<p>The concept of a home invasion has always freaked me out, and two years ago in CT, where I live, there was a terrible situation where a man’s entire family was killed and he was severely injured during a home invasion. I’m very careful now to make sure all our doors are locked when it starts to get dark, and we’ve even begun to lock our cars even when they’re only in the driveway, since they contain the automatic garage door openers which can be used to get into the house. But it seems to me that, if someone didn’t care about making a little noise or breaking a few things, it would be relatively simple to get into anyone’s home. I mean, we have sliding glass patio doors that could be broken, and “sidelights” next to the front door, which someone could break and then just reach in to unlock the door. I’m starting to wonder if maybe we should do more. </p>
<p>What do the rest of you do to keep your family and your homes safe? Do you have a security system with an alarm? Just keep a baseball bat by the side of the bed?</p>
<p>I would suggest an alarm. There is an initial outlay, and yearly monitoring fees, but it generally will go off if someone opens a door or window as you describe. There are sound and motion detectors as well as door and window alarms which can be added. They have alot of additional things that they will tell you about. There are panic buttons that you can have as well. You can add fire and CO2 alarms which are also not a bad idea. I remember when the tennis player died in a house in the hamptons from CO2. Nothing is fool proof, but you can add to your security.</p>
<p>Home invasions often happen during the day, especially in the suburbs when lots of people are gone.</p>
<p>There are amazingly sophisticate alarm systems today. You can get one that will trigger a police alert any time a glass door breaks. They signal when any door is open and show on pads which door. You can put panic buttons in–one push and police are on the way. You can get a system to do just about anything.</p>
<p>Are you kidding??? Do not, do not, however “nice” your neighborhood is, leave unlocked cars in the driveway! If possible get them into the garage at night . Our community has been plagued by vehicle burgleries… if the same vehicle has the DVD players ripped out of the seats two or three time while parked in the driveway or the street, with the “Disney edition” bumper sticker… - well, what do you expect?</p>
<p>At night activate the lock on your garage door opener bolted to the wall. If your car gets broken into, the garage door cannot be opened automatically.</p>
<p>I am way too relaxed about our home security…I am aware that problems can arise anywhere, but the reality is that the town we live in has little crime, other than a few car surfing problems with kids when school is out in the summer.</p>
<p>I do have an alarm system but do not turn it on ever…I sometimes leave my back door unlocked when it is warm. I have retirees living close by who watch over things in the cul-de-sac.
I have a worthless watch dog ( golden retriever who happily welcomed my nephew into our home at 3am )
I actually am more concerned with making my 12 yr old daughter more paranoid that she already is about being abducted than an actual issue taking place at our home
Before moving to this home, I even left my doors unlocked at all times excluding vacations. Also, my car was parked in the driveway, keys in ignition and my purse inside.
If I was to become a victim of a home invasion or robbery, I would have no one to blame but myself, I realize…yet, I still feel that statistics are on my side (((( gasp ))))</p>
<p>We got an alarm system for our house when we moved here 23+ years ago. It’s a safe area, and no one else on our street has an alarm, but we were moving from NYC and carrying our paranoia with us. We do turn the alarm on when we go away overnight, but never otherwise. I figure the deterrence of the sign in the front yard is the main thing. We often leave a car in the driveway, locked, but the driveway extends around the back of the house so the car is pretty well hidden from the street.</p>
<p>Note - for your front door you could install a double cylinder deadbolt - i.e. one that requires a key to lock or unlock it even from the inside. It prevents one from breaking a sidelight and reaching it and simply turning a knob. Also - don’t forget to always keep the door between the house and garage locked since garages are easy to break into and then they can sometimes just open the unlocked door to the house (as I know from personal experience - on the receiving end).</p>
<p>We don’t have an alarm system but do have a dog pound mutt that does a fair imitation of Cujo when anyone approaches the house. I read an article in the newspaper where someone had interviewed incarcerated home invaders/thieves who said that a barking dog was the biggest deterrent to home invasions.</p>
<p>We always park our cars in the garage with doors locked.</p>
<p>We have a $3 light timer on the lamp in the front window of the house. So when we are away from home, there will always be a light on in the front of the house.</p>
<p>For the sliding doors, go to a lumber yard and get some large dowels or strips of wood to lay down in the door tracks. That way even if the locks get jimmied, the doors can’t open.</p>
<p>For the doors with the side lights install sliding locks or something similar to what hotels have. Install them either up really high or really low where they can’t be reached by the side windows.</p>
<p>When you are out of town, install the timers on your tv as well. The flicker of the light will make someone pause and think that someone is home.</p>
<p>Make it look like you have a big breed dog. Buy a “I love my pittbull” door mat.</p>
<p>Yeah, I admit it. The last one I just made up.</p>
<p>One thing I have heard about at sporting events around here is that people leave their GPS in the car and the cars are being broken into, the GPS stolen as well as the garage door opener. All the thief has to do is turn on the GPS and set it to bring you (them) home and once they get there they also have the garage door opener which helps give them full access to your house. Of course best thing is to take the GPS out of the car, if not then at least set your GPS using a password if possible or actually set home position a few blocks from where you live or your work address and never leave the door from the garage to the house unlocked.</p>
<p>I’ve heard people recommend setting “home” on your GPS as the closest police station to your house, and setting a different waypoint as your home under a different name.</p>
