"If someone crosses those sensors' beams, alarms and lights go off — and they run off before they break the window."
— Greg Wilson, Owner, Smoke Rise Bottle Shoppe, Stone Mountain, GA
The most obvious improvement in the newest generation of security cameras is the quality of their images. "In a lot of cases, we don't even have to go to court," said a person involved in security for the 336 state run liquor stores in Virginia. "Once the person sees the picture and how clear it is, they really can't deny it."
Just how good are the images? "We have people who do their store's inventory using the camera sys- tem," said Brian Davis, director of sales for 3xLogic, a company that manufactures the cameras and digital video recorders (DVRs) being used in the Idaho stores. "When someone is handling money, you can tell what bills they are holding. You could never do that before."
Increasingly, retailers are using security camera systems equipped with audio. If a customer has a complaint about how they were treated by an employee, the retailer can play back the incident, lis- tening to what everyone actually said. "We coach our clients to bring cashiers into the back office, show them a snippet of themselves wait- ing on a customer and point out what a good job they did," said Loss Prevention's Bregar. "There are two reasons to do this: one, the employee feels good
