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Many people have strong feelings about gated communities -- they either love them or hate them! Like most ideas, there are
pros and cons to having gates at the entrance to a community. Some people like the added privacy and the sense of security
that the gates provide. Others feel strongly that all of the streets within a community should be open to everyone.
Lets start with the basic premise of private property. Few would disagree that a family should expect full privacy within
the walls of their house or apartment. Most would extend that right of privacy to a homeowner's yard. Tenants of an apartment
building may want to restrict access to the property's common areas for the purpose of privacy and security. Apartment buildings
have used doormen or electric locks with intercom systems for lobby doors for many decades to deter trespassers. Larger apartment
complexes have restricted access to their parking areas with gates, overhead doors, or security officers.
More recently private developments have created private streets for a community of single-family dwellings. Private streets
may have gates or they may be open to traffic. Either way, unauthorized people may be banned from private streets by the
Property Owners Association. The police, of course, cannot legally ban people from the public streets of their community.
There is not much controversy with private access to homes and apartments. Private streets, however, are still somewhat
controversial. I personally favor private streets as an effective way to keep troublemakers out of a neighborhood.
LAKE PANORAMA
Lake Panorama, my former employer, does not have any entrance gates now. It was a gated community with a security officer
on duty at its beginning. The expense of the officer and the hassle for invited guests outweighed the benefits for the Board
of Directors. The gated entrance was removed after a few years.
The major problem for Lake Panorama, like many large developments, is that the project expanded far beyond the original
gated entrance. Lake Panorama has three entrances on the west side of the lake and ten entrances on the east side of the
lake. Even reducing the entrances to a total of four or six would be a major inconvenience to legitimate users. It would
be hard to justify the inconvenience in such a low crime area.
The Lake Panorama Association (LPA) has always maintained its own private streets since the beginning of the project in
the late 1960's. One reason for the private streets is that the LPA Board of Directors wants to maintain a higher level of
maintenance than the rural county government would provide. Another reason for private streets at Lake Panorama is that many
of the property owners prefer having a private community with private amenities.
All of the entrances at Lake Panorama are posted:
"PRIVATE PROPERTY
MEMBERS ONLY
NO TRESPASSING"
The no trespassing rule is rarely enforced. The rule is used only when a nonmember is discovered causing a problem of
some type. For example, when I was the Chief of Security for the LPA I occasionally had residents complain of door-to-door
salespeople in their neighborhood. When I caught up with the salespeople I would tell them to leave the private community.
Another example was when I had property owners complain of loud, profane boys using the private swimming beach. I told
the boys to behave and left the area. When I was called back by more complaints I ordered them all to leave and to stay away.
Sometimes I had more serious problems. One day I had a call about suspicious men in a pickup truck during some unusually
cold weather. I found the truck with three men at a widow's house who said they were "attic insulation contractors"
seeking customers at Lake Panorama. It turned out that the driver had a warrant for his arrest in another county for contractor
fraud and the police arrested him. The two other men were advised to stay away from Lake Panorama. I told them that if they
returned they would be subject to arrest for criminal trespass. I never saw or heard from them again.
LPA Security, along with security officers protecting private property all across North America, have the criminal trespass
laws as an extra crime prevention tool that city police officers cannot use on the public streets. The law is very effective
and the troublemakers usually leave without incident.
AUTOMATIC GATES
More and more apartment complexes and single family subdivisions are using unmanned automatic gates in conjunction with
their private streets as a way to keep uninvited strangers away from their homes, businesses and recreational facilities.
Authorized people may open the gate with an access card or by entering the proper code into a touch pad. Visitors use a telephone
system near the entrance to call the resident they want to visit. The resident decides whether or not to "buzz"
the visitor through the gate. Some systems allow the resident to see the visitor on a video monitor inside their home during
a call.
Video monitoring systems have become more affordable. It would be very useful to have such a system near each entrance
with a prominent sign to advertising it. Most troublemakers do not want a video record of their entrance and exit from the
village and the sign may deter them. The recordings would not only help the police identify suspects, the cameras would also
record the exact times and dates involved to help with prosecution of crimes.
