View from the cop: Crime & punishment
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AJC.com > Metro > View from the cop > Archives > 2008 > November > 03
Monday, November 3, 2008
Good hardware deters burglars
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Many burglars will only spend about a minute trying to defeat the locks holding them out of your house. A combination of good neighbors and good locks can add up to a big deterrent to a burglar.
Probably about half of the burglaries we see involve the bad guy coming in an unlocked door or window. So first things first, lock them up. If your front door does not have a dead bolt, get one. A good dead bolt should have a 1 ½ to 2” throw. Make sure it’s well installed.
Sliding doors are sometimes easy access into the home. You can install commercially available locks or use a broomstick or dowel in the inside track to jam the door from sliding open. To prevent the door from being lifted from the track, drill a hole through sliding door frame and the fixed frame then slide a pin through, connected both.
Double-hung windows can be secured with key locks. You can “pin” them by drilling a small hole into a forty-five degree angle between the inner and outer frames. Insert a nail that can be removed. Don’t forget to place the alarm-company decal on the windows or if you prefer, the picture of the Rotweiller foaming at the mouth. I have a photo of my Uncle Dewey after “Tequila Night at the Moose Lodge” posted on the windows and door. It reads: “Come on in, I’d love to meet you!” under it. He’s smiling and his eyes are going in different directions and he’s drooling all over his old “Johnny Paycheck for President” airbrushed t-shirt he got in Panama City in 1984. Not only do we not have any burglar problems but have us on THEIR do-not-call list. Whatever works!
Check your doors. Flimsy doors don’t keep anyone out. Unfortunately, many older apartments have sub-standard door frames and doors that cave in on the first kick.
Check it and request that maintenance come out and look them over. Make it know that you want a new door if that old one doesn’t fit tightly, or has an obvious weakness. (In apartment communities you sometimes have to be persistent so be persistent.)
Install a peephole or wide-angle viewer in all entry doors so you can see who it is outside without opening the door. Forget door chains. I don’t know why they even install them. They don’t keep out intruders. Speaking of opening the door, don’t be afraid to ask who it is when somebody knocks or rings the doorbell. Find out before you open the door.
Speaking of opening the door (again,) be mindful that we got a couple of calls from residents as well as complaints from retail areas such as the grocery stores that young males were trying to solicit money for a basketball team. Sometimes these are legit but there have been some problems with these being phonies too. Ask questions and request a phone number to call and verify. Be careful.
Check your lights on the outside of the house. This has more to do with thieves looking to break into your car but if you read this report often enough you’ll remember where we occasionally have a cat burglar who probably originally intended to go into the garage and then into the car and steal from it but found the door leading to the kitchen from the garage open and took a purse from the kitchen counter. These night thieves hate light. Motion detection units are affordable and be bought at hardware stores and then easily installed.
Keep the bushes cut back enough so that you can see your windows. Under the window, plant bushes that have nice sharp points on them.
House numbers—(this is a pet peeve of mine) should be large and loud. It costs valuable response time when we cannot find your house number. Make them painfully obvious! Neon is fine.
Put timers on your lights and even your stereo inside the house. Don’t let the mail pile up. Call a neighbor to pick it and the paper up. Why have your neighbor pick it up instead of the post office canceling it for a while? The less people who know you’re gone, the better.
Use the Out of Town House Check Form. You can download it at www.sandyspringspolice.org under “downloadable forms.”
And finally. Remember to inventory what you have. Serial numbers and digital photos of items are great for recovering stolen property. A major problem with just about all police departments is not being able to identify recovered stolen property. With digital photography and computers, there’s no reason you can’t have beautiful 5x7 glossies of your expensive jewelry, electronics, heirlooms. Anyway, the point is, have a record of what you have and put it on CD or something, somewhere, where we can access it later. For instance, my Uncle Renaldo has an impressive collection of deer heads he keeps in his trailer up near Ball Ground. Sometimes, when he gets into a bottle of Old Gumshoe, he puts one of them on and chases the neighbors around some. It’s all good harmless fun but the point is if they steal it and we recover it, we need for you to be able to identify it so we can give it back.
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