It’s a shame that we even have to bring up this subject. But lately it’s becoming more and more necessary to lock up your gear on site, especially when you leave it overnight at a venue.
Years ago in Austria I left a really nice leather coat on a dimmer rack. I forgot it because we were playing multiple nights at the venue. I take the blame for that as I was stupid to leave it there.
About ten years ago, I left a tour jacket at FOH draped across my console chair while I went to catering. Somebody in the house stole it, before doors were open. No big deal other than I was cold. Again, I was an idiot for leaving it there when I thought it would be safe.
But things have really gone too far nowadays because local people are stealing gear. A few years ago I walked into a convention center where I had a giant rig of lights in the air. I needed to replace a bulb in a mover. When I went to the spares case I got a big surprise. Someone had opened the case overnight and now all my spare moving light bulbs were missing. The case just had typical sessions latches on it and no way to lock it. Whoever took them knew exactly what they were looking for. They left the source 4 bulbs but took all the expensive ones, including the 5k fresnel lamps.
So nowadays many people use coffin locks on their cases. But that’s not really enough either since anyone with a set of Allen Keys can open your case. If they want the stuff, they will get it.
Last year I did a show at McCormick place in Chicago. Huge show with tons of multicable and feeder. We finished loading out on a Monday night and left the gear sitting in cases on the floor. The next morning one crew guy came in to supervise the forklifts rolling the cases onto the truck. He noticed that 3 of his multi cases were missing. The booth was the last one to load out so it wasn’t too hard to look for the cases. They were missing. So he walked downstairs and started poking around another part of the convention center.
Lo and behold, he found 3 empty cases by a roll up door. Not hidden, just looted.
Well he called the security team and raised a huff. Twenty thousand dollars of cable was missing from the cases. So they checked out the surveillance camera tapes. Lo and behold, they saw the culprit. A guy (teamster one may think) had driven on to the empty floor and one by one took the cases to a freight elevator, went down a level and then rolled them over to a pickup truck. Obviously he had a coffin key to open them because the tape showed him loading the bundles of wire into the pickup. Probably to be sold for scrap copper somewhere. Didn’t even bother to return the empty cases. The tapes were grainy and the lighting insufficient so they could not nab the culprit.
But at least the police report was filed and an insurance claim was made by the lighting co to compensate for some of their losses. But later on I found out that other lighting companies had been pillaged for copper as well. Unbelievable. So we all took a hit on one of the biggest shows this place does all year.
So last week I saw an email from another local Chicago lighting company. Once again they were looted at the exact same show, one year later. Cases of extra cable leftover in spare road cases was looted from the loading dock during the show. They did not even wait for load out.
We are out of ideas. If we put up a cable camera, they will steal that too. We thought of buying a bunch of steel knack lockable cases for the extra cable. Then someone pointed out that they could just fork the whole nice work case on to their pickup and take that too.
So now we are settling on using 1/2” steel wire rope to run thru the handles of all the cases on the dock. Thinking at least the fork cannot move 30 cases at once. Someone would need a serious bolt cutter or welding torch to get thru this, but hopefully it will deter some thief.
Otherwise, I am really open on ideas on how we can stop this, if you got any. Thanx.
Nook
