Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera says at least three of every 10 violent crimes in Mexico City are committed with toy weapons.

Transformation is rarely instantaneous. It generally starts with one small initial change — repeated over and over. For Protection 1, small changes in every area of the company have produced remarkable transformation, resulting in a year deserving of the SDM 2012 Dealer of the Year award.

Patty Hartman will be the 2012 recipient of the George A. Weinstock Award for lifetime achievement and service to the security industry. But most notably, Hartman, a former two-term president of CAA, is the first female to receive the award.

Talk to a Protection 1 employee and there is a palpable energy that radiates outward about their job, the company and the customer. Chicago-based Protection 1, has always contained a deep-rooted love for the customer. But while employees embraced the concept, the execution was missing, as Protection 1 experienced declining growth for seven consecutive years.

You can tidy up or rehearse speeches if you want to when you know someone is coming to visit, but you can’t fake genuine enthusiasm.

Jim Corbett, United Alarm, Brookfield, Conn., is warmly called the “fastest panel programmer in the East” by NAPCO Security Technologies Inc., Amityville, N.Y. He can program panels like nobody’s business, having plenty of practice since he has been at it since 1974.

RFI Communications & Security Systems (RFI), San Jose, Calif., is not beginning to learn IT’s lingo, trying to harness the network or ramping up its comfort level with IT. The company already has implemented cloud-based solutions that other companies are just now diving into.

A TV set is not a monitor, but it can certainly function as one, especially if it has an HDMI connection. Price points for flat-screen TVs have swiftly decreased in recent years, and continue to fall. It can be a big decision — choosing to use a cheaper consumer computer monitor or TV or pay more for a commercial monitor for security applications

Small to mid-sized security companies, especially in today’s economy, do not have deep pockets for marketing. Sometimes it can be a challenge to do any marketing at all. Even if a marketing department exists, it can be understaffed and unable to meet the demands of all the ways a company can be marketed — leading to missed opportunities and lost potential customers. That is where a dealer program’s marketing offering can make a difference.

This week, the space shuttle Endeavour slowly traveled through the streets of Los Angeles to its final home at the California Science Center (CSC).