Use case · Trespassing and loitering
People on the site who have no reason to be there
Trespass is the problem most often written up as "nothing happened", which is exactly why it is so hard to get anybody to deal with. The thing you want is not a recording and not an arrest — it is the person leaving, before it becomes something else.
- CSLB C-7 #976737
- BSIS ACO #7501
- CMMC certified
- SAM.gov registered
- Est. 2008
The problem
The category that officially does not exist
It starts small and it is always the same list. Somebody in the yard at six in the morning who walks off when the first van arrives. A tent behind the transformer enclosure. People drinking in the top deck of the parking structure every Friday. A group in the stairwell. Somebody who has been through the skips and left the contents across the loading bay. A car that parks in the same corner of the lot for three hours every night with nobody getting out of it.
None of it is a crime you can hand anybody, most of the time. That is the defining feature. There is no property to recover, frequently no damage to point at, and by the time a response arrives the person is gone or is doing nothing in particular. So it produces no report, no case number and no statistic — and then, six months later, it produces a break-in, a fire in a doorway, a fight, a staff member who will not open the building alone, or a tenant who does not renew.
The operational cost is real long before any of that. It is the manager who now walks the lot before staff arrive. The delivery driver who will not use the rear bay. The cleaning contractor who charges extra. The morning tidy-up. The residents' meeting. The insurer asking questions at renewal. None of it is dramatic and all of it is a tax on the business's time.
And it resists solving for a structural reason: everything most sites have is designed to detect a crime, and this is not one. An intruder alarm expects a breach of a closed building. A recorder expects an incident to review. A patrol expects to be present at the moment it matters. Trespass slides between all three — outside the envelope, before the incident, and at whatever hour the patrol is somewhere else.
What the evidence shows
What is sourceable, and what is not
There is no trespassing or loitering statistic on this page because there is no primary source for one. What there is, is evidence about how offenders choose targets and what happens to unverified alarm calls — both quoted with the caveats that come attached.
No trespass figure exists. Neither San Diego Police Department's published incident data nor the FBI's Crime Data Explorer isolates trespass or loitering as a countable category we could extract, and no primary source we checked on 2 September 2026 publishes one for commercial premises. So there is no number here for how much of it happens. We would rather say that than reach for a figure from a vendor page.
| Reported | Finding |
|---|---|
| 83% | said they would try to determine whether an alarm was present before attempting a burglary. |
| 60% | said they would seek an alternative target if there was an alarm on site. |
| About half | of those who discovered an alarm mid-attempt said they would discontinue; 31% said they would sometimes retreat and 13% said they would always continue. |
Source: Kuhns, J. B., Blevins, K. R., & Lee, S. Z. (2012), Understanding Decisions to Burglarize from the Offender's Perspective, Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte — inside.charlotte.edu. Period: published 2012, publicised 2013. Type: SURVEY. Retrieved: 2 September 2026. FUNDING DISCLOSURE, which the university states openly and which we repeat because it matters: the study was funded by the Alarm Industry Research and Educational Foundation, under the auspices of the Electronic Security Association — the security industry's own trade association. Further limits: n = 422; drawn from state prisons in North Carolina, Kentucky and Ohio only, not California and not San Diego; self-reported by convicted offenders, meaning by burglars who were caught; and now more than thirteen years old. About 31% of the sample said they typically committed commercial instead of residential burglaries. The study lists "outdoor cameras or other surveillance equipment" among the signs of increased security that influenced target selection, but that finding is qualitative — no percentage may be attached to cameras specifically, and we have not attached one. It also describes burglary, not trespass; we cite it because target selection is the mechanism the two share, not because it measures loitering.
