Tips to Stop Criminals from Choosing Your Home!
Easy steps to prevent home invasions.
Private Investigator Craig Brooks
Tips to Stop Criminals from Choosing Your Home!
Easy steps to prevent home invasions: Brooks Brothers Investigations Craig Brooks
As a police officer I investigated hundreds of burglaries. Remember Hardworking criminals can gain access to almost any home. Fortunately, most criminals aren’t hardworking at break-in time. Instead they look for easy marks. Let’s read on for some home security tips that can lower the odds of home invasion and improve your peace of mind.
Your home is your castle, keeping it secure and your family safe should be a high priority. Many focus on how to handle a bugler once they enter your home, instead you should focus on methods to reduce your home from being an easy target. Consider the mindset of someone who is wanting to illegally enter your home, most buglers and home invaders are opportunists. They are looking for an easy target with a low chance of risk to themselves. Finding a way to reduce the probability that someone would want to illegally enter your home can be done with the following easy steps.
1. Lock your doors and windows
This might seem like common sense, but many people forget to lock their doors and windows and hence providing easy access to points to buglers. According to our research, about 33% of buglers in the United States are considered unlawful entry and less of burglary, meaning intruders gained entry without breaking in usually through an unlocked door.
2. Make your house well light at night.
Someone looking to enter your home doesn’t want to be seen. It is easy to forget to turn the lights on sometimes so just set them to turn on automatically when it's dark using a photosensitive switch.
Outside your home, have motion-activated lights or keep lights on throughout the night. (Solar lights might be most cost effective and reliable.) Place the lights up high and where they aren't easily disabled.
Inside your home, keep lights on even when you’re away. Security systems with home automation make it easy to program your home’s lighting. With mobile app control, you can adjust the lamps no matter where you are. Automated window blinds are an option too.
3. Make it appear someone is at home.
Contrary to popular beliefs most home invasions don’t occur at night, 67% of them often occur between 6 am and 6 pm. Most times a bugler attempting to access your home during the day will pose as a salesman to find out if someone is home. Often, they will knock on your door and if no one responds it’s a green light to them.
4. Learn to rely on neighbors to watch your house
The best way to have your neighbors is to be a good neighbor. Take your time to develop a good relationship with your neighbors. Or even volunteer to be in the neighborhood watch association if there is one in your area. This way you can always be sure your home is safe when you are not around.
5. Remove shrubbery from around the house
Doing this will make the bugler not have anywhere to hide. Also, consider planting plants around your house that have thorns. Anything you can do to make it difficult for them to get close to your house will make it a challenge to them.
With these simple and inexpensive steps, you can severely reduce the probability that your home will be a target for home invasion.
6. Use Radio and TV
When you leave your home, help create the impression it's occupied by playing a talk radio station or the TV. Criminals might still try to break in if they think they won’t be noticed, but the sound of voices can be a deterrent.
7. Fortify Your Doors
A properly fortified door can’t be kicked in. You can reinforce a basic wooden door with a few inexpensive metal strike plates. A strike plate is several inches high and covers part of a door’s front, side and back. Similar reinforces can be installed around door handles so that they’re more difficult to remove.
As for locks, strong doors are secured with high quality deadbolt locks. An effective door lock is solid metal (not hollow) with a throw at least 1.5 inches long. Many of the leading home security companies sell powerful door locks with keypads.
8. Guard Your Windows
To help stop criminals from choosing your home, walk around the premises and examine your windows with a criminal mind. Are basement windows easy to open? Protect them with metal grates or bars. Are higher-up windows accessible? Remember that criminals could use a ladder, a patio table, a drainpipe, a car or each other’s shoulders as a boost. Use window locks!
9. Lock Away Helpful Objects
Homeowners sometimes make criminals’ job easy by providing the tools! Store your ladders and stackable items (such as heavy boxes) in a locked area. Avoid placing a table or other item near your home where it might be used as a step. Keep your snow shovels and other potential break-and-entry tools out of reach.
10. Don’t Stash a Key
The most helpful object for an intruder is a house key. Many people think that they hide their spare keys. However, stashing a key is very risky. It raises the risk of entering your home without seeing any sign of intrusion… and possibly encountering a criminal.
Criminals know that people often “hide” keys beneath doormats, above entryways and in plants or faux rocks. And if you choose a more unusual spot, that can be discovered through snooping or spying.
If you tend to forget house keys, then automated door locks with keypads might be a good solution. You might also rely on a trustworthy neighbor, but make sure that they store your spare key in a smart location. Don’t label the spare key with your name or address. Instead attach it to a unique keychain that helps the neighbor remember whose it is.
11. Grease the Drainpipe
It might sound cartoonish, but criminals really do climb up drainpipes! To foil this home invasion strategy homeowners sometimes coat metal drainpipes with slippery substances such as petroleum jelly.

12. More Home Security Tips
What are your favorite tips for home security? Send us your strategies! Also check us out on our web page Brookspi.com or on FB Brooks Brothers Investigations.
Hope this helps someone
Detective Craig Brooks
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