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Resources
Home Safety
- Good locks, simple precautions, neighborly alertness and common sense can help prevent most crimes. Get together with your neighbors to keep an eye on each other’s homes. Half of all home burglaries occur during the day when alert neighbors could spot the thieves and call the police.
- Install good deadbolt locks in your doors (not the spring-latch ones with the key in the knob) and use them! About 33% of burglars get in through unlocked doors and windows!
- Avoid door locks that can be manipulated by breaking glass or door panels to reach inside.
- Make sure outside doors, including the one between your house and garage, are solid 1¾- inch metal or wood and fit tightly in their frames. Hinges should be on the inside.
- Secure sliding glass doors with commercially available locks, with a rigid wooden dowel in the track, or with a nail inserted through a hole drilled in the sliding door frame and projecting into the fixed frame.
- Lock double-hung windows by sliding a bolt or nail through a hole drilled at a downward angle in each top corner of the inside sash, or buy window key locks at a hardware store. Consider grills for basement or street level windows.
Going Away?
- Burglars hope to avoid confrontations, so make your home look occupied!
- Leave lights on and the radio playing, preferably a talk show, when you go out
- Keep your garage door closed and locked
- Use inexpensive timing devices to turn inside lights and radio on and off at different times
- If no one will be at home for more than a few days, arrange to have someone pick up the mail and newspapers. Have deliveries stopped or sent elsewhere
Outside
- Trim back shrubbery that hides doors or windows. Cut back tree limbs that could help a thief climb into second story windows
- Make sure all porches, entrances, and yards are well-lit
- Help keep your neighborhood in good shape. Dark alleys, litter and run-down areas attract crime
Don’t be afraid to call police (911) when you see suspicious persons or activity