Personal Property Risk Assessment

Photo by Max Böhme on Unsplash

*This article should not be construed as legal advice of any type.*

It is no secret that desperate people are getting more brazen as their ability to acquire goods from other desperate and low income people becomes more difficult. It is only a matter of time until the areas that are crime hotbeds in cities begin to expand outwards. The suburbs and middle income households are going to increasingly become the next targets and many of them already are. We are also seeing an increase in criminals going to farmsteads and small rural communities to rob and beat on the populace in these areas as they learn that police responses are even slower then in the cities.

One of my skillsets that I have employed as a “side desk” project, sometimes remunerated with an honorarium and occasionally free, is I have done business and personal property risk management. One of the biggest I did was for a hemp plant in Saskatchewan. I go to the business or home, interview the staff/home owner, security staff (if any), take pictures and video as well as do a detailed walkthrough of the business/home with the Operations Manager/home owner or someone that really knows the grounds. I then complete a risk management report with my suggestions in three key areas.

Why do I Need to Risk Assess?

Every single day we do risk assessments. Every second we are risk assessing of some sort. We all have a risk tolerance level that is different. There are innumerable areas of risk that we manage for. Every time you take a step you are risk assessing that your foot will land on solid ground. Most people have taken a wrong step in a parking lot and ended up in an embarrassing situation of picking themselves up, muttering under their breath about the damn ice patch they didn’t expect. Ignorant people are the ones that see risk and do nothing to mitigate it or pretend the risk isn’t there. Your gut knows, self preservation is baked into our being yet we ignore the warning signs often to our own potential peril. The fun of a roller coaster ride for many is that their body is screaming at them that what they’re doing is dangerous and secretes the adrenaline to respond but they ignore it knowing that they should be safely strapped in, so the person get a dopamine hit/high from it.

When we risk manage we are being prepared for potentially dangerous situations. Police do failure drills, if two shots to the chest doesn’t stop the threat and it’s still advancing the next shot is usually to the head. That is split second decision that has to be baked into the response reaction or else they may just end up mag dumping into body armor or a body so high on drugs it doesn’t know it’s dying. The infantry studies battlefield geometry with dynamic entry into buildings so that if they engage a threat they aren’t shooting their squad mates through the wall when engaging threats. The person crawling in the ducts of a factory has a air quality test done so that they don’t inhale dangerous gases that will kill or injure them. Many of these types of risk management strategies come from tragedy that has already occurred.

The topic today will cover three areas that you can employ to better protect your property, personal or business. Free preview ends here.