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I don't know where you're living, OP, but between the neighbors who won't call the cops when they see suspicious activity, won't watch your home when youre away, and removing the mailboxes because of theft, well, it sounds miserable. I know you explained it's not a high crime neighborhood, but it sure sounds unpleasant. At least, on a social level.
Nobody in this neighborhood has removed their boxes. Others in other neighborhoods have, but it is a small town. As I already stated, we did have a neighbor check when we were gone and will do so again.
It IS a bit unpleasant, probably not in the way you think. The unpleasant part is realizing that people are too willing to give unfamiliar or questionable people the benefit of the doubt. "Oh, I thought that was just so-and-so's friend." The problem is that when there are, in fact, many noncriminal strangers (tourists) around, you cannot be paranoid about someone looking at a house or street. Some of them are just plain lost.
What vacay? You must be talking about someone else.
I admit I haven't been reading through the 7 pages/60+ posts, and I was just curious as your original Thread Starter post was several weeks ago, and ref'd:
Quote:
Originally Posted by pikabike
...I want to take extra precautions when we go away. With so many tourists and other nonresidents present all year, unfamiliar faces are not noticeable...and some of the criminals are locals, anyway.
...
I don't want to be a smart alack BUT ... if you are that worried that your house will be burglarized when you are gone with all of the precautions that you have taken, you really need to look at moving to a better neighborhood.
This
I haven't been at my house in 2+ weeks. I'm not even remotely concerned about a break-in. My neighbors would call or email if something happened and nobody is going to pull into our little private lane in an unknown car without a retiree neighbor challenging them.
I got rid of the Intermatic Astro timers, and good riddance to them. Ironically, the day the electrician was working at our house, a neighbor who had recently had two of those installed ran over and asked him to figure out why hers was not working as programmed.
He made the other changes I had decided on, including several new motion-detector lights, and we still can manually turn on the other, non-motion-detector lights any time we want (which is not often). I like the new setup much better, and we will continue with all the other precautions already taken. Still need to add one more thing that is a DIY project.
If someone wants to break into a house they will do it. In the last 2 yrs when our subdivision had a rash of break ins, all but one of the homes had alarms on them.
A Alarm pretty much means they cant clean you out, since they have 5 mins and under to get what they want and leave, since they know a cop wont show up for a minimum of 10 mins+ typically and those 3-4 mins is all they needed to take your tv, gun, laptop and whatever small item they could find and even steal your car when they see the keys for it.
Cameras serve more as a deterrent and might work with teens, but if someone really wants to get in your home, they just put on a mask and the camera near useless at that point.
Like many have said, timers, a motion sensing camera that emails you, along with an alarm is the best bet and hide your PC or personal files if you are still worried about being broken into.
I hide that stuff, including vehicle keys, and in some cases lock them up in odd places, when we go away. They could search for them, if they're willing to risk getting caught while taking that time to search. The cops in a small town have much less distance to cover, so 5 minutes would be very risky.
Of course a thief can break in despite alarms, lights, and other deterrents. That is why they are called deterrrents, not guarantees. But better to have some deterrents than nothing. Any obstacle I can put in their way to ill-gotten items is another reason to go pick on an unalarmed, un-MD-sensed, unlocked house instead of mine. And, BTW, even though neighbors are not nosy/guarding types, an alarm going off or other obvious red flag would probably result in someone calling the cops, who would be notified by the alarm company anyway.
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