What apartment managers actually call us about
Not many property managers call a security company because of one big incident. They call because the same handful of things keep happening and the front office keeps absorbing the complaints:
Resident parking and open carports overnight. The most common complaint at almost every community we cover.
Porches, mailrooms and parcel areas, usually in the hours right after delivery.
Non-residents, expired-tab vehicles, and cars sitting in someone else’s assigned stall for weeks.
Breezeways, stairwells, garages, laundry and trash enclosures after dark.
Pools, gyms and clubhouses in use past posted hours — a liability problem as much as a noise one.
Furniture at the dumpster, graffiti, damaged gates and broken lighting.
Between tenancies and during turns, when a unit is easiest to get into.
A marked patrol vehicle showing up on an irregular schedule deters most of this outright. What it does not deter, it documents — which is the half that actually helps you.
Parking enforcement: residential property has its own rules
Most people assume the 24-hour wait and the signs at every entrance apply everywhere. They do not. Under RCW 46.55.070(1) those requirements attach to nonresidential private property and public parking facilities. Subsection (2) is the part that matters to you:
RCW 46.55.070(2): the posting requirements do not apply to residential property, and a person having charge of the property may have an unauthorized vehicle impounded immediately upon giving written authorization.
RCW 46.55.080: a registered tow truck operator, employee or agent may not act as the property owner’s agent in signing an impound authorization, and may not independently identify a vehicle for impound.
Every private impound authorization must carry the statement that a person authorizing the impound may be held liable for the vehicle owner’s costs if it is found to violate chapter 46.55.
Read those together and the position is clear. You can act quickly at a residential property — but the decision is yours, it cannot be handed to the tow truck driver, and if the call turns out to be wrong the liability lands on the person who authorized it. What protects you is being able to show that the vehicle really was unauthorized: where it was, how long it had been there, and what the plate and stall were, recorded at the time rather than reconstructed afterwards.
That is what our patrol log is. Officers record plate, location, date and time with photographs on each pass, so a vehicle’s history at your property is established before anyone authorizes anything — and it is still there if the owner disputes it later.
General information about Washington law, not legal advice. Mixed-use properties can be treated differently for the commercial portion of the site, and your management company or counsel should set your written parking policy.
The documentation is what you are really buying
A patrol that shows up and tells you it was quiet is worth something. A patrol that can prove where it went, when, and what it found is worth considerably more — because three of the hardest parts of your job all come down to evidence.
Lease enforcement. A notice backed by a dated photograph is a different conversation from one backed by a neighbour’s account. Insurance and owner reporting. Claims and board questions both go better when the incident record already exists. Your own defensibility. When a resident argues the tow was unfair or the damage predates them, contemporaneous records settle it.
Every pass our officers make is time-stamped, GPS-verified and photographed, and it appears in your client portal the moment it is filed. You are not waiting on a monthly report or calling dispatch to ask what happened Saturday night — you open it yourself. If a patrol was missed, you will see that too. We would rather you catch it than wonder.
What a patrol actually looks like at a community
We agree a route with you covering the areas that matter at your property — resident parking and carports, breezeways and stairwells, the mail and parcel area, laundry rooms, trash enclosures, the pool and clubhouse, garage levels, and any vacant units you want checked. Then officers work that route on an irregular schedule, because a patrol that arrives at 11pm every night teaches people exactly when to avoid.
Officers check the doors and gates that should be locked, log vehicles that do not belong, move loiterers along, note lighting that has failed, and photograph anything a manager will need to see. Anything urgent gets called in straight away rather than appearing in a report the next morning.
Most communities are covered well by scheduled overnight patrols. Where there is an active, sustained problem, a dedicated on-site officer makes more sense — and we will tell you honestly which one your property needs. An unnecessary full-time post is the most common way a security budget gets wasted.
Where we patrol
We cover apartment and multifamily communities in Lynnwood, Everett, Mill Creek, Bothell, Edmonds, Mukilteo, Marysville, Shoreline, Lake Stevens and Snohomish. Our officers are already on the road in these cities overnight, which is the difference between a patrol built into an existing route and one dispatched from another county.
Lynnwood in particular is dense with multifamily housing along the 99 and Alderwood corridors, and the problems there tend to be parking, prowls and through-traffic rather than anything exotic. If you manage a community in that area, we can tell you what we already see nearby.