The parking garages in the big city face major challenges. Vandalism has increased sharply since the corona crisis, the number of customers has decreased. And what about the transition to electric driving? Philip De Brabanter, director of Q-Park Belgium, about his Brussels parking garages.
Graffiti, broken car windows, smashed-in entrance doors. Empty fire extinguishers or fire hoses, broken barriers or destroyed cash registers. Spray on the cameras that helps to monitor….
Vandalism has always been there, but it has increased sharply since the corona crisis. This can partly be explained by the fact that more drug addicts are seeking refuge in garages. More people have also ended up in precarity, which may lead to more burglaries. Philip De Brabanter – Belgium director at Q-Park – estimates that the number of cases of vandalism in some garages has increased almost tenfold.
There was also a burglary plague in Brussels recently. What are you doing to make parking garages safer?
De Brabanter: The range of tasks of our mobile teams has expanded, the people are technically and practically trained. In addition, we keep the garages hermetically closed. We have installed more cameras in the stairwells, as well as in the garage itself. We monitor 24/7 via camera images.
Yet the pedestrian entrance of the Lepage car park in the center of the city has been open for months, or so we hear.
De Brabanter: I checked, the door was indeed open. But the door is checked daily. It’s the new trick of sticking tape on the door so that it doesn’t fall into the lock… We see those vandalisms on camera. Thanks to our images, the police often manage to arrest people quickly.
Should The Police do More For The Safety of The Garages?
De Brabanter: The police are already doing more than enough, it is Justice that has to make decisions: that is where the shoe pinches. Last week, the police arrested the perpetrator of the burglaries in parking Lepage, he was already walking around at the beginning of this week. There was also a burglary in the Pacheco parking garage at the beginning of this week. It is too early to say whether the person arrested was the perpetrator.
It’s very frustrating. We do everything we can to make the car parks as safe as possible. But those who shouldn’t be there come in anyway. You can’t make it one hundred percent safe, for example, they slip behind a car. The police arrest them, but they are soon released. It is mopping with the tap open.
Is it an option to get the porter back? I understood that until corona there was always a doorman…
De Brabanter: A porter is not there 24/7. We have mobile teams that can be on site within five minutes. They are with at least two people. If something happens, you can’t intervene on your own anyway. If you try to reach customer service via e-mail, you sometimes have to wait a few days. But you can reach someone from Q-Park 24/7 via the info button at the pedestrian entrance. One of our mobile teams will be contacted if necessary via the info button. In an emergency, the operator sends the police.
This article is originally published on bruzz.be
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