<p>We have a key safe where we secure all our spare home and car keys, as well as our keys to our safe. Our fireproof safe contains all our important documents (soon, we’ll be getting a safe deposit box, but our belongings didn’t warrant it until now). All valuables are photographed and the photographs are kept offsite, in a password-protected album, for insurance purposes. We carry renter’s insurance. We have an alarm. We’re in a third-floor apartment, nothing to climb to access any of the windows. The balcony door and main entrance are wired into the alarm system, and it’s monitored. The police show up if the alarm goes off and my husband or I don’t give them a password when the monitoring company calls us. There’s a silent panic code that we all know and regularly talk about.</p>
<p>We don’t keep anything… ANYTHING… visible in our cars, our cars are always locked… while we’re driving, while we’re parked at home, while we’re parked anywhere. Mine is alarmed; my husband’s is not. His was broken into last year but nothing was stolen, though they did $1500 worth of damage (they cut through the convertible top with a pocketknife).</p>
<p>Anything with our names on it gets shredded instead of just thrown in the trash. We check our credit monthly for anything weird. Our cell phones are locked and passcoded, with ICE (In Case of Emergency) numbers displayed on our iPhone backgrounds. Our financial information on our computers is encrypted and password-protected.</p>
<p>Our pets are microchipped. We have gone through a thorough regimen with our cats to train them to hide under the bed when strangers arrive, when they hear an odd noise, when the vacuum comes out, or when it’s time for a bath, and we drill them on the procedure regularly.</p>
<p>Perhaps my saving grace is that we have two noisy, noisy, noisy barking dogs. They bark when the neighbor across the street coughs. They bark when the children on the street walk to the school bus stop. They bark when anyone comes to the door. They bark when my children come home for a visit. They bark when DH or I comes home after half a day away. </p>
<p>I’m mainly concerned about Bad Guys who have no qualms about property damage in order to gain entrance to the house. While the dogs will bark, perhaps the best deterrent would be an alarm system sticker, real or not.</p>
<p>There is very little crime in our town, except a few years back when a lot of homes were broken into during dinner time. We have these McMasions where if people were downstairs, you couldn’t hear anything upstairs. Many people don’t put sensors on their upstairs windows either</p>
<p>The scariest thing we had was in a middle of night someone rang our doorbell. It took a few seconds before we woke up and realized it was the doorbell. It rang again, when my husband looked out there were 2 men standing outside. He had me call the police and grabbed his samurai sword ( not sure what would have happened if he’s used it). The police was at our house in 3 min, no joke. They didn’t find anyone, but said some homes have been broken into that summer because people were on vacation. I think those 2 guys were going to break in to our house because they thought no one was home.</p>
<p>Whenever I am home alone, even in the day, I set the alarm to stay. All windows and doors have contacts. If anyone is opened, the alarm goes off. The glass break sensors are on in the stay mode. The motion detectors are NOT on.</p>
<p>There used to be a great-but-terrifying show on the Discovery Channel called “It Takes a Thief”. Two ex-burglars (who used to be VERY good at what they did) would get permission from homeowners to break into their houses and ransack it. They’d videotape everything, then have the homeowners watch it. They’d lay out everything that they stole on a table, go over what they took, repair all the damage, post a guard overnight, and then the next day, they’d come back and install security upgrades to secure the house. Oftentimes, the burglars would get away with multiple vehicles and thousands and thousands of dollars in goods, and the houses would be trashed. Dogs were never a deterrent… They’d always be very friendly to the burglar, and he’d throw a toy in a closet and close the door on the dog. One time, the burglar stole a whole cache of guns, a cop’s badge, and all the cop’s uniforms. That was pretty scary to watch. It was a real wake-up call to some people. You can live in a nice, idyllic neighborhood, but those are the ones that these guys hit. Nobody expects a Spanish Inquisition.</p>
<p>Ditto…barking dogs are no deterrent…they simply let our dog out so she ran away until someone found her later. Neither are wood dowels on patio doors or fake alarm stickers/signs deterrents.</p>
<p>We lived in the same house for over 20 years, an old house in a quiet suburb with lots of retired folks home during the day, including my parents who lived 2 doors down. My daughter, a freshman in high school at the time, drove up into the carport one day after school to find the door slightly ajar. Not thinking, she stepped into the house, which was completely ransacked. The police said it appeared as though they left in a hurry and that it may have been DD driving up that frightened them off. </p>
<p>Our dog barks at everything, yet it didn’t stop them. We also had the wood dowel on the glass patio doors. This was an old house and the burglars actually pushed in the entire frame and glass picture window over the kitchen sink. We hadn’t wanted to invest (and didn’t feel the need to) in an alarm system in such an old house. I was never comfortable in that house again, it was so disturbing that my daughter could have walked in while they were still there.</p>
<p>Nobody in the neighborhood, including my parents who were home, saw or heard anything. I’m here to tell you not to have a false sense of security. We moved to another house with a monitored alarm system as did my parents.</p>
<p>There was also a rash of home invasions in our city on elderly people at night where they were beaten and tied up, then robbed. The people were caught and apparently targeted their victims by canvassing the neighborhood under the guise of tree trimming. In yet another case, a lady in a quiet suburb was home from work sick in bed during the day; she didn’t answer the door when the doorbell rang so they kicked in her door (probably thinking noone was home), tied her up and robbed her.</p>
<p>My advice is to get an alarm system, have it monitored and use it. I could care less about someone taking my “stuff” but my family is a different matter.</p>