Use case · Theft and burglary
Stock, tools and equipment leaving the premises
Forced entry after hours and theft during trading are two different problems that arrive as one line in your accounts. This page is about what actually reduces each of them at a commercial site in San Diego, what the local data says, and what we would look at if we walked your building.
- CSLB C-7 #976737
- BSIS ACO #7501
- CMMC certified
- SAM.gov registered
- Est. 2008
The problem
It is two problems wearing the same name
The version most businesses picture is the overnight break-in: a forced rear door or a cut shutter, the place turned over, tools and stock gone, and a morning spent on a police report, an insurer, a glazier and a locksmith while nobody does any actual work. The cost people quote afterwards is the value of what was taken. The cost that hurts is the day and a half of the business not running, the excess, the premium at renewal, and the fact that a door that was easy to force once is still easy to force.
The other version has no forced entry at all. Stock leaves through a receiving door during a delivery, a set of tools goes off a van in the yard, a pallet is loaded onto the wrong vehicle, or a stockroom is emptied slowly over months by somebody with legitimate access. It is noticed at a count, not at an opening, which means it is noticed weeks late, and by then whatever was recorded of the event has usually been overwritten. This version rarely produces a police report at all, which is one reason it is under-represented in every statistic on this page.
The result is that money gets spent on the wrong thing. A camera count is quoted against square footage, the cameras get mounted high and wide so they cover the most floor per unit, and the footage that comes back after an incident shows that something happened without showing who. The building is covered and nothing is provable.
Most buildings do not know where their boundary is
Both are hard to solve for the same underlying reason: they happen at the boundary of the site, and most commercial buildings do not really know where their boundary is. A survey almost always turns up more ways in than the operator expected — the roof hatch reached from the neighbouring flat roof, the gate that is chained, not locked, the yard fence with a permanent gap behind the skip, the fire exit that is propped in summer, the side door that has a key in circulation from three tenants ago.
The San Diego data
What is actually happening, and it is not a surge
San Diego Police Department records burglary of a commercial premises separately from burglary of a residence, so the commercial share is directly countable — not estimated. Here is every published year.
| Year | Commercial | Residential | Total burglary | Commercial share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 1,553 | 1,797 | 3,376 | 46.0% |
| 2021 | 1,580 | 1,886 | 3,475 | 45.5% |
| 2022 | 1,634 | 1,719 | 3,357 | 48.7% |
| 2023 | 1,289 | 1,598 | 2,888 | 44.6% |
| 2024 | 1,183 | 1,500 | 2,687 | 44.0% |
| 2025 | 1,014 | 1,103 | 2,118 | 47.9% |
Source: San Diego Police Department, Police NIBRS Crime Offenses, City of San Diego Open Data Portal — data.sandiego.gov/datasets/police-nibrs. Period: calendar years 2020–2025. Type: COUNT of offences reported to police, not an estimate of offences that occurred. Retrieved: 2 September 2026. Between 1 and 26 offences a year carried both classifications or neither and are excluded from the split, which is why the two columns do not always sum to the total. SDPD began NIBRS reporting in January 2021, so the recording basis changes at the 2020 boundary, and SDPD states that its data "is dynamic as records are updated daily and may change or be deleted as police investigations proceed" — the figures will move on re-extraction. The commercial and residential labels are SDPD's own, derived from the California Penal Code section charged.
Commercial burglary in San Diego is falling. It fell 34.7% between 2020 and 2025 and 14.3% between 2024 and 2025 alone. We have an obvious commercial incentive to imply the opposite and we are not going to, because the source we cite says otherwise and you can check it in about ninety seconds. Just under half of what is left is of commercial premises — 47.9% in 2025 — which is the genuinely useful finding here, because most published burglary data cannot tell you whether a business or a house was broken into at all.
| Neighbourhood | Commercial burglary offences, 2025 |
|---|---|
| Sorrento Valley | 104 |
| Kearny Mesa | 96 |
| San Ysidro | 48 |
| Ridgeview / Webster | 42 |
| Miramar | 34 |
| Mission Valley East | 30 |
Source: San Diego Police Department, Police NIBRS Crime Offenses — data.sandiego.gov/datasets/police-nibrs. Period: calendar year 2025. Type: COUNT. Retrieved: 2 September 2026. SDPD's own dataset spells Kearny Mesa as "Kearney Mesa". By SDPD division the 2025 counts were Eastern 174, Northwestern 131, Central 125, Western 111, Northeastern 111, Northern 102, Southeastern 100, Mid-City 81 and Southern 79. These are counts, not rates: the dataset carries no denominator for how many commercial premises sit in each neighbourhood, so a high count may reflect a dense concentration of business parks instead of a higher risk per building. Sorrento Valley, Kearny Mesa and Miramar are among the densest commercial and industrial districts in the city. It is defensible to say these neighbourhoods recorded the most commercial burglaries; it is not defensible to call them the most dangerous places to run a business, and we are not saying that.
Why it resists solving
Almost none of it is ever cleared
6.6%
DERIVED1,456 of 21,897. "Cleared" means cleared by arrest or by exceptional means, which is not a conviction, and clearances recorded in a given year may relate to offences from an earlier one. These ratios are approximations, not precise rates.
| Clearance rate, 2025 | Share |
|---|---|
| Property crime, SDPD | 6.6% |
| Burglary, SDPD | 14.9% |
| All property crime, national | 17.4% |
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime Data Explorer, offences and clearances, agency ORI CA0371100. Period: calendar year 2025. Type: COUNT, with the ratio computed. Retrieved: 2 September 2026.
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime Data Explorer, offences and clearances, agency ORI CA0371100 for San Diego Police Department — cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp. The 17.4% national figure is stated directly in the FBI's UCR Summary of Reported Crimes in the Nation, 2025, released August 2026 — cde.ucr.cjis.gov. Period: calendar year 2025. Type: COUNT, with the ratio computed. Retrieved: 2 September 2026. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting participation is voluntary; the 2025 national report was built from 17,075 agencies, 87.3% of those enrolled, covering 96.2% of the population.
There is a second gap underneath that one. Everything above counts crimes reported to police. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that 30.5% of property crime and 40.7% of burglary were reported in 2024 — but that survey covers households and persons, not businesses, so it cannot tell you the commercial reporting rate. What it establishes is only that recorded figures understate the total, which is honest and still useful.
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Criminal Victimization, 2024 (NCJ 310547), published 29 September 2025, Table 4 — bjs.ojp.gov. Period: calendar year 2024. Type: ESTIMATE from a sample survey of households and persons aged 12 and over. Retrieved: 2 September 2026. The National Crime Victimization Survey does not measure crime against businesses, so it cannot support any claim about how much commercial burglary goes unreported. BJS also began an instrument redesign in 2024, so comparisons with earlier years carry that caveat.
Put the two together and the design brief writes itself. Assume the offence is not solved by somebody else. Assume the only account of it is the one your building recorded. Then ask, of every camera on the plan, whether it would actually produce that account — which is a question about sightlines, lighting, mounting height and lens choice, not about how many cameras there are.
Volume is the wrong worry
Volume is the wrong thing to worry about, and it is the thing this industry usually sells against. The number that should change how you scope a system is what happens after an offence is reported.
What reduces it
Six things that change the outcome
In rough order of how much difference each makes at a typical commercial site. Which of them matters most at yours is settled at survey, not from a catalogue.
Coverage at the crossing points
Not even coverage of the floor — coverage of every point where a person or a load crosses the boundary, framed to identify rather than to observe. Doors, the gate, the dock, roof access and the yard line, each specified against what that view has to prove. That is commercial security camera installation.
Credentials instead of keys
A key tells you nothing about who used it and cannot be withdrawn from one person. A credential can, and it produces a record of who opened which door and when — which is what turns "stock is missing" into a list of people who were in the building. That is commercial access control.
Detection somebody acts on
A local siren is heard by whoever happens to be near it. Monitored intrusion detection puts the signal in front of a person whose job is to do something about it, and covers the openings a camera cannot see round. That is commercial alarm monitoring.
Somebody watching while it happens
A recorder documents a break-in; it does not interrupt one. Where the requirement is to stop the event instead of reconstructing it, the coverage has to be watched during closed hours by an operator able to intervene. That is remote video monitoring.
Cabling that carries what you asked for
Most disappointing camera systems are disappointing because of what is behind the camera — an undersized run, a marginal length, a shared switch, no capacity to add the position you will want next year. That is structured cabling.
