Reduce Your Chances of a Robbery

As some of you know, my house was robbed in November. Today I read about another house that was almost robbed but the thief was scared away. Unfortunately, it seems like I am hearing more and more of this around Park City. What I have learned is that robberies happen here and the perpetrator will likely not be caught. So, your best option is to not get robbed. Here are some of the things I do (and know) now:

1. Our family does not leave the garage door open when we are not in front of our house.
2. Doors are locked, even when we are home.
3. I have wooden dowels in each window and door that slides to prevent them from opening. Our thief used a crow bar on a sliding window to break the lock. Making dowels is easier than it sounds and can be accomplished in 20 minutes at Home Depot. Measure the opening in each door window, take the measurements to Home Depot, and ask them to cut handrail into pieces of lengths you need. The dowels can easily be painted to match your window.
4. I have motion detectors around the outside of our home that signal when someone comes close to our home.
5. I now have an alarm system, although we don’t advertise this with a sign of the actual alarm company because that allows the thief to know about how your system works.
6. I call the Sheriff any time we see someone suspicious in our neighborhood.
7. I check to see if there are any cars on the street with people sitting in them as we pull away from our house.
8. I have moved anything I really don’t want stolen to a safe deposit box at the bank.
9. I would actually rather have my dogs with me than left alone trying to “protect” my house. If someone was willing to break my window and steal from me, what might they be willing to do to my dog?

Here is my goal:

1. I want to be observant and notice any potential thief if possible.
2. I want to make my house look hard to break into. That way they may go somewhere else.
3. If a thief gets into my home and I’m not home, I want to slow them down as much as possible. They are trying to get in and out in less than 5 minutes. I want it to take them longer than that, so there is a chance that they will be caught.
4. If they get in and I’m home, I want to know via the motion detector and alarms that an intruder is there and I need to take action.

I realize it sounds a little overboard; however, in practice it’s not much harder than it was before. It just took realizing that even though we live in a beautiful place like Park City, robberies do happen here. Perhaps because of that, they happen that much more often.