Criminals often show great creativity and imagination in their approach. We hear the stories of the stupid criminals who fail and are caught but rarely about the clever ones who succeed and escape.
Roni Horowitz tells this story on the SIT site. ’It has become standard practice for companies to install an 
alarm system that is connected to a security center with a response unit. If a burglary takes place, a signal is sent to the center and security guards rush to see what’s going on. Recently I heard a very interesting story about how two burglars figured out ways of overcoming this obstacle.
They start by breaking the lock in the usual way, and the first burglar goes in and starts collecting the loot. The alarm goes off and a signal is sent to the security center. The second guy takes a NEW lock and locks the door from the outside so that it seems as though nothing has happened. When the security guards arrive, they look around, see that everything is OK, report to the center, curse the systems that have so many false alarms, and return to the office. At the same time, our friends take their time finishing off the job.’
Roni claims this is an example of an SIT tool: ‘Multiplication – solve a problem by adding to the problem world an object that is similar to an existing one. This idea is especially interesting because we bring in an object that seems at first to be an obstacle – the lock.’
The moral he draws is this; when you think you should remove something, rather think about bringing in more of whatever it is you want to remove, and when you think you should bring in more of something, think about removing it.
Paul Sloane