The newer video systems now available use color cameras and digital hard drive recorders. Digital recorders may keep
weeks or even months of recordings on their hard drive. Unlike the old videotape recording systems, which had tapes that
had to be manually changed every day or so, the new systems are totally automatic. The oldest recordings are on the hard
drive are erased as new recordings are created.
I am very much concerned about violations of citizen's privacy rights in the 21st Century. However, security cameras
at the entrance gates that are properly posted with warning signs should not be a problem for most people.
PRIVATE SECURITY OFFICERS
A security officer posted at a gated entrance is better than an automatic gate for several reasons:
First, the officer can deter "tailgating". Tailgating occurs when a vehicle follows an authorized car through
the entrance before the gate has time to close.
Second, an officer at the entrance can talk face to face with visitors to better determine their identity. For example,
a stranger "claiming" to be delivering pizzas in the village should have some pizzas in their car along with the
appropriate delivery receipts. If still in doubt, the officer could telephone the pizza recipient to determine the validity
of the delivery person.
Third, residents may call the officer assigned to the entrance with information about their expected visitors. The officer
on duty may admit those visitors through the gate even when the resident is not at home to receive them.
Fourth, the officer on duty could be warned to prevent some people from entering the village. For example, a judge orders
an ex-spouse to keep away from the village. The security officer can refuse to open the gate if the ex-spouse shows up.
THE PROS AND CONS OF GATES
On the positive side:
A gate will reduce the amount of unwanted traffic on the streets by curious strangers, door-to-door sales people and carloads
of noisy teenagers that have no reason to be in the community.
A typical criminal would avoid a gated village; they prefer a neighborhood where they can come and go unnoticed with many
easy exits out in the event they encounter the police or security. They want to be in a "normal" open neighborhood
rather than risk attracting attention trying to get past the entrance gate.
A criminal intuitively knows that they will have more trouble "talking their way out" of an encounter with people
in authority when they are in a clearly posted no trespassing area.
Sometimes people get a tip that a crime is about to take place. A gated village has the option of closely monitoring
everyone entering the village. For example, say a resident reports that her ex-boyfriend has threatened to hurt her. The
security officer on duty could be alerted to the threat and be prepared to prevent the suspect from going into the village.
DEVELOPERS SHOULD CONSIDER SOME OF THE NEGATIVES:
Gates will cause some inconvenience for everyone.
There is a significant expense involved in both the construction and maintenance of gates.
It is possible for a criminal to fake their way inside, or to tailgate through an unmanned gate behind a resident.
People should never expect gates to make an area totally crime free -- that would be unrealistic. For example, gates
would do nothing to protect a person from the other residents in the community, their guests, and the contractors and service
workers invited into the neighborhood for legitimate reasons
I believe that a gated entrance, even with the gate left open, provides a psychological deterrent to some criminals as
long as the entrance is posted as private property. Furthermore, gates at the entrance allow the police or security the ability
to temporarily secure the gates during an emergency.
VARIATIONS.
There are many variations of gated communities. Some are huge master planned communities like Hot Springs Village, Arkansas
with over 15,000 residents. The 26,000-acre private development has all seven of its entrances gated 24 hours a day. Five
entrances have unmanned automated gates in low traffic areas and the two primary entrances are manned with security officers
on duty to screen visitors.
Other gated communities are much smaller and have only one or two unmanned automated gates that residents open with remote
control devices kept inside of their automobiles.
Still other communities leave their gates open during the daytime and only close them at night. This modified version
of a gated community allows greater convenience for residents and visitors alike and will have less maintenance expenses over
the long term.
The Ten Block Village Plan can be used either as a gated community or as a traditional open community. If gates are used,
they may be placed at both ends of Village Drive. One or both of the gates may be left open during the daytime for the convenience
to the legitimate vehicles that need to enter.
An alternative is to leave Village Drive open and just use gated entrances for select residential streets within the village.
The Crime Doctor discusses Gated Communities
Photo of Hot Springs Village, Arkansas
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