[OT] Hatton Garden diamond heist

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'd have thought a vault storing billions of pounds would have had its own security people? Even if only contract. Perhaps they weren't trusted to go inside the building on their own?

[michael adams]

This stinks to high heaven. Given all the planning involved it's difficult to believe that the robbers would have overlooked any of the alarms unless they could have been sure that they'd get no response. So that's one or two coppers, coming up to retirement maybe, in the frame.

The "Sweeney" episode was from 1975, 40 years ago now. Banks and similar were fitting CCTV in their vaults even then. Nowadays you can go into Maplins spend ?40 or so, and rig up cameras in nestboxes in your garden to watch blue t*ts hatching. But not it seems in vaults holding squillions of quids worth of gear.

Never mind heat sensors, motion sensors light sensors or any of the other sensors which could be expected to go berserk at any sign of life inside a locked vault.

So that's whoever decided not to bother with any CCTV or similar in the frame as well.

This has a lot of similarities with the Northern Bank job in Northern Ireland. Which was conveniently blamed on the Provisional IRA. The first bank robbery they'd have ever committed without shooting at least four or five people or blowing half the building away, never mind getting not getting caught.

michael adams

...

[Nightjar]

I am surprised they didn't have remotely monitored CCTV everywhere other than in the private cubicles which most vaults provide for people to open their boxes in. Even my local Poundland has CCTV covering every inch of the store. Perhaps some of the vault customers might not want to appear on CCTV, but if that were an objection it could probably be overcome by only activating the CCTV when the place was closed for business.

[Nightjar]

One way to be sure that there will be no response is to arrange for several false alarms over the previous months.

[michael adams]

That was the method, sort of, as used by Martin Cahill in the Beit Art Robbery. They triggered the alarms, and waited until the police inspected the house and could find no intruders or suspicious signs of entry. Once the police had left, they then broke in.

This method has probably also featured in films

Normally in such circumstances its probaly advisable to make sure that the police haven't been alerted, so maybe they triggered the alarm on purpose before even gaining entry.

However no matter how many false alarms there'd been, its astonishing, given the values involved, that they never even thought of investigating.

michael adams

...

[Martin Brown]

Almost certainly and that they managed to get the Met not to respond. (if you wrote it as a crime novel plot it would not be credible)

That is interesting since it seems tonight that the Met (paragons of virtue that they are) have admitted to ignoring a premises alarm.

Do they really get that many false alarms from a secure high value site that they *can* ignore it or was someone in the control centre knobbled?

Time was when any hardwired alarm would get a 15 minute police response. (assuming the annual false positive count is not exceeded)

I am surprised that the builders did not include things in the concrete intended to resist power tools for a very long time. Simplest of which are a modest number of hardened steel ball bearings of various sizes.

[dennis]

Will that even slow a diamond core bit? I doubt it.

[Dave Liquorice]

bearings

Hardened ball bearings are very difficult to cut when you can't stop them rotating. Just cast in concrete they won't bond and will simply rotate in the socket no matter the angle the cutting blade approaches.

[Tim Watts]

Like the roller bars in mortice deadbolts.

I'm not convinced that they wouldn't bond to the concrete - but corrosion if nothing else.

Perhaps what's needed are ball bearings in plastic jackets - bury those in the concrete and they will last forever and spin freely.

Thermal lance time then....

[dennis]

They would rotate against the diamonds so they would still wear and once they have a few scores they would start to bind against the concrete or plastic. I would drop kevlar rope in there so it binds the drill. Maybe add some industrial diamonds to wear the drill.

The above just slow them down so the (non existent!) security staff have more chance of catching them.

[Nightjar]

On 10/04/2015 20:29, michael adams wrote: ...

The Police will always refuse to attend when the number of false alarms passes a certain, fairly low, level. When I had remotely monitored alarms in my factories, it was one in any twelve month period. After that, they will normally only attend if a human can confirm that there are people on the premises, either by personal visit or by viewing them on CCTV.

[Huge]

This may be true of premises such as factories, but when very large sums of money are involved, they attend every time.

(I used to be a co-keyholder (on rota) for the largest banknote vault in the City of London.)

[Nightjar]

How long ago though? There was a time when they attended every time for remotely monitored factories as well. Then it became no more than five false alarms in two years, which lead to an increase in systems using dual monitoring sensors, and, probably about a decade ago, no more than one false alarm in twelve months.

[Dave Liquorice]

Yep.

Can you harden stainless? If you can't I'm not sure that hardened steel corrodes much anyway

Unless the cutter just happens to be appraoching along a line that passes through the centre of the ball bearing I don't think the path of the point of contact on the surface of the ball bearing will be a simple slice though. Even if it does rotate "cog like" you end up with a groove, nothing sticking out to cut the concrete/plastic.

Not sure that kevalr would upset a diamond cutter very much. Bits of soft metal like aluminium would clog it and stop it cutting.

This true but if it slows 'em down longer than a four day bank holiday weekend...

[Huge]

Sufficiently long enough that the vault is no longer there (well, the vault is, but there's nothing in it but broken office furniture and obsolete PCs) and I'm no longer a keyholder (indeed, I don't even work there any more.)

But when we were having some telecoms work done and the wiremen managed to disconnect the alarm a couple of times, we got used to armed policemen running into reception ... This would have been ~2000

[Adam Aglionby]

Mate used to work in a truck garage that got the odd security van in, managed to upset one when it was in, locked him in, made lots of noise and what appeared to be all of Lothian and Borders Police turned up at the garage.

[Sam Plusnet]

I imagine it all depends on the current set of priorities handed down to the Chief Constable by his political overlords. If the election-seekers decide that "crimes against the person" should be treated as a priority, then something else takes a back seat.

I feel sorry for the bod who was on duty when that call came in. Sh1t always flows downhill and that's going to be one hell of a big pile of it.

[stuart noble]

:-)

[Huge]

When you have a vault with several hundred million in cash in it, it takes priority.

[Nightjar]

Surely it is up to the vault operators to ensure that their security matches the risk, rather than to expect the Police to provide security?