Turn on your back porch lamp on at night to prevent burglary.
– Photo from Wikepedia.com.
House breaking incidents, robberies and others often happen lately. Though there are security companies available, it does not guarantee that we are free from being a victim. Having good security is good indeed, but we also need to play our role in preventing or acting to prevent unwanted events from happening.
Here are some tips that we can utilize. Just read, at least we know what to do:
1. Don’t let your kids sleep alone in your living room. They might be using your kid as hostage.
2. Lock or hide all your knives in your kitchen before sleeping. All house burglary cases are found to have lost knife and according to police they burglars will find a knife first before stealing things to protect themselves.
3. If you heard or seen you outdoor tap or garden tap is on in the middle of a night (12 midnight and above), don’t go out to off the tap because this is their latest tactic to get your open your door and get in.
4. Tell your children if they need to go to toilet in midnight or early morning (if the toilet is far away, some houses have their toilet separated), wake up their parent to be with them.
5. Don’t keep your jewelries in your wardrobe.
6. Keep your car alarm key at reach when sleeping, if you woke up at night because of suspicious sound, try turning on and off your car alarm to scare off the burglars and to show that we are alert.
7. Press your car alarm button if you suspect that the burglars have already got into your house.
8. If you saw strange peoples and strangers around the area of your house, get their car or bike plate number. They usually are in two and if you look at them or pass by them, they will bow their heads down.
9. Tell your neighbors, if there are peoples come to your house and admit that they are our relatives to take our stuffs, don’t let them. Give your office number or mobile phone number to your neighbors so that they can check that with you.
10. When sleeping, be sure that your mobile phone is around you or a cordless phone or a phone extension is besides you. This will make easier for you to make emergency call if you feel that a burglar is already in your house.
11. Make a list of emergency phone numbers such as police, firefighters, 911 or others. Make sure you store these numbers in your mobile phone as a quick access number. If you can memorize them, try to. This will ease you to make a phone call.
12. If you can afford it, install burglar alarm device or intruder detection device at your house.
13. The porch lights and lamps behind your house should automatically turned on at night, either we are at home or on vacation. Try using energy saving lamp or green lamp to save energy.
14. If you are in a long vacation, ask help from your neighbors to collect your mails in your mailbox and newspapers. Tell you newspaper delivery to not send you their newspaper during your vacation. A mailbox full with letters helps the thieves smell your absence in your house.
15. If you are in an area where burglary is frequent, make a formal request from your nearest police station to have frequent policemen patrol in your area.
16. If you just bought a brand new car, at least lock your gear and steering wheel before sleep. This actually cannot stop a car theft, but it will slow down and make it difficult for the thief.
17. If you have female kids, it is better to have them lock their room door from the inside and be sure that you have a duplicate in case there are other emergencies such as fire. Some thieves make sexual assaults.
18. If you have, keep a hockey stick or baseball bat underneath your bed to defend yourself from an aggressive robber.
19. Don’t left your key under a vase, mailbox, door bars or windows edge when going out. These are old tricks and thieves already know this a long ago. It is safer to give it to your neighbors that you know well.
20. If you just move in into a new rented house, change to new padlocks, you’ll never know that the past renter still is keeping the spare keys.
21. Never give your house keys to contractors that work on renovation on your house. If you have to, change the key or use temporary padlocks and change again after the works is done. Also take the contractor information for future reference.
