Security

Buying and Selling
08/01/11 8:11am

Flip This Bomb Shelter!

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Homes for Sale, Land for Sale, Security, Tanglewood
9 Comments

Only a few days after it sold, the 1961 Tanglewood home and bomb shelter on Brown Saddle St. featured on Swamplot back in January has been put back on the market. Only this time, the listing doesn’t mention the shelter or the abandoned pipeline slicing through a portion of the property — or really anything about the building itself. No more interior pics, either. The low-slung modern structure is now tagged as “not liveable” and won’t be shown — though the agent does fess up to having a key. The asking price? Only $550K more than what the property sold for earlier in the week, when the home and its interior were touted as sales features. At 38,263 sq. ft. (that’s actually been marked down a few thousand sq. ft. from the earlier sale), the lot is advertised as the biggest in Tanglewood.

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Royal Oaks
07/28/11 4:47pm

Who Gets Past the Gates of Royal Oaks

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Security
28 Comments

Fox26’s Isiah Carey reports that the Department of Housing and Urban Development will be investigating a Royal Oaks resident’s complaints earlier this week — that security guards at the west-side neighborhood’s front gate had been refusing entry to visitors who were black. David Williams, who’s been renting a 3-bedroom home on Stuart Manor in the northern reaches of Royal Oaks, says he saw a note in the gatehouse informing security guards that “David Williams . . . is not allowed to have any company,” and that a guard told him “We personally don’t have a problem with you, but we’ll lose our jobs [if we let your friends in].” Williams also says that a group of people in a golf cart banged on his garage door on Memorial Day, used racial epithets, and said “You’re not going to move into our neighborhood.” Williams’s African-American guests have been getting through more recently, but community officials at Royal Oaks still have not returned Carey’s phone calls.

Photo: Fox26

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Landscape
06/15/11 4:26pm

West U Fruit Surveillance Now in Place for Another Season

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Security, Signs, Trees, West University
17 Comments

It’s just about summertime, and all you fans of fresh West University produce know what that means: Yes, it’s well past time to set up those security cameras to monitor your vulnerable front-yard fruits. “The camera and fruit-thief deterrent signs have returned,” notes the reader who sent in these photos of this ripe “either peach or nectarine” tree on Tangley, west of Buffalo Speedway. But the security effort actually appears to be a bit more subdued than last year. The bilingual warning signage featured on the tree and a few of its neighbors last season has been replaced with a smaller and simpler handwritten “Camera” warning.

Swamplot’s West U fruit scout says there’s another sign on the other side of the tree “that says something like ‘Don’t even think about it.’” No photo of that? Explains the source: “I was in a hurry and, of course, wanting to stay out of the camera’s wily view.”

Photos: Swamplot inbox

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Homes for Sale
01/07/11 11:01am

It’s the Bomb! A Survivalist’s Tanglewood Dream

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Security, Tanglewood
28 Comments

What’s the safety of your family worth, anyway? Is $2,052,218 really too high a price to pay for the security of knowing that when the revolution/apocalypse/nuclear winter/plague of locusts/hurricane/historic designation comes, your loved ones could be comfortably ensconced in their very own bomb shelter? And look! A trained school of security fish stand guard by the shelter’s entrance — in their very own BB-proof booth. Plus, right next door, there’s a $5 million home!

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Comments
11/16/10 3:24pm

Comment of the Day: Crime Block

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Crime, Quicklink, Security
2 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: CRIME BLOCK “Does having a wall at a dead end street make it more secure? In some ways, criminals may be safer where no one can see them during the day, or night. The wall may act as a buffer for thieves instead of hindering their action. There are many stories in the neighborhood where high walls and fences encouraged thieves. Typically, pedestrian areas seem to be more safe since there is always someone watching. So I’m not sure about the safety for those residents on the dead end street with just a wall.” [Montrose Slums, commenting on Open and Shut: The Montrose H-E-B’s Pedestrian Gates]

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Landscape
06/14/10 10:24am

West U Fruit Tree Warning Update: Bilingual Protection

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Security, Signage, Trees, West University
11 Comments

Those of you who feared the appearance in Swamplot comments of a second warning sign might be the signal of an escalating fruit-tree security threat in West U need not be alarmed: It’s apparently nothing new. The reader who first sent in a photo of the best-protected fruit tree in town — on Tangley Rd. west of Buffalo Speedway — claims not to have even noticed that the second sign a few steps away was any different from the first. And yet it is! The uh, somewhat enhanced wording on the second sign is en Español.

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Downtown
03/12/10 12:32pm

The Hilton Americas-Houston Hotel, Where Everybody Knows Your Face

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Hotels, Security
No Comments

From a hotel press release:

Hilton Americas-Houston is the first hotel to utilize 3VR [Security, Inc.]’s facial recognition, license plate recognition and advanced motion analytics to provide the ultimate in guest security. In the hotel security business since 1990, John Alan Moore, director of security and life safety for Hilton Americas-Houston says “I’ve never seen anything that is able to do the things this technology does; it’s light-years ahead of the system we previously used.” . . .

Another use for the system that Hilton Americas-Houston has found useful is recognizing repeat customers. According to Moore, “We will be able to tie in with front office systems to flag our Gold Card members in order to be able to blow them away with service. This is another tool to be used to keep Hilton as the leader in the industry.” With 90% accuracy, the system registers few false positives, even picking up good facial info on cameras not specifically designated as facial-recognition. On a humorous note, the system is so sensitive that it has recognized faces that were not actually guests; they were photos of the t-shirts of guests. Moore said “President Obama made an appearance on our skywalk, on a guest’s clothing. That’s how bad the system wants to recognize a face.”

Photo: Urban Jungle Survivalist

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Public Buildings
02/26/10 10:35am

Cutting Schools

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Quicklink, Security
8 Comments

CUTTING SCHOOLS If our kids don’t see the spikes, how will they get the message that we want them to stay in school? “On Thursday, fencing contractors clipped the last strand of barbed wire at Scott Elementary School, wrapping up a three-month project to rid 68 schools of nearly 100,000 feet of the sharp stuff. Some parents praised the move to give campuses more curb appeal, while others said they feared criminals would be more tempted to break in without the barbed wire. . . . The speedy removal of the barbed wire across HISD cost nearly $147,000. Many of the campuses will get entirely new fencing in the next 18 months thanks to the 2007 voter-approved bond, said Dick Lindsay, the district’s chief business officer. Black vinyl fencing will replace the old, rusted chain-link around the campuses, while more expensive wrought-iron — traditionally found at schools in wealthier neighborhoods — will grace the front of the buildings.” [Houston Chronicle]

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Comments
11/04/09 3:13pm

Comment of the Day: Form, Function, and Home Security

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Home Design, Quicklink, Security
2 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: FORM, FUNCTION, AND HOME SECURITY “Properly implemented, turrets *are* good. The problem in this particular case as well as with so many modern faux-Tuscan and faux-Chateau adaptations is that architects fail to incorporate functional support for modern defensive armament and surveilance equipment. For instance, no McMansion is truely complete without a remote-controlled servo-actuated Browning M2 machine gun hardwired to the saferoom. But that critical bit of hardware doesn’t do the least bit of good if the turret does not project out from the structure or if it is lacking a sufficient number of meurtrieres to ensure an adequate field of fire. Along similar lines, I question the lack of murder holes above the entrances to such homes; no McMansion should be complete without the capability to dump a vat of scalding hot oil onto Jehovah’s Witnesses at the mere flick of a switch.” [TheNiche, commenting on Comment of the Day: Beauty Is in the Intention of the Landholder]

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