Summer Safety – Protecting Your Home

Securing your home while away on vacation requires more than just locking your doors

***Guest Blog by John Garrigan, security professional***

Welcome to Summer! For a vast majority of people, summer is the season for vacations, water parks and trips to the beach. For criminals, summer is a season of opportunity. Numerous studies have shown that crime rates typically tend to soar during the summer months for a variety of reasons.

Summer months are when many homeowners tend to go on vacation, leaving largely unprotected homes and property behind them. In addition, people often tend to overlook common sense precautions, such as locking doors and securing windows, more often during the summer months than any other season. Law enforcement authorities note that burglaries are a crime of opportunity. So when people make it obvious that there is no one at home or leave valuables such as phones, wallets, cameras and stereos in plain sight, they become much more attractive targets for burglars.

Here are some proven tips to help protect your home:

Prior to going on vacation:

• Don’t broadcast to everyone in your building, neighborhood or on you social media accounts that you will be on vacation. The bad guys monitor these sites as well!
• Call your alarm company and let them know when you will be away (if you don’t have one, consider getting one); make sure they have a local contact to call in the event of an alarm.
• If you are going overseas, let your credit card companies know.
• Inform a trusted neighbor, friend or relative to watch over your home.
• Cancel all mail and newspaper deliveries or at least have someone pick these up every day.
• Walk your property and remove anything that could help a criminal get inside (ladders, etc.) and trim any foliage that provides a hiding place for a burglar or provides an opportunity to break in without discