Secure Your Home: Police Offer Tips To Prevent Burglaries

Editor’s note: the following tips were compiled and submitted by Sandy Springs police Capt. Steve Rose:

From Jan. 1 thru Oct. 31 of this year, there have been 529 burglaries or an average of just under 2 a day. As I’ve said, most of them are apartment burglaries. There are some crooks who prefer working with single family homes. Apartment burglaries and house burglaries have two different approaches. Most house burglaries happen during the day. Generally, the crooks prefer to enter from the back of the home to avoid being in view. Entry is usually made by forcing a door or window, listening for the alarm to activate, and then moving inside.

Once inside, they move up the stairs looking for goodies to take. Bathroom vanity areas, closets, and bedroom dresser locations are favorites for jewelry. They work fast mostly going upstairs and moving down. They’re probably in the home an average of ten minutes — unless they fell secure. Then, they’ll extend the time.

Home office areas have computers and home office desks at times have checks and other negotiable items. Home office areas also are a favorite place to store a gun.

What to do?

• Well alarms are good if you use them. Every once in a while we’ll see a cat burglar case where the guy enters at night and takes the purse from the kitchen counter. In some cases, the homeowner hears a noise and sees that the burglar just left or is in the process of leaving.
• Do a walk-through of your home. Check the windows and lock them. If you have an alarms system, place the alarm company stickers on each window in the back portion of the home. If you don’t have an alarm system, also post alarm stickers on each window in the back portion of your home. (Trickery is allowed.)
• Basement and or back doors do not necessarily have to be as visually appealing as the front door so my advice is to get a metal door or even a very solid heavy wooden door. Deadbolt it with a 2” throw and check the wood that the strike plate attaches to. If it’s worn, the screws will rip right out. Make sure that strike plate is secured with 2-inch screws. If your home is older, you might want to re-secure the door jamb. It’s not hard. Most doors come in a prefab frame that slides onto the 2x4’s that make up the door framed area. A carpenter can shore this up pretty easily if it is weak. The goal is to not allow the door frame itself collapse. Remember burglars can’t afford to take much time or make much noise.
• Windows are common points of entry. To be practical, if a burglar wants in bad enough, he’ll compromise the window by throwing a rock or using a crow bar but on average, most don’t want to make such a fuss. If you’re alarmed, the window break should set off the alarm.
• Pinning the windows is just as effective as a window lock. Don’t use a nail but rather a pin that is much thicker. You can get them at the hardware store in the specialty area.
• Let’s say the bad guy gets into the basement. In order to access the house, he’s got to move up the stairs to the main area; therefore the door leading to the basement should also be either metal or that really solid wood. Remember the door is only as good as the door jamb to support it. Yes, install another deadbolt, one sided is fine. The door should not have windows.
• As far as the main area of the home, do some proactive work. Record serial numbers of your electronics. Remember laptops, flat-screen TV’s and game systems are popular. We recover them all the time so having a number corresponding to you will make the return much easier. If something doesn’t have a serial number, you can use a simple engraver to engrave a number on the back or other inconspicuous place on it. Just use a number (please no Social Security numbers, dates or birth or anything like that) that you can record on a master list of numbers. Don’t keep the list on your laptop. Digital photos are good too. Just be organized.

Weapons

Guns should be accessible to you when you need it, for instance, at night. When you’re gone, guns should be stored somewhere it would take some time and imagination to find. Any weapon that isn’t your “ready” gun should be locked up and/or wrapped with a gun lock. Jewelry should not be in the traditional areas one would look for it, like vanity and dresser areas.

Safes

Good safes are solid and bolted into the floor. The best is a safe bolted into a cement floor. Again, make the job of getting to it time consuming.

Cameras

More and more cameras play a pivotal role in catching crooks. Home cameras are now commercial and professional quality. The price is now lower so that it really is affordable. Placing them inconspicuously throughout main areas can give you 3-4 different versions of the same person. We make a lot of arrests based on camera images.

Be proactive

Neighborhood Watch is an effective program. They’re easy to start and involve communication with one another. Nextdoor.com is an app that many neighborhoods use for a variety of topics including crime. We monitor them and frequently post information on them. For more information, e-mail me at srose@sandyspringsga.gov.

Out of town house checks are done by Sandy Springs police. The form is on our website. If you get along with your neighbors, let them know when you’re going out of town. Have them pick up the mail versus having the USPS notified. Have your lights and other items (if you like) on timers to come on at different times. For instance, downstairs at 6 p.m. and upstairs at 7, and so on. I recall one woman who had a timer on her vacuum cleaner that went off for 30 seconds when she was out of town. Remember NOT to leave the lights on all the time, especially the porch light. That’s a giveaway. Have your neighbors walk by the house on the evening walk. Have the paper picked up.

Facebook

I know we’re all looking forward to you posting a photo of the lobster you ordered for dinner while you’re on vacation however remember that advertising your absence is not always a good thing. Can you Facebook page give me an idea where you live? Check it out and edit down so that it doesn’t.

Risk vs. Opportunity

A simple but effective formula. Heighten the risk and lower the opportunity. Burglars don’t want to get:

1. Shot
2. Bitten
3. Caught

Remember they have an endless amount of victims they can choose from. Your goal is not to be on the top of the list. It’s like the joke about two guys running from the bear. You don’t have to outrun the bear — only the other guy.

See it—Call it in

If you second guess yourself enough, you know that most of the time, you’re wrong. Did you see something suspicious? Call it in. Burglars will dress like the utility guy or other service people, but the legit ones have valid ID and company ID on them. They drive company vehicles properly marked. Get your guard up when someone comes to the door soliciting services like gutter cleaning. Don’t tolerate door to door solicitors. Call them in and let your neighbors know.

Photo credit: Shutterstock