On alarms and police response. The US Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services guide False Burglar Alarms, 2nd edition, by Rana Sampson — popcenter.asu.edu — reports that "studies from both the United States and the United Kingdom have shown burglar alarms to be among the most effective burglary-deterrence measures" and names closed-circuit television among measures "shown to be effective". Type: ESTIMATE; guide published 2007, underlying data approximately 2001–2005. Retrieved: 2 September 2026. Those statements are not quantified in the source and we have attached no figure to them. The same guide is critical of this industry and we are not going to hide that: it states there is "no evidence of a link" between rising alarm installation and the US burglary decline, reports one study in which police were more likely to catch burglars at premises without alarms, and lists "providing an emergency police response to unverified burglar alarm calls" under Response Not Recommended. Read honestly, that is an argument for verification before response — which is the service described further down this page — and against the unverified alarm, which is not something we would sell you as a trespass answer.
21,897
COUNTThese are REPORTED offences, not offences committed, and reporting rates are not constant. Neither total includes trespass, which is the subject of this page — it is quoted to show the direction of travel, so nothing here reads as a surge.
| Measure | Offences |
|---|---|
| Property crime 2024 | 23,524 |
| Property crime 2025 | 21,897 |
| Burglary 2024 | 2,628 |
| Burglary 2025 | 2,061 |
FBI Crime Data Explorer, agency ORI CA0371100. Period: calendar years 2024–2025. Type: COUNT. Retrieved: 2 September 2026.
Direction of travel, so nothing here reads as a surge: recorded crime in San Diego is falling, as the figures above show. Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer, agency ORI CA0371100, COUNT, retrieved 2 September 2026 \u2014 cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp. Nationally the FBI's UCR Summary of Reported Crimes in the Nation, 2025 estimates property crime down 12.4% year on year. Neither total includes trespass.
Why it resists solving
You want somebody to leave, not somebody to be caught
Every other problem in this section has a desired outcome that arrives after the event: a recovery, a claim, an identification, a prosecution. Trespass is the odd one out. The outcome you want is that the next hour does not happen. Nothing that gets produced afterwards is worth much, which is why a system designed around producing evidence performs badly here even when it is working exactly as specified.
The second reason is the verification gap. An unverified signal — a beam broken, a contact opened, a motion event — describes something that might be a person, an animal, weather or a fault, and describes it to somebody who has to decide what to do about it with no further information. San Diego's own dispatch record shows how that plays out at scale: the overwhelming majority of burglary-alarm calls SDPD is dispatched to end with no crime report and no arrest. We have set that data out in full, with its method and its caveats, on after-hours coverage.
The third is that the boundary is usually a fiction. On most commercial sites the line between where the public may be and where they may not is drawn by a low wall, a planting bed, a chained gate or nothing at all, and a person crossing it has not done anything visible or deliberate. You cannot enforce a boundary that nobody can see, and a large share of what a survey turns up on this problem is not equipment. It is where the boundary actually is, and what would make it legible.
The last is escalation. Presence becomes a habit, a habit becomes an encampment or a regular group, and at that point the conversation is about people, not about property, with obligations attached that no security contractor should be improvising. Early is easier than late by a very large margin, and that is the honest argument for dealing with a trespass problem while it is still boring.
What reduces it
Six things that change the outcome
Ordered by how much difference each makes on a typical site with a presence problem, not a break-in problem.
Verification, and a voice
Coverage watched during closed hours, so an activation produces a look, and an operator able to speak into the space before presence becomes an incident. This is the single highest-value element for this problem. That is remote video monitoring.
Cameras on approaches and chokepoints
Positions on the routes in and the places everybody has to pass, specified to work at night at that distance — not general coverage of the yard, which produces a shape in the dark and nothing else. That is commercial security camera installation.
A boundary that is real
Credentials at gates and doors, short gate cycles that defeat tailgating, and a record of who was expected — which is what lets everything else that crosses the line be treated as worth looking at. That is commercial access control.
Coverage where there is no infrastructure
Lot corners, a yard, a boundary strip, a site between phases — ground with no power and no network where a fixed install is not proportionate to a problem that may move. We own and deploy our own units. That is mobile surveillance.
Detection that is not crying wolf
Perimeter and area detection chosen for the environment, zoned to the real boundary and set on site, so activations mean something and get acted on. That is commercial alarm monitoring.
Pathway to the positions that matter
The useful positions on a trespass problem are almost always the awkward ones — the far gate, the back of the lot, the roof access — and whether they are reachable is a cabling and pathway question settled before anything is specified. That is structured cabling.
Who has it worst
Where presence becomes a standing problem
Sites with a large publicly accessible edge and long unoccupied hours get this hardest. Three types in particular.
- Managed office and multi-tenant property. Parking structures, service yards, bin stores, loading areas and landscaped edges that are open all day by necessity and unoccupied all night by design, with a tenant base that reports every occurrence to the managing agent. That is office and property management security.
- Warehouses and distribution sites. A long fence line, a yard full of trailers and equipment, gates that stay open through the working day, and shift patterns that leave real gaps with nobody on site at all. That is warehouse and logistics security.
- Apartment communities and managed residential property. Stairwells, lobbies, mail rooms, bin areas and resident parking, where presence is a resident-safety issue as much as a security one and where coverage is bounded by privacy expectations that have to be taken seriously. That is multifamily and apartment security.
The other verticals are on all industries and the full service list is on all commercial services. Where presence has already turned into damage or forced entry, the related problems are vandalism and theft and burglary.
The boundaries, plainly. Removing people from a property is guard and patrol work, licensed separately in California, and where a site needs officers we coordinate that through Guardian Integrated Security, Inc., of which we are a DBA, not presenting ourselves as a guard company. We work on commercial premises only and not on private residences, though managed residential property is in scope. And we do not hold a C-10 or a C-16, so we do not work on fire alarm systems; that is coordinated with your own licensed fire alarm contractor.
At survey
What we would look at on your site
A trespass survey spends most of its time on the edge of the site, not the building, and a fair share of what it produces is not equipment.
Where the boundary actually is
Walked in full, including the parts that are a line on a plan and nothing on the ground. We want to know where somebody would have to make a deliberate decision to cross, and where they would not realise they had.
The pattern, in time as well as place
Which spots, which hours, which days, and whether it is the same people. A Friday-night group in a parking structure and a daily presence in a doorway are different problems with different answers, and the log you already keep is more useful to us than any description of it.
Cover, shelter and escape routes
Presence goes where there is something to sit behind, shelter from weather and a way out. Recesses, bin stores, hoardings, planting, stair landings, undercrofts and the gap between a building and a fence — each is a design decision that can usually be revisited.
Light and sightlines after dark
What is genuinely lit, what is glare, and what a camera at each candidate position would actually produce at the hour the problem occurs. We walk these sites at night for the same reason we walk vandalism sites at night.
How the site is opened and closed
Gate cycle times, whether a chained gate is locked, which doors are propped and when, who has a credential, and how deliveries and contractors get in outside hours. Most tailgating problems are visible in ten minutes of watching the gate.
What is somebody else's to agree
Shared roads, neighbouring lots, landlord-controlled yards and public footpaths along the fence all bring a third party into the design. We identify those before anything is specified.
Findings go in writing whether or not you go on to contract with us, and they include the changes that cost nothing. Where the honest answer is that your problem needs officers instead of equipment, we will say so — that is licensed work we coordinate, not provide, and selling you a camera instead would not fix it.
Common questions
Trespassing and loitering questions
Less with a camera than you would like, and more with the shape of the site than you would expect. A recorded image of somebody in a doorway does not move them and gives you very little to act on. What changes the pattern is making the spot less usable and less private: closing the recess, changing where a light points, removing the cover that makes it attractive, and securing the boundary that turns a public route into a sheltered private one. Where the site cannot be changed, the intervention that works is a person, not a recording — either coverage watched during closed hours by an operator able to speak into the space before somebody settles in, or officers, which is licensed work we coordinate, not provide. We would rather tell you which of those applies to your site than sell you the wrong one.
RelatedRemote video monitoring
Because an unverified signal describes an event that may or may not still be happening by the time anybody arrives, and trespass is the category where that gap is widest — the person who set off the beam is often gone within a minute, and even when they are not, there is frequently no crime to report. The alternative is to verify before anybody is dispatched: an operator looks at what the detector saw, establishes whether there is a person on site and what they are doing, and only then decides what the right response is. That is a fundamentally different product from an alarm that dials out on a contact closure, and it is the argument the local dispatch data makes very clearly. We have set that data out in full on our after-hours coverage page.
