Private Security Regulation Authority, and while the number of security firms and consultancies have grown to over 200, the number of security guards on record to March 14, 2006 had fallen to 12,891.

“People want to make sure their homes are secure, and it’s not a luxury any more,” said Ricky Mahfood, managing director of Hawkeye Security, one of Jamaica’s largest and oldest suppliers of security systems.

“If you have a guard at your home, you’ll be spending about $175 per hour for 24 hours. That’s almost $4,000 per day. Whereas, for $4,000 you can get a month’s service from us.”

At homes visited by the Sunday Observer whose owners had made serious investments in security systems, the devices tended to blend into the general decor of the house and were barely discernible.

One St Andrew property had motion detectors inside the house and on the lawns, panic buttons inside, an automatic gate with intercom, an automatic garage door, recessed magnetic sensors on doors and windows, grilled gates with vibration sensors, and cameras that surveyed almost every point on the property.

The estimated price tag: at least $500,000, plus about $60,000 annually in monitoring and response fees.

“Of course I feel more secure, but not so much from all the stuff,” said the householder, whose name and address the Sunday Observer agreed not to publish.

“That’s mostly for my husband,” she said, explaining that he was a lover of ‘techie’ gadgets.

“But, in the end, it’s really the armed response service that makes me feel safe, and I think just having that sign makes anybody planning to try something think twice,” she added.

Makes sense, says Azar.

“The criminal element almost always looks for the easiest target,” he said. If you have two houses beside each other, one has no dogs, no grills, no automatic gate, no alarm, the other has dogs, grills, gates, alarms – unless the person in that house has something that only he has, the criminal will go to the house without security systems. It’s common sense. Criminals will always choose the path of least resistance.”

The security industry’s growth has been evident since 2000, even when measured only by the numbers of surveillance cameras, electronic gates, and signs erected in neighbourhoods proclaiming ‘Protected by’ individual private security firms.

Kenny Benjamin has put his best guess on the value of the industry today at $10 billion on the top end.

“Nobody knows how much the industry is actually worth, but some estimate it should be somewhere in the region of $8-10 billion,” said Benjamin, chief executive officer of Guardsman Group of Companies. “This market will never be saturated. If you have a good service, people will gravitate towards the better companies…”

Guardsman has annual revenues of some $3 billion, but five of the 14 companies in the group are not security related.

The cost for security devices has been falling, and concomitantly persons with modest incomes are subscribing increasingly to basic security systems, says Stephen Roomes, marketing manager of Hawkeye.

KingAlarm, for example, a specialist in electronic security, has a client base of about 5,000 in Kingston, St Andrew and St Catherine, 3,000 of whom are residential clients.

“Over the past five years, electronic security has moved from being the preserve of the rich and has become far more cost-effective,” says Azar.

Hawkeye’s client base is a more even split.

“Initially, our client base was 60 per cent commercial, 40 per cent residential, but now I’d say that it’s about 50:50,” says Mahfood.

“It’s certainly increased, particularly in the last 4 to 5 years.”

There is a robust demand for the most basic security system, the automatic gate opener with intercom, which stems from the realisation that a closed gate tends to deter would-be burglars, according to Roomes and Azar.

The element of personal safety is also a factor, Azar added, saying persons who step out of their cars late at night to open gates to their homes often present an invitation to would-be attackers.

“People are starting to realise that they’re more vulnerable to things like carjacking and robbery when they leave their cars to open a gate. In cases like that, you find, if you don’t have an automatic gate, it’s sometimes better to just leave the gate open.”

One step up from automatic gates are panic and holdup systems, which are also gaining popularity among wary homeowners.

With that service, clients are handed ‘panic buttons’, remote devices with high-speed radio transmitters that operate whether or not there is a supply of electricity or available phone service. When pressed, the button sends an alarm to a monitoring base from which armed security guards are deployed to investigate the call.

“We aim for a response time of … seven-minutes,” said Roomes, whose company serves the urban centres of Kingston, some parts of St Catherine, and some areas of Montego Bay.

The cost of that service can range from $3,000 to $6,000 per month, and includes the cost of the buttons, which may be fixed inside the home or attached to a chain and worn on the person.

A $50,000 security system will provide burglar alarms that use magnetic contact on doors and windows, vibration sensors on metal grills and infrared motion detectors to raise an alarm if there is an intruder.

That’s a one-time cost for homeowners who consider the alarm sufficient as a deterrent to intruders. The response and monitoring service by the security company would attract a monthly fee.

The more expensive devices include surveillance cameras.

A simple four-camera system with a monitoring device starts at about $150,000. Adding a digital recording and transmitting device pushes the price up to about $250,000.

“We also have the technology to allow for remote viewing, so a person can install devices that can allow them to view their property anywhere they are in the world via the internet, or to record, digitally and then play back,” said Roomes.

Cameras offer the added advantage of detecting ‘inside crimes’, such as household staff allowing unauthorised entry, or as perpetrators, and can be hidden, said Azar, in just about any device – from radios, to photo frames, to stuffed animals.

“In some instances you want a camera system to be very visible, because that in and of itself is a deterrent. But sometimes you need to have covert cameras, and those we can install anywhere,” said the security executive.

“We even have ‘baby-watch’ camera systems where people set up hidden cameras to monitor the care of their children.”

campbello@jamaicaobserver.com