We are a university town and have countless large apartment complexes. Many of these complexes feature automated gates. While the city requires that these gates open to a universal emergency services code they are hard to access at times. Does anyone work in a similar AO and have a good solution for first responders getting into these gates? And no, ramming is not an option...
Some are set to open for the siren. Doesn't always work as advertised in my experience. And for LE we don't always want to announce our arrival. Many years ago we were looking for an A&D cop killer piece of garbage. We were given an address in a gated apartment complex. We simply waited for a car to exit and drove in the outbound lane. That car stayed on the pressure pad until the next one entered and so on. For EMS that's not a great option but perhaps let the complex management know they can be sued for delaying life saving response if they fail to provide a way for emergency vehicles to enter?Originally Posted by secondstoryguy
I've also seen special codes for us but those seem to get shared with the wrong people and then the complex changes them without making proper notification to first responders. One SO in Florida had a universal remote but again - hit or miss.
Lastly if it is daytime the ruse of dialing a random person and saying you're a delivery vehicle can often get them to buzz you into the complex. Learned that trick from a realtor of all people. Lol!
Last edited by El Cid; 06-09-2016 at 10:14 PM.
I saw the siren device on the interwebs. It seemed a little sketchy for me, especially for its over $400 pricetag. Our code offices are asking for input for any changes that might help us do our jobs better and I'm trying to put together some suggestions to the gate problem.
Social engineering 101Lastly if it is daytime the ruse of dialing a random person and saying you're a delivery vehicle can often get them to buzz you into the complex. Learned that trick from a realtor of all people. Lol!
I worked in an area where 90% of my district is shithole apartment complexes. Dealing with a gates are a headache. A lot of the codes are included on the call slip... others we simply have to keep track of them on our own. Its a continuous issue for us.
Last edited by andre3k; 06-10-2016 at 12:40 AM.
If you can get your city code people to write daily citations for the gate bypasses not working, they'll usually get fixed in short order. If the people at the complex are jerks about it, start the tickets on Friday afternoon and that way by Monday morning they already have 4 piled up. For us it's as simple as the apartment folks giving us a call so we can get the info updated in CAD.
If you have bolt cutters handy, cutting the roller chain works better than ramming gates.
We have the garage door clicker bypass things. We bought the last batch 6 years ago, and they have about an average 2 year service life, so they are few and far between.
Last edited by txdpd; 06-10-2016 at 02:19 AM.
It's not as fast as siren activation but you can control who has access to the keys.
http://www.knoxbox.com
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Our city uses the gate codes as well as the Knox box system. It's a small box that takes a special key that only police and fire carry. We can turn the gate to open once then shut or open and leave open. Works every time.
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"Shooting is 90% mental. The rest is in your head." -Nils
We have a list of every gate code in the county on our computer system. When I worked a CSA, I had all of mine on an index card on the visor. My county has an ordinance requiring codes to be provided with some fairly substantial penalties for non-compliance. Never been an issue.
The last thing I want to do is light up the siren to open the gate. Whoever thought of that option (yes, we have it here too) has never been fired upon as they approach a "routine call".
The only thing that has worked here is most gate codes are printed on the MDT map screen or in the call detail notes. The call detail notes have now become so convoluted due to new software that you have to read three chapters of insignificant details to get to the meat of the matter. So we toggle to the map and 8 times out of 10 its on there next to the complex in a highlighted color.
If it's not, we radio dispatch to get the code. If they don't have it or the code they give us doesn't work, we wait for someone to come in or out and solicit it from them.
I have yet to see a "gated" community or apartment complex not suffer from the same burglaries and b&e to autos as non-gated communities. I have, however, seen it delay ambulances, fire trucks, and us......sometimes to the tune of several minutes.
No way I would live in one. The rewards are almost nil and the downsides are huge.
Interestingly enough, when we have caught car burglars and such, a good majority of the time they are residents or children of residents that live within the gated complex and have the code anyway.
Your mileage may vary but here they simply are a solution that only causes additional problems.
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