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Residents and business owners in California’s Bay Area are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to combat a surge of burglaries and robberies along with police staffing shortages, with one security company telling Fox News Digital its sales of AI-based surveillance have been through the roof.
Deep Sentinel, a Pleasanton, California-based company providing AI-based security nationwide, told Fox News Digital that business tripled during the coronavirus pandemic and that trend has continued ever since as burglaries and robberies continue to plague San Francisco and the Bay Area in general.
"I would say that the business segment has just skyrocketed in the past year," Tomasz Borys, Deep Sentinel’s vice president of marketing, told Fox News Digital.
"The way that works is these cameras come with a sensor, so when there's an object that goes in front of the camera, it will trigger the artificial intelligence really quickly within a millisecond and determine what the object is," Borys explained. "If it’s a human, that feed within seconds will go to our live surveillance center."
Burglars observed attempting to enter the Rose Mary Jane cannabis bar in Oakland, California. (Deep Sentinel)
The security system is manned by live guards 24/7 who can not only warn criminals to stay away over a loudspeaker but also send real-time information to police departments that confirms a verified active situation is happening, which increases the likelihood officers will respond swiftly since there is no question whether it's a false alarm and the system also passes information about the crime to police instantly.
In San Francisco, the surge in crime over the past couple of years has been accompanied by a severe staffing shortage in the police department, where the force was short roughly 800 officers heading into 2023.
Earlier this year, the understaffed department took 15 hours to respond to a burglary call.
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A potential intruder is deterred by a Deep Sentinel security system. (Deep Sentinel)
"Small businesses in San Francisco are getting squeezed all the time, and we have no protection from the city," Eleanor Hayes, the wife of a bar owner that was robbed earlier this year, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "The message is, 'You should just be happy it wasn’t worse.'"
In Oakland, commercial burglaries have surged 76% in 2022, KTVU-TV reported.
Burglaries, robberies and other crimes have forced retail chains to close their doors, including Whole Foods, which shuttered its flagship location in downtown San Francisco due to safety concerns.
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Drug users and dealers gather across the street from the San Francisco Federal Building. (Fox News Digital / Jon Michael Raasch)
California’s legal marijuana dispensaries have been one of the industries hardest hit by rising crime and Rose Mary Jane, a cannabis bar and lounge in Oakland, is one of the companies that turned to Deep Sentinel’s AI technology and has already seen results.
"Most cannabis businesses in Oakland have experienced a heavy amount of burglaries, break-ins and shoplifting," Sway Macaluso, the store manager of Rose Mary Jane, said in a video posted on YouTube, adding that they were searching for a solution that would "prevent crime" and also adhere to the regulations of the cannabis industry.
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Asha Manaktala, an assistant manager at Rose Mary Jane, said that the Deep Sentinel system recently spotted burglars trying to break into their facility before their in-person security guard did.
"It engaged, prevented and contacted law enforcement before our on-site guard even saw the burglars," Manaktala said.
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Borys told Fox News Digital that police were on the scene in six to eight minutes after the burglary attempt at Rose Mary Jane.
Another cannabis dispensary in Vallejo that also uses the services of Deep Sentinel posted a video online showing two burglaries on the same night that were both thwarted when the AI recognized the threat and alerted a live guard, who issued a warning over a loudspeaker.
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"This is Deep Sentinel Security, this is private property, the police are being called," a female guard could be heard saying over the loudspeaker, causing the burglars to flee.
Borys told Fox News Digital that the voice deterrents scare off criminals 99% of the time, but the company is testing even stronger deterrents for determined burglars who ignore the warnings, including pepper spray, smoke machines and blaring sirens.
Deep Sentinel was started by Dave Selinger, an early employee at Amazon, who had the idea to start the company after a neighbor was a victim of a home invasion, according to Borys.
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"This all came about because the next-door neighbor had a home invasion," Borys explained. "The whole family, hands tied behind their back, guns drawn to their head. They had a high-end camera system and alarm system and nothing prevented that. Nothing got police there as quickly as they hoped it would.
"He decided to take matters into his own hands and create something that would be super preventative, something that was super proactive and something that would be affordable that everyone and anyone can use."
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