CONSUMERS : ‘Tis the Time to Outsmart Yule Burglars
‘Tis not only the season to be jolly. ‘Tis also the time to be especially cautious and to safeguard your home against burglars. During the holidays, police say, thieves increase their activity because there’s often plenty of pricey booty to be found under those Christmas trees.
National statistics show that a break-in is reported once every 10 seconds at an U.S. home or business; in Los Angeles, a residential burglary is committed once every 10 minutes.
So if you’re going away for that Christmas vacation, or plan to be gone often during the holidays, play it smart and protect your home or apartment as much as you can.
For example, you can call your local police to see if they will conduct vacation checks of your home. Many agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department, offer such a service, and some departments not only will drive by your house but will have officers get out of their cars to double-check doors and windows.
The frequency of the visits depends on officers’ other crime-fighting commitments that day, says the LAPD’s Lt. Fred Nixon, adding, “We’re big, but we’re not uncaring.”
He said that senior lead officers at LAPD stations handle residents’ requests for vacation look-ins.
“Those officers are like mini-police chiefs at their divisions. The requests are forwarded to them and they either do the vacation checks themselves or assign someone to make them. We try to do them on a daily basis, also for businesses. People can call the station, give their name and address and tell us what dates they will be gone.”
In Pasadena, police who handle “extra service” requests will feed information on vacationing residents into their computer. They also ask residents to provide emergency telephone contact numbers. “We’ll get out and shake doors and make sure everything is OK,” said Pasadena Police Lt. Gregg Henderson.
Besides working with the police, if you’re planning to use house-sitters who aren’t friends, be sure they have proper references or are bonded before hiring them, experts advise. “Make sure the company has credibility and references in the community,” said Lila Greene, who operates Renta Yenta, a personal services company. She hires house-sitting services for her clients or does the work herself for $25 a day.
As a deterrent to burglars at any time, law-enforcement officials agree, there’s no beating an alarm system connected to police or private security agencies.
Even burglars rate security systems as the best way to keep thieves out of the house. In a recent study by Ohio State University researchers, 600 imprisoned burglars, armed robbers and car thieves reported that security systems, electronic window sensors and closed-circuit televisions were their top deterrents; they also gave high marks to dogs.
And though forces on both sides of the law concur that there’s no foolproof burglar protection, there are ways to, perhaps, persuade criminals to by-pass your home.
Holiday merry-makers, for example, “shouldn’t put the tree in the front window and then stack $6,000 worth of packages under it, open the drapes and go out to a party for the evening,” Henderson said. “Somebody may come by and do their Christmas shopping.”
He also suggested that gift buyers, “when they’re taking presents out of the boxes . . . should record the serial numbers of the items before they’re installed and etch their driver license number or California ID number on the back of it. That number will follow a person all over the state. A Social Security number on the item won’t do us any good in tracking it. Social Security numbers are private and we can’t access them.”
Officer Rick Shields, an LAPD senior lead officer at Venice Beach who monitors vacation checks for his area, agreed: “If they stencil on the driver license number, there’s a much better chance of getting the VCR, TV or whatever back.”
If you do buy or receive expensive electronics--televisions, VCRs, stereos or computers--don’t put out those empty boxes for trash collection until the last moment. Thieves can learn a lot about what’s in your home just by checking the garbage, Shields said.
Most of the seasonal home protection is “common sense,” said Beverly Hills Police spokesman Lt. Robert Curtis. “If they’re leaving town, they should alert us and tell their neighbors. They should have someone pick up their newspapers and not advertise the fact that they’re going to be out of town. A lot of residents here have private security. But we encourage them to call the station and let us know when they’re going to be on vacation.”
For those who don’t have them, police recommend that property owners install dead-bolt metal locks extending at least an inch into the door for all outside entrances; keyed window locks are good, too.
Indoor lights and radios that are hooked to timers can give vacant homes that lived-in look, while outdoors, inexpensive photoelectric cells can automatically trigger lights to go on at dusk and shut off at dawn.
As for alarms, Shields of LAPD advised: “They give people a sense of security. But there are a lot of accidentals (false alarms) with them. . . . And they’re expensive. They can run from $200 to $5,000 or $10,000.”
Michael Feldman, vice president and general manager of Post Alarm Co., which includes Post Patrol and Romark Security, said the systems “work the same way--they basically detect an intrusion and send a signal to the police station or alarm company. The difference in price is in the quality and the number of features of the system.”
Some less-costly systems, for example, lack various sensors to protect different doors or windows or they guard against only break-ins but do not warn of fires, he said. Some services are tied into private security patrols, rather than simply alerting a distant office, which then calls the local police.
Post Alarm’s Post Patrol, for example, is a private security firm offering residential and business patrols by officers in cars. Such residential services cost from $35 to $150 a month for 24-hour, seven-day service, Feldman said, “depending on area and on the more physical attention they require, walking around the house. . . . Commercial patrol is $50 and up per month. Some commercial clients pay up to $6,000 a month for a lot of patrolling after hours, say, at a warehouse when people aren’t there.”
Feldman advised consumers considering alarm systems for their homes to ensure that the firm is fully insured or bonded; that it has a state license, as required by the California Department of Consumer Affairs, and that each of its employees is state licensed and carries identification.