RelatedRemote video monitoring
Reliably only if it is told who your staff are, which is an access-control question. A credentialled entry at a gate or a door creates a record that this person, at this time, was expected. Analytics on a camera can classify a person as a person and can flag movement across a line or presence in a zone, which is genuinely useful for cutting down the noise from wildlife, weather and headlights — but classification is not identification, and a system that only sees a shape cannot tell an employee from anybody else. In practice the combination is what works: a credential establishes who is meant to be there, and everything else that crosses the line is worth a look.
RelatedRemote video monitoring
Most people leave. Being addressed directly, by a person, about what you are specifically doing at a specific place is a very different experience from noticing a camera, and it removes the assumption of being unobserved that most opportunistic presence depends on. We will not attach a success rate to it, because no primary source supports one and this site does not carry unevidenced numbers. What we will say is that the mechanism is not mysterious and that it addresses trespass better than almost anything else available, because the outcome you want is somebody leaving, not somebody being identified. Where the person does not leave, the operator has already established what is happening and who needs to be called, which is a better starting point than a contact closure.
RelatedRemote video monitoring
Signage does two jobs and it is worth separating them. The first is notice: on a commercial property, clear signage about the boundary and about recording is generally part of doing this properly, and there may be requirements attached to your jurisdiction, your lease or your insurer — take that to your own advice, not ours. The second job is deterrence, and there we can only tell you what the sourced material actually supports. Offender research finds that visible signs of security influence target selection, but the studies we could source are about burglary, not trespass, are self-reported, and are old. Nobody should buy a sign expecting it to solve a loitering problem, and anybody quoting you a percentage for what a sign achieves should be asked where the number came from.
RelatedRemote video monitoring
It will if it is specified badly, and that is the most common reason a site ends up ignoring its own alarm. A beam across an open yard will be triggered by cats, gulls, wind-blown material, rain and headlights from the road, and once the first fifty activations are nothing, the fifty-first is treated as nothing too. The fixes are ordinary engineering: detection chosen for the environment it sits in, sensitivity and masking set on site, detection zones drawn to the actual boundary, and — the important one — verification, so that an activation produces a look. A site that cannot trust its own perimeter detection is worse off than one with none, because it has trained itself to ignore the signal.
RelatedRemote video monitoring
Tailgating is the most common way a controlled boundary is defeated and it is almost never solved by the credential. It is solved by the physical arrangement — a gate whose cycle is short enough that a second vehicle cannot follow, a door with a closer that actually closes, an entry that does not open onto a place where somebody can wait unseen — and by making the boundary visible enough that following somebody through is a conspicuous act. Coverage on the inside of the boundary as well as the outside matters here, because the useful evidence is the second person, not the first. We look at cycle times, closers, latches and sightlines at survey, and the fix is often mechanical.
RelatedRemote video monitoring
It changes what you can do, not what is possible, and it is worth establishing early because it decides the design. A shared service road, a neighbouring car park, a landlord-controlled yard, a public path along the fence — each brings somebody else whose agreement is needed before anything is mounted, routed or pointed. Where a camera would look substantially onto land you do not control, that is a conversation to have with your own advice and with the other party. What we do is survey against those constraints, tell you plainly which positions need somebody else to agree, and design the coverage that works inside your own boundary, not assuming a permission that has not been given.
RelatedRemote video monitoring
No, and it is important to be clear about it. Removing or physically dealing with people on a property is guard and patrol work, which is licensed separately in California under a Private Patrol Operator licence. 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. Our own work is technical: cameras, access control, intrusion detection, cabling and monitored coverage. San Diego CCTV Pros holds CSLB 976737, a C-7 low voltage contractor licence, and a BSIS Alarm Company Operator licence, ACO #7501. We do not hold a C-10 or a C-16, so we do not work on fire alarm systems; that is coordinated with your own licensed fire alarm contractor, and we work on commercial premises only.
RelatedRemote video monitoring