Property owners have a duty to ensure their property has appropriate security for anyone inside or around their buildings. This duty extends to basic responsibilities like cleaning up spills and patching up holes in the floor, but also involves taking steps to protect against foreseeable criminal activity. Here are five ways property owners fail to secure their property, putting everyone in or around their building at risk of crime:
- Poor lighting
- While it may seem basic, simply having functional lights in and around your property is a great way of preventing all sorts of injuries, including injuries caused by criminal activity. This is because muggers, burglars, and other criminals prefer poorly-lit places where they are less likely to be caught or identified. Thus, when property owners fail to put up proper lighting, they place others at increased risk of being the victims of criminal acts.
- No security cameras
- Advances in technology mean that surveillance equipment like security cameras are more widely available than ever, but many buildings do not have them. Without cameras, criminals are not only more likely to commit crimes, they are also more likely to evade capture or conviction. Ensuring a building has security cameras thus helps to protect against violent crime, and helps victims get justice when it happens.
- Missing/broken locks
- It is reasonably rare to find buildings where there are no locks on the doors or windows. However, it is far too common to find buildings where the locks are broken or missing, which means they might as well not be there at all. Keeping a building’s locks in good repair is an important way of keeping the people inside the building safe from crime, and a good way of preventing lawsuits arising from that crime.
- No bars on windows
- Putting bars on windows is not a common practice everywhere, but in any place that experiences a lot of crime, bars on windows are considered a basic safety practice. This helps to keep tenants safe and prevents breaking and entering from burglars and other criminals. A landlord who knows that crime is common around their building but fails to put bars on their windows may well be considered to be negligent, if one of their tenants suffers a break-in.
- No guards
- At the end of the day, there are few deterrents against crime quite like having a guard on duty to protect against potential criminal activity. This is why many buildings will have security guards on duty to prevent anyone unauthorized from entering. When there are no guards on duty, it makes the risk of a crime inside or around the building that much more likely.
If you or a loved one have been injured due to someone else’s negligence, you should seek out the personal injury lawyers at Zlotolow & Associates. Our seasoned New York personal injury attorneys bring more than two decades of trial experience to your case. We serve all five boroughs of New York City, as well as Nassau and Suffolk County. Our aggressive personal injury attorneys always demand maximum compensation. We have helped thousands of clients recover through settlements and courtroom verdicts. To schedule a consultation, you can call us at 866-800-0092, or you can visit our contact page.
