Little sensor embedded in wall records visit from security guard making rounds

By CRAIG MELLO
columns@modbee.com

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Like most men, I'm not a big fan of shopping. I hate it, actually. In fact, if I were to make a list of a hundred things I despise most in life, a day of shopping would probably beat out a root canal. It's not that I don't buy gifts for people, but my idea of window-shopping is through the Internet windows of my laptop.

Every once in a while, however, I'm forced to leave the comfort of home and brave the wilds of consumer craziness on the outside. My wife makes me. When this happens, I usually find my shopping stamina starts to wane long before hers. About halfway through the day, I end up waiting in the car, perfectly content to sit and listen to the radio with a hot cup of coffee and a newspaper.

Recently, during one of these times spent waiting for my wife in the parking lot of the Monte Vista Crossings Shopping Center in Turlock, I noticed something peculiar. A security guard was making rounds in the parking lot. At each store he would touch what looked like a small pen or flashlight to the building's wall.

I thought maybe he was marking the wall or doing something grafitti-ish, so I got out of the car and inspected the wall after he'd left. On the building was a quarter-sized sensor of some kind. Happy that it wasn't vandalism and sure it had something to do with his job, I caught up to the guard to ask what it was.

The man's name was Satnam Singh, and he told me he worked for a company called Crimetek Security Service in Turlock. He showed me a penlight-sized wand called a "ProxiPen," made by a company called Detex. In order to verify that he is making the appropriate rounds of the shopping center, he puts the wand up against the sensors on the walls of each business. The wand has a flash drive inside that records the time he arrives at each business.

If he's not in the right place at the right time, there's a digital record to prove it. It's a way of ensuring that each business gets equal supervision. In security guard lingo, they're called "Detex rounds."

According to Crimetek general manager Ed Esmaili, the use of electronic "touring" systems has been around for a while. They're a logical solution for businesses that want to guarantee that the security company they use is doing its job. Also, it allows businesses the luxury of choosing the locations that they want monitored. Crimetek alone incorporates them in almost 40 locations in Stanislaus County: in parking lots, factories, businesses, and even construction sites.

Very cool, I thought. So much for the Norman Rockwell image of a 90-year-old security guard asleep in a rocking chair! Security, just like everything else, appears to have gone completely high-tech.

I guess my day out shopping turned out to be productive after all. It might even have been better than a root canal.

For more information, go to www.detex.com/proxipen.aspx.

Mello is a Modesto teacher and a former visiting editor with The Bee. E-mail him at columns@modbee.com.