A system that still works in year three
Lenses fog, cameras get knocked out of alignment by a forklift, drives fail quietly and retention drifts below the point where it is any use. The failure is discovered when the footage is needed. That is CCTV maintenance and repair.
Who has it worst
Where this problem concentrates
Three types have it badly enough to design around
Every commercial premises has some version of this. Three types have it badly enough that the design starts from it, not treating it as one requirement among several.
- Warehouses and distribution sites. A large envelope with a yard, multiple dock doors, high-value stock in bulk and a fence line that is a boundary in theory, not in practice — plus mounting heights and backlit dock openings that defeat cameras specified for an office. That is warehouse and logistics security.
- Retail. Two exposures at once: theft off the floor during trading and forced entry after close, with a receiving door that is the clearest path from stockroom to street and the most under-covered position in most stores. That is retail security and loss prevention.
- Construction sites. High-value plant and materials on ground with no permanent power, no network, no envelope at all, and a layout that changes every few weeks as the build progresses. That is construction site security.
If your operation is not one of those, the other verticals are on all industries, and the full list of what we do is on all commercial services. Sorrento Valley, Kearny Mesa and Miramar — three of the districts at the top of the table above — are ordinary working territory for us, which is the only reason this page is worth our writing.
Somebody watching, not something recording
A recorder on an empty site is an archive: it documents the visit thoroughly and does nothing about it while it is happening. What changes the outcome is an operator who can see an activation, assess it against the cameras and speak into the space.
- Detection that separates a person from weather and wildlife
- An operator on the feed during the hours the site is shut
- A response plan agreed in writing before anything is switched on
How remote video monitoring works
The envelope walked in full
The envelope walked in full: doors, shutters, gates, dock levellers, windows at reachable height, roof hatches and skylights, service risers, the fence line, and anything adjoining that gives access to your roof or your yard. Written down as a list, with the ones currently covered marked and the ones not covered marked.
Two boundaries, stated plainly. We work on commercial premises only and not on private residences; the residential column in the table above is a classification in SDPD's data, not a description of anything we sell. And guard and patrol work is licensed separately in California — where a site needs officers we coordinate that through Guardian Integrated Security, Inc., of which we are a DBA, rather than presenting ourselves as a guard company.
At survey
What we would look at on your site
This is the specific walk we do for a theft and burglary problem, as distinct from a general survey. It usually takes longer than people expect and produces a shorter equipment list than they expect.
Every way in, including the ones that are not doors
The envelope walked in full: doors, shutters, gates, dock levellers, windows at reachable height, roof hatches and skylights, service risers, the fence line, and anything adjoining that gives access to your roof or your yard. Written down as a list, with the ones currently covered marked and the ones not covered marked.
What is actually worth taking, and where it sits
Stock, tools, plant, metals, cash and data all behave differently. We want to know what the high-value items are, where they are held overnight, how they physically leave the building in normal operation, and which of those routes is used when nobody is watching.
Light, at night, as it really is
A daytime survey tells you very little about a camera that has to work at 3am. We look at what is lit, what is glare, what is silhouette against a bright dock door, and where a fitting has failed and never been replaced. Lighting placement changes what a camera can resolve more than the camera specification does.
Who currently holds a key or a code
Almost always more people than the list says: former staff, contractors, a previous tenant, a cleaning firm, a landlord. This is usually the first thing we recommend changing on a site, and it costs nothing to establish.
The existing system, assessed
What the cameras can genuinely resolve at their mounting positions, what the recorder is actually retaining against what it claims, how the cabling is terminated, whether anything on it is unsupported, and whether the clock is right. Some of it is worth keeping and we will say which.
How long you take to notice a loss
The single question that sets retention. A business that reconciles weekly needs a different design from one that counts quarterly, and getting this wrong is why so much footage is overwritten before anybody goes looking for it.
Findings are put in writing whether or not you go on to contract with us, and they include the positions we think are not worth a camera. Nothing on this page is a promise about a response time, a price or a reduction figure — none of those appear anywhere on this site, because none of them can be evidenced before we have seen the building.
