Some of the most wealthy and famous residents of Los Angeles are investing in private armies for protection as California continues to deal with the aftermath of the deadly wildfires and looters and scammers target affluent homeowners.
MPS Security is one of the security companies residents are turning to as they work to rebuild what they lost in the wildfires.
“When it first happened, they were only letting security companies up in the areas, so they were only letting people check on their houses if they could afford it,” Matthew Crider, executive protection manager at MPS Security, shared with Fox News Digital.
“I think that was kind of a downside. I felt like people didn’t know if their houses were still there. They had no power there. They probably use some type of camera system that needed power and definitely needed Wi-Fi, so that really did kind of take a toll on us.”
Crider said they had clients who would ask them to check on a neighbor’s home and see if it was still standing, offering help to those who couldn’t afford private detail. His agents would take photos of the debris and send them back to their clients for proof of destruction and to try to help residents determine if they lost everything or still had a home.
“It’s extremely heartbreaking that that’s how they found out. But we did do a lot of them to where, ‘Hey, your house is still here. I mean there’s some damage to the fence or whatnot, but it’s still there,'” Crider explained. “So with that, it’s definitely hard. But we did do that for some of our clients that asked us to because we did feel that it was kind of unfair that only security companies could go do patrols, and you had to pay that company to go see if your house was OK.”
