24-Hour Watchfulness: Your Cost-Free Family Home Security System
Awareness forms the basis for any change in behavior, and when it comes to home security, increasing your awareness is a primary component in increasing your security. Home security devices work when someone breaks into your home, but your watchfulness can keep break-ins from happening in the first place.
The Neighborhood Watch is a highly effective program based on the idea that community members can prevent crime by being openly watchful and by monitoring and reporting of suspicious behavior. If you can join or start a Neighborhood Watch, your security will increase as will that of your neighbors. Otherwise, you can still pay attention to what happens on the street outside your house. If someone is loitering around your house, he very may well leave when he sees that you are noticing him. If he doesn't leave and doesn't come over to introduce himself as your new neighbor or a kid with a lawn-mowing business, he feels too secure himself: call the non-emergency police line and ask them to come out and investigate.
Knowing your neighbors is key in keeping your home protected. Neighbors can pick up the mail when you're away, come over when you're alone and nervous, or help you let a potential no-good know that he's been seen and is outnumbered. Whenever possible, get to know your neighbors. Offer to help take care of their houses and yards while they're on vacation, and they can return the favor when you go away. Get together to plan shared security measures, such as automatic motion-detector lights that overlap in driveways, along fences, or near hedges where a burglar might hide. Call each other if you sense something may be wrong.
Notice your house's security faults and take measures to remedy them. Take a walk around the outside of your house, once in the daytime and again at night, taking notes and thinking like a burglar. Are your current home security methods enough, or are there gaps in your security systems? In the evening, make sure to turn on your indoor lights, so you can see what your neighbors see. Check your house's outdoor lights to make sure there are no dark places, and use motion detectors to illuminate porches, fence lines and shrubbery or trees. Make sure that light bulbs are changed as soon as they burn out.
Can you see inside the house? It's important to know that your family's movements aren't visible from outside. Have someone else stay inside and walk from room to room. You would be surprised how well people outside the house can see inside when night comes. One man's innocent glance from his kitchen one evening showed his neighbor washing at the bathroom sink. She thinks the textured glass is providing her with privacy. In a way, it is, since he's too embarrassed to tell her otherwise. Being an shy, old-fashioned man, he just doesn't look out his window anymore.
Are your computer, your television, stereo and art objects visible? Don't leave your purse or wallet on a table by an open window while you're in the kitchen doing the dishes: it may prove too tempting to passers-by. Reconsider your choice of curtains, using layering to cover sheers, and make sure to close your curtains in the evening, every evening. Sometimes home security can be as simple as covering a window.
Be certain that windows can't be opened from the outside, and lock them at night or when you are away. Plan your lighting so that the area outside your house is floodlit at night, and inside your house appears lived-in even when you're not home. Check that doors are solid core and door locks are secure, and make a security round at night to make sure the house is locked up. Make sure that upstairs windows either lock shut or cannot be accessed by trees or drainpipes or by tables, chairs, ladders in your yard. Lock your basement, sheds and carports, and keep them locked whenever you aren't using them
Other ways to keep your home secure include obtaining window stickers and signs from alarm companies and using them whether you have a home alarm system or not. Burglars want easy entry and a quick getaway: sometimes, a home security sign in the yard is enough to send a burglar somewhere else. "Beware of the Dog" signs may also act as deterrents.
Teach your children security awareness without causing them undue fear. Have them play where you can watch them, ideally in your fenced yard. Teach them not to open the front door unless they know who's there, and provide a small step inside the door to help them reach a wide-view (160 degree) peephole. Teach them what to do if a stranger tries to get them into a car, or tried to snatch them from the schoolyard. Practice running and screaming with them, and make it a game, but let them know that they should run away and scream if someone they don't know tries to touch them or take them away. Tell your kids, "This will probably never happen, but if it does, you'll know just what to do."
