Smash and Grab Robberies are Very Costly – In Many Different Ways
When most people think of the cost of a smash and grab robbery, they think of replacing the actual items that are stolen. However, these expenses are only a fraction of the overall cost. There are almost always other costs associated with a smash and grab robbery and it’s quite common to have these costs far exceed the expense of replacing the goods stolen.
Smash and grab robberies are chaotic and often very violent. Criminals use brute force in order to gain access to a property and they damage quite a lot of property in the process.
A criminal doesn’t care about your property or about reducing damage. All that he or she cares about is getting in and out of your location as quickly as possible and taking as much merchandise as possible.
Criminals use weapons such as baseball bats, rocks, stones or crowbars to gain access to a location. This means broken doors and windows. In some cases, doors are ripped off of their hinges and window frames are bent and mangled. Repairing this damage can be very expensive and time consuming.
The time it takes to repair your location is another factor that comes into play and one that can harm a business. After all, if your windows, doors or in-store displays are damaged during a smash and grab, you’ll likely need to close down for at least a short while in order to make repairs. This results in lost business as sales that you would have made during the days you were closed are not guaranteed to happen once you re-open. In fact, closing for a while to repair damage could make passersby believe that your company has gone out of business.
A smash and grab robbery can also hurt your organization’s reputation, which will harm your business. Customers may not want to shop at a retailer or do business with an office that appears to be vulnerable. This may not make rational sense, but people often don’t want to shop at or conduct business in an area that they believe to be “unsafe.”
Protecting your Property from Smash and Grab Robberies
As you can see, there are a number of reasons why a smash and grab robbery is costly to a business. Therefore, it’s important that businesses take steps to protect themselves before such crimes happen. Some business owners think that the costs of securing a property are too great and, therefore, they tend to wait until a crime has already taken place to install proper security.
If you wait until after a property has been broken into, you are costing your business a great deal of money.
The good news is that installing proper security is often significantly less costly that the price of repairing a damaged store. Physical security gates work to place a barrier between criminals and your property. They eliminate the likelihood of a smash and grab robbery and cause criminals to think twice before striking your location.
Want some more helpful tips to improving the security of your business? Download our helpful guide to Improving Your Security Mindset.