Common questions
Theft and burglary questions
Four things, in roughly this order of usefulness. Controlling and recording who can open which door, so an entry has an owner and a shared key is not the answer to every question. Covering the specific points where a person or a load crosses a boundary — the doors, the gate, the dock, the roof access, the yard line — instead of covering the site evenly. Detecting an entry while it is happening, not discovering it at opening, which means monitored intrusion detection — never a local siren nobody is listening to. And having somebody able to see what the detector saw, so the response is to a known event instead of an unverified signal. No single one of those is the answer; the combination is what changes the outcome, and which parts matter most at your site is a survey question, not a catalogue question.
No, and we will not pretend otherwise to sell a system. San Diego Police Department recorded 1,014 commercial burglary offences in 2025 against 1,553 in 2020 — a fall of 34.7% across those six years, and a further fall of 14.3% in the single year from 2024 to 2025. Nationally the FBI put the estimated burglary rate at a twenty-year low in 2025. Those are the sources we cite on this page and they all point the same way. The reason to record your own premises is not a crime wave. It is that if an offence does happen at your building, very little of this category is ever solved, and the evidence most likely to exist is the evidence you captured yourself.
On the sites we survey it is rarely the front. It is the rear or side door with no coverage on it, the roller shutter facing an alley, a gate that is chained, not locked, a yard fence with a permanent gap behind a skip, or an unsecured roof hatch reached from an adjoining flat roof. Interior doors matter too: a stockroom, a parts store or a server room reached from inside the building without passing anything that records it. This is the single most useful output of a survey — walking the envelope and writing down every point at which a person or a pallet can cross it, including the ones nobody thinks of as a door.
A recorder documents a break-in; it does not interrupt one. That is not a criticism of cameras, it is a description of what a recording device does. Where a site needs the event stopped, not reconstructed afterwards, the coverage has to be watched during closed hours by somebody able to intervene — which is a monitored service over a recording one. We will also not attach a deterrence percentage to a camera. There is a widely circulated set of figures in this industry claiming cameras cut crime by some specific proportion; we went looking for a primary source for them and could not find one, so they do not appear anywhere on this site.
Low. In 2025 San Diego Police Department cleared 1,456 of 21,897 reported property crimes — 6.6%, about one in fifteen. For burglary specifically the SDPD clearance rate was 14.9%, and the national figure the FBI reports for all property crime is 17.4%. Cleared means cleared by arrest or by exceptional means, which is not a conviction, and clearances recorded in one year may relate to offences from an earlier year, so treat these as approximations. The practical consequence for a business is straightforward: plan on the assumption that the record of what happened at your premises is the one your own system holds.
Longer than you think, and it is a design decision taken at install instead of being discovered afterwards. Theft is frequently noticed at a stock count, an audit or a reconciliation weeks after the event, not on the morning after. If retention is set to whatever the recorder happened to default to, the footage of the incident is very often already overwritten by the time anybody goes looking for it. Retention is a function of camera count, resolution, frame rate and how much storage was bought, so it is set deliberately against how long your business actually takes to notice a loss. Regulated sites have their own minimums on top of that.
Not as our own service. Guard and patrol work is licensed separately in California under a Private Patrol Operator licence, and where a site genuinely needs officers we coordinate that through Guardian Integrated Security, Inc., of which we are a DBA, not presenting ourselves as a guard company. What we do instead is the technical side — cameras, access control, intrusion detection, cabling and monitored coverage — and in a good many cases a site that thought it needed a body on the gate actually needed the gate covered and somebody watching the feed.
Usually, and we would rather assess it than replace it on principle. Existing cameras, recorders, cabling and access-control hardware are surveyed on their own merits: what the cameras can actually resolve at the distances they are mounted at, whether the cabling supports what you want to add, whether the recorder is retaining what it claims to retain, and whether anything on the network is unsupported. Some of it is worth keeping and some of it is not, and we will tell you which is which in writing. We service systems we did not install, and we do not use a survey as a lever for a rip-and-replace.
Two licences cover almost all of it, and both are ours: CSLB #976737, a C-7 low voltage contractor's licence, for the cameras, cabling and door hardware; and BSIS ACO #7501, an Alarm Company Operator licence, for the intrusion alarm and for monitoring. Look up either one on the state register — that is what it is for. The part that is not ours is fire, which needs a C-10 or C-16.