0374117268 (N) by Geoff Manaugh

Author:Geoff Manaugh
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, History
ISBN: 9780374710286
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2015-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

Panic Room

A little more than an hour’s drive south of Manhattan, amid a rolling landscape of state parks and golf courses in the woods of coastal New Jersey, Vietnam vet and former New Jersey State cop Karl Alizade owns a small warehouse. Pulling into the parking lot of Alizade’s firm, you can’t miss the broken safe placed out beside the driveway, its door wide-open, sitting there exposed to the weather like a peculiar kind of lawn sculpture. It’s as effective a reminder as any that, to a burglar, safes are often just decorative, offering little more than an illusion of security.

Aside from the safe, it is not easy to guess what happens inside this warehouse set back among the pine trees. But here Alizade runs what architects would call a design-build studio; his is a busy workshop dedicated to conceiving and assembling some of the world’s most impenetrable architectural designs. Yet Alizade doesn’t think of himself as a designer, let alone an architect. He actually seemed somewhat taken aback when I explained that I was interested in his work from an architectural point of view. Rather, Alizade works in the niche world of the design of safe rooms—more popularly known as panic rooms.

Alizade greeted me at the front door in jeans and a half-zip black fleece sweater. He is built more like a linebacker than a businessman. He is stout, broad-shouldered, and has large hands; he gestured with them often as he spoke, twisting and turning them as if solving an invisible Rubik’s Cube in order to explain how his products were made. Despite his chosen field of security design and his physical resemblance to someone more likely to be leading tours through the Alaskan outback, he is jovial, prone to quick jokes and laughter.

After graduating with an engineering degree from Auburn University, and following a stint in Vietnam, Alizade joined the New Jersey State police force. During his time as a cop, he was struck by the raw, destructive power burglary had on victims’ lives, making it second only to rape, in his view, in terms of its long-term emotional impact. This is supported by much of the sociological literature: that intense feelings of betrayal and paranoia can be expected to follow any burglary, after which even the smallest detail from earlier interactions with neighbors can lead to a debilitating suspicion that perhaps they were behind the burglary. Maybe your neighbor made a now deeply suspicious comment when you mentioned you’d be going out of town for a week, or, in retrospect, a curious observation that you always seemed to be at the grocery store the same time every day—which was exactly when your home was broken into. This can lead to an often paralyzing fear of leaving the house or trusting any of your old friends.

Burglary is a horribly invasive crime, Alizade emphasized, offending the very idea of personal space and dignity. The feelings of embarrassment and violation it can cause are so powerful, he added, that he

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