Franchisee Ronnie Mossotti joined Signal 88 after serving as a police officer.

Elaborate on your background.

I grew up in Kentucky and was a University of Kentucky graduate. I was a police office for four and a half years before I bought the Signal 88 Security franchise in Clearwater.

How did you hear about the brand and why did you choose to get involved?

I liked Signal 88’s method, including the technology aspects and patrols. They seemed extremely knowledgeable about criminal activity and how to prevent crime. I was able to use along with information from my police experience that I had previously used to protect people. We work closely with the local police and sheriff’s offices and we’ve been able to reach out to contacts there to help them solve crimes. We’ve had an apartment complex that was getting burglarized and we were able to work very well with the local police.

What are some of the ways that Signal 88 has been able to help local community members?

We’ve been able to bring our patrol service to some of our HOA communities. We’ve seen crime at places that didn’t have security at all and since we started patrolling those areas they have gone down 90%.

One example was at an apartment complex where they had a security officer there for 8-10 hours per night. When we reached out to them and told them what we do they we’re receptive and decided to try out service out. One of the issues before was that patrons at the office weren’t able to find the security officer. If you are a resident and live in a community with a security officer and you aren’t able to find them it doesn’t do you much good. We asked this company to give us 90 days to prove that we could help. The residents said they’ve never experienced this level of peace of mind before. We’ve been able to knock the police calls down 90% at all of our locations. The HOA is called Bridgewater HOA in St. Petersburgh and they have seen up to 90% decrease in crime.

We are able to handle some of the things that police can’t or don’t have time to handle in our local markets. Glass at the pool is not a law but it is a rule, so we as security officers ae able to come in and handle that issue. We are able to curb a lot of the issues that police can’t handle. If you live in an HOA and people are being disorderly we are able to manage that.

What’s next for you and your business?

Potentially, this is very far down the line. We’d be open to expanding to other communities in Florida where they don’t have a Signal 88 Security close to them.