"This Building is Under 24-Hour Surveillance"

There are much more subtle ways of doing things. At any rate I live in a pre-war walk up with no doorman or surveillance system and I've never felt unsafe.

the property manager's security people, i guess...

Solid!

Mind you, (name here again no google thx) was in Europe at the time.

In one of our hotel/luxury building combinations, another doorman was pimping one of the cleaning girls and using the apartments of vacationing tenants to do so. Neither work for us anymore, you see...

Ugh, my ex, FDNY, was a doorman in the building next door to my apartment when I met him. His entire apartment is furnished with things stolen from the apartments of tenants. I don't trust the "surveillance" of these buildings as far as I can throw them, in short.

That's basically all I'm saying, is that A) doormen are some sort of for-hire version of Risky Business B) surveillance isn't really that much safer than no surveillance. I guess the upside of the sign is that it is meant to deter, much like putting a sticker on your door that your apartment is alarmed--but there's an awful lot of people who would either be betting on lack of human surveillance or people who just don't give a fuck.

People are always hitting the buzzers in my building yelling like "Time Warner" or something. The only time I fell for that was because I actually WAS waiting for Time Warner at the time, and I opened the door and caught this dude who clearly was not from Time Warner just like trolling around, I was like, "Who are you? Where did the cable guy go?" and he took off?? It was the strangest behavior; did he expect that whomever let him in wouldn't answer their apartment door?

Living in Brooklyn flats til the age of 12, I would always see that type of sign sprayed over with graffiti (and god knows what else)....considering that the residents could never find the super during the best of times, this made me wonder just where his 'base of surveillance' was.

Course, this would been that there would have had to be actual cops patrolling the area. Oddly enough, you rarely saw them, either.

So, that sign alone never me me feel especially safe; only that the super was too damn cheap to put a working security system.

(xpost with Nichole) I see my super all the time, he's a lovely man who usually hangs out on the stoop of one of the buildings, old skool style, it's great. BUT he's an unhealthy man in his late 60s/early 70s--not exactly one to stop a criminal.

He prolly has a strapping son/nephew/etc to stick around, in case of trouble, however. (Few relatives would leave their family solo, in cases like that.) I'm thinking he hopefully has a successor in mind, to take over.

(However, your area/building seems pretty secure; I wouldn't think there is much crime, there?)

That's where Groening gets those wicked story ideas!

My building is terribly insecure, for about two years the front door lock was broken in various ways, for example.

This was because one of my charming fellow tenants kept getting up and smashing the lock because he got sick of having to get up and buzz in his friends.

Really, I have more to worry about from my fellow tenants than anyone outside the building so I shouldn't even be in on this discussion.

(bark of laughter) So they've a flashing neon sign: "Will sit on my arse for food?"

And knowing where to hit people.

Tombot is semi-OTM: if the intruder is a woman or eunuch, then there are less places to hit them.