Occasionally when I chat with folks — especially strangers — I’m reminded that living in a central-city neighborhood poses certain risks that those in middle-class suburbs escape. Truth to tell, most of the time I don’t dwell on the dangers presented by the meth colonies directly to the north and to the west of us. My house is secured, I have a barking dog, and I’m armed to the teeth, so…well…make my day. 😀
Today, though, in response to a Quora query, I was led to articulate the steps I’ve taken to secure my home. These are strategies most of us can use and, with the exception of the security doors and the drill-resistant deadbolts, modestly priced. And none of them include owning a shotgun or a baseball bat…
Assuming you live in a place you own, as opposed to a rental…
Install motion-sensitive light fixtures outside all the doors.
Also install, motion-sensitive floodlights that will light up each of the exterior walls. Place these up under the eaves, where a prowler can’t easily reach them to unscrew the bulbs.
Install good-quality steel security doors on all exterior doors, and equip these with tamper-resistant, drill-resistant locks such as Schlage or Medeco.
Equip exterior doors and windows with “screamer” alarms that you can set to squeal if the door or window is opened (this assumes you’re not fond of whole-house burglar alarm systems).
Or, if you don’t mind the expense and nuisance, call a burglar alarm company and sign up to have them alarm every entrance and send you a bill once a month.
Attach timers to a few lights and a radio inside your home. Set these to go on and off at various times (for example, to make it look like you have moved from the living room to a bedroom or family room). Leave the radio playing just loud enough to be heard through a closed window…but put it on a timer, too, because most burglars are smart enough to know you don’t have the radio blatting 24/7.
Some of these, such as #4, #6, and #7’s barking dog alarm gadget, apply to rentals, too. Also, you can get motion-sensitive light-bulbs, so if your apartment has porch lights, in theory you could replace the regular bulbs with these — I’ve found they don’t work very well, so personally would not spend the money on them. But nothing ventured…
The last “safety alert” the head of our neighborhood group sent out reported seven burglary and prowler incidents over the preceding fifteen days. That’s one every two days. And it includes only the those that homeowners relayed to this guy, not every single episode on the police blotter.
At least two sets of perps are watching residents’ movements. They wait until a homeowner leaves, then break in a back entrance, walk through the house to the garage, open the garage door, drive their car inside, close the door, and clean out the house. Then they drive away, unnoticed by the neighbors. One woman was ripped off royally in the time it took her to run to the grocery store. The latest victim was close to my house, and the perps who drive the green station wagon were recently seen peering over the back wall at La Maya and La Bethulia’s house.
Burglar alarms don’t help. One guy, knowing it would take the cops 10 or 15 minutes to get there after the security company called them, strode through a house with the alarm blaring—he had plenty of time to lift a laptop and rifle through all the papers in the owner’s home office.
For quite some time, I’ve been quietly thinking about installing security doors on the four entrances in the back and on the side of the house, which cannot be seen from the street. Three of these doors are sliders; one of them latches but does not lock, and another will not latch or lock at all. All three Arcadia doors are alarmed and “secured” shut (more or less) with sticks in the runners. The back door is the worst menace: it’s a cheap Home Depot affair with glass lights and a single-cylinder dead bolt. Even I could bust through it: use my shoe to break a window, and then just reach through the opening and unlock the door.
I’m not fond of security doors. My feeling is that the burglars, not the honest citizens, belong behind bars. How can I say how much I resent feeling that I need to live behind bars, alarm systems, and glaring security lights when I have done nothing to deserve being locked up? But…on the other hand, if the guys across the street had had security doors front and back, they wouldn’t have suffered a home invasion, wouldn’t have been beat up, wouldn’t have been chased down the street by a guy waving a pistol. Security doors have other plusses, too. The one on my front door allows me to leave the door open to let the fresh air in on lovely days like today, and its ugly security screen lets me see out (sort of) without a stranger at the door seeing in. When someone rings the doorbell, I can open my front door to see who they are, but they can’t see whether I’m alone, how big I am, how old I am, or whether I have a mastiff standing at my side. These are good things.
On the other other hand, when La Bethulia was here the other night, she remarked that a house she owned in Moon Valley had a pair of security doors over an Arcadia door. During the hour or so it took her to go out to dinner one evening, the perps took a crowbar to the lock and just broke it off. This left them plenty of time to go through her belongings at their leisure. So…it may be that security doors are not as secure as they look, especially with instructions on how to “bump” a lock available on YouTube. My locks, like most people’s, are vulnerable to this easy break-in technique; to secure all my doors, I would have to replace every deadbolt in the house with safer locks, not an inconsiderable expense.
And speaking of expense: security doors are not cheap. Most of them are plug hideous: they look either like prison doors or like a kitsch dealer’s wet dream. See what I mean?
Welcome to the Big House!We wuv whales!
Titan Security Doors, the outfit my favorite door-&-window retailer does business with, does offer a coupleof models(that’s two, count’em, 2) that aren’t excessively offensive:
Frank Lloyd Wright run amokOkay, I don't hate this all THAT much...
At first I thought Frank Lloyd Wright Drops Acidwould work, since the windows in front have a FLlW-like motif. But then La Maya pointed out that after you’ve looked at it for a minute or two, your eyeballs start to vibrate. Imagine two of those babies, back to back, spanning an Arcadia door. Ouch! Although We Wish We Lived on Nob Hilldoesn’t in any way fit the house’s general mood, neither does it cause pain to the eyes.
The cost of these charmers is so outrageous that if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. The window guy was here measuring a couple of days ago, but he still hasn’t called with an estimate. I figure he took one look around the place and realized there was no way I could pay to cover all the doors in back with the things.
Maybe the best strategy would be to put one on the kitchen door (which is just a regular exterior door) and a pair on the Arcadia door in the bedroom. This would secure the softest entrance, and it also would allow me to leave the bedroom door open at night, when the weather is nice. Then, if a miracle happens and I manage to hang onto my job for another couple of years, I can fortify the remaining two Arcadias. Meanwhile, I’ll just have to do the best I can to make it hard to open them.
Occasionally when I chat with folks — especially strangers — I’m reminded that living in a central-city neighborhood poses certain risks that those in middle-class suburbs escape. Truth to tell, most of the time I don’t dwell on the dangers presented by the meth colonies directly to the north and to the west of us. My house is secured, I have a barking dog, and I’m armed to the teeth, so…well…make my day. 😀
