Burglary – Page 4 – Make Your Home Safer

There are roughly 2.5 million burglaries a year, 66% of those being home break ins. Police solve only 13% of reported burglary cases due to lack of a witness or physical evidence. Alarms.org Overlooked Ways To Protect Your House From Burglars You know the old expression about how insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? Sometimes in life, we get so caught up in stuff that we don't even think about the low hanging fruit that we can do with little effort to make our lives easier and better. Not to mention safer, too. When it comes to home security many people think that they need to buy a home security system and they're done. A home security system doesn't fix weaknesses that a thief can exploit however. Consider each entry point to your house, namely doors and windows and especially sliding doors which are common weak points with poor locking mechanisms. Pay close attention to side doors which are commonly exploited by thieves. Ensure your garage door is properly locked and have a lock on your gate to make entry into your backyard more difficult. Walk around your house from the outside and take a look at each vantage point. Remove unnecessary brush and trim trees and hedges to avoid creating hidden areas and add lights to brighten up dark spots near doors. Think Like A Burglar If you lock yourself out of your house and are able to get in through a door, a window or using the "secret" key you hid under the fake rock that you bought to store your spare key, imagine how easy it is for an experienced thief to do the same? Looks for the path(s) of least resistance that a thief could exploit. If you look through the back door or through the kitchen window, can you see the calendar on the wall or fridge that shows the dates you're traveling? A thief can see that too. Imagine that your calendar still shows last month because you are away for an extended period and no one is there to change it to the next month. A thief can see that as well. Don't let prowlers know you're not home. Solution: Think beyond the obvious. If you were a thief, how would you break into your house? Think of every weakness you can and fix them. Pay special attention to side house doors that are often hidden from view. Thieves often target them so add a deadbolt and other protection to make it harder to enter. When your calendar is visible through your kitchen window, you give your schedule to a potential thief to let them know when your home is empty. Secure Doors and Windows This seems obvious but if you read the stats mentioned above stating that 2/3 of break-ins target homes, you see that home dwellings are most frequently targeted for theft as opposed to commercial properties. Alarms.org also state that 95% of home invasions (break-ins) involve forceful entry. This means that 5% of break-ins involve the thief entering the house without breaking a window or door or picking a lock. They just enter the house because something is left open. 5% is a small number but if you're one of the those people who is careless about locking and securing doors and windows, you run the risk of being among the 2.5 million break-ins that occur each year. Protect Weak Entry Points Most break-ins occur in the areas you'd think of: Doors. Windows. Sliding doors. We already spoke about securing doors and windows. Sliding patio doors are often targeted by thieves because the locking mechanisms are often cheap and wear out and if improperly maintained, can be yanked open with force. Our home patio door is like that. I replaced the locking mechanism and still can yank it open if I try hard enough. Solution: Place a wooden dowel or long block of wood in the track to prevent the door from being slid open by an intruder at night or when you're not home. Our sliding patio door also comes with a locking metal bar that slides in place parallel to the floor to keep the door from being forced open. I use both. Shut Your Blinds At Night If thieves can't see into your house, they can't see your stuff. They also can't peer inside to see if there is anyone in the house or if it's empty when you're away. Make it harder for potential thieves to learn your schedule especially if you close the blinds and randomly leave lights on even when you're not home. Use Cheap Technology These days, you can easily and cheaply find technology to automate lights, produce sounds that make it seem like someone is home and apps that enable you to live monitor your house even when no one is home. Use automatic porch and backdoor lights that turn on with motion. Use light automation inside the house to randomly turn them on and off when you're not home. Get a smart doorbell with a camera and speaker. Modern ones enable you to be away from your home but still able to see and speak with someone on your cellphone with an app, making it appear like you're in the house even if you aren't. Buy window film that effectively tints the windows so you can see out but people can't see in. Beats living in a fishbowl and makes it harder if not impossible for people to peer inside your house. Don't Announce Your Vacation When you announce on Facebook that you're about to go away or are already on vacation, it's like letting people know your home is empty and available for the taking. Same goes with posting vacation pics while still on holiday. Have a chat with your kids too. Children don't think about the ramifications of posting personal information online and letting their friends - and everyone they are "friends" with online - that your house is going to be empty for specific dates. Sometimes, adults don't think about this either. Solution: Wait until you get home to post pics and vacation info. Let people know you were on vacation after you've already returned. A few days delay isn't going to change the fact that you had a nice trip but it could be the difference between your house being broken into or not. Protect Letterbox Openers If you have a letterbox opener built into your front door, know that there have been cases of thieves pushing open the letterbox and sliding a long rod or an unwound wire coat hanger into your house and snatching car or house keys off the counter that you've left by the front door. It happens. Solution: Don't store valuables near the front door if you have a letterbox. Attach a letterbox cage to the back of your front door to prevent letterbox fishing as described above. Better solution? Don't have a letterbox opener built into your front door. Secure Your Pet Door If you have a cat or dog door that flaps open so your pet can enter and exit the house as they wish, it literally opens another security hole into your house. While the openings are only big enough for a small animal to pass through, they can make it easier for thieves to access your house. Solution: Don't install the pet door on an actual door. Secure it to a wall and far enough away from your door that a thief can't access the back of your door to unlock a deadbolt from a distance. Alternatively, install the pet door inside your garage so that you can leave your garage open during the day for your pet to use but close it at night so the pet door is not accessible to anyone. Look for a pet flap that only opens with a collar-based sensor so when your cat or dog walks up to the flap, it unlocks the flap and locks again after they pass through. Don't Forget Your Garage If you have a standard garage door with a window(s) to let light in, thieves can break the glass and open the garage door from the outside by pulling on the emergency pull cord which bypasses even an electric garage door opener if you have one. Solution: Add a garage door lock on the inside of the garage to prevent the door from being opened when you're away for an extended period or even when not using the garage doors. Some garage doors have them built in already. Alternatively you can tie the emergency cord up in a knot so it's inaccessible from the outside or just remove the cord completely and attach it again when needed. Secure the back door of your garage if you have one with a deadbolt too. Look For Quality There's a reason why some deadbolts are $10 and why some are $100. The higher end locking systems have locks that are more difficult to pick and keys that are more difficult to mimic or copy. Secure Your Home For Cheap While you don't want to go cheap and get a false sense of security, you can better secure your home with some relatively inexpensive options. Let potential thieves know you've taken steps to thwart them. Can't afford a home security system? Get stickers that say you have a home security system. Get a Beware of Dog sign even if you don't have a dog. It may or may not help but for a few bucks, it's not much cost or effort. For under $20 you can get a no-drill door handle lock or a security bar for a door. For under $15 you can buy window locks and a flip latch to secure a door. From personal experience the flip latch is also good when you have small children so they don't escape out a door when you're not looking. For under $10 you can add an old-fashioned peephole to look through before answering when your doorbell rings. For under $2 you can replace short screws that hold your deadbolts in place with 3" long screws that better protect against your door from being kicked in. Add a quality deadbolt to side doors and other entrances that are hidden that thieves may try to target. On doors that have glass that could be smashed in, consider a deadbolt that locks from the outside and inside with a key rather than one with an inside latch that is turned to unlock it. This is great for infrequently used doors like a side door. If the window is smashed, the thief can't just reach through and unlatch the door. A deadbolt with a key lock on the inside of the door so that a thief can't simply unlatch it from the outside if they break the glass.