Your home is the one place where you should be safe.  Secure from uninvited visitors who want to steal your belongings and possibly cause you bodily harm. The locks on your doors are your first source of home security so it’s important that they are in proper working condition. If they fail to operate correctly the bad guys or even a hard wind could be coming through your doors.

In 2015, an estimated 14.3 billion worth of property damage and theft was a direct result from home burgaries. In 2018, roughly 325,000 homes were broken into. That seems like a lot, but think of it in this context; if you walk down Bourbon Street in New Orleans at three in the morning and walk with intent, hanging your head high, you will be fine. But stare at your feet with a terrified look on your face, and someone may take it upon themselves to rob you.

Similarly, criminals look for weak spots on a house before deciding to break in, if the crime isn’t personally motivated. An easy mark, so to speak. Here’s a nice list of tips you can use to help keep yourself, your loved ones and your possessions safe.

1. If your garage door is open or unlocked, anyone who wants can enter it. Be wary of your garage door the same you are your front door. Secure your garage door with cane bolts and hasps. Besides your garage door, you should also secure storage sheds, fence gates and tool boxes with padlocks.

2. Rose bushes, or other plant life that is full of thorns, can be a great deterrent if strategically placed near windows. Make sure you keep the security bushes, and all of your hedges and shurbbery , well manicured, as to not give a hiding space to burglars.

3. Bright lights and motion sensors do wonders to scare off criminals.

4. Make sure your entry point doors have a solid core or use a metal-clad door with inside hinge pins and at the very least, a one inch deadbolt. If your hinge pins are on the outside, a crafty criminal can easily take your door down.

5. Don’t use hide-a-key fake rocks and the like. It might fool your nieghbors, but it doesn’t fool a crook.

6. Leave lights on to make it appear as if you are home when you are not. Also, NEVER leave a note on your door saying “Be right back”! You are advertising that your home is empty to break into.

7. For those with decorative windows on their doors, make sure they are made of unbreakable glass on both sides.

8.  Double key deadbolts are a must for any door with a window, decorative or not. In case of emergency, the key to your double key deadbolt should be left in the lock at all times when someone is home.

9. Peep holes on your doors. Nuff said.

10. Secure double hung windows with a pin. What you do is drill a hole at an angle through the top frame of your lower window halfway into the frame of the upper window, and then enter your security pin.  You can also add an extra layer of safety to crank windows by drilling a hole through its latch handle and frame, then put in a metal pin or a nail through the hole and boom, you have an extra lock.

11. A large amount of home burgaries occur because someone left a door unlocked. Don’t be that person, lock your doors.

12. If you can open and close your garage door with a keypad, reprogram the code often.

13. Security systems cost a lot of money, but a sign or sticker that says you have a security system is free.

Tip:

About the only thing burglars have in common is wanting to steal your property. To protect yourself from different types of burglars and the burglaries they commit, you need to, firstly, understand them. Most burglars have the same goal. They want to steal whatever they can get away with and convert it into money as quickly as possible. However, each thief responds to challenges in varying ways. Understanding these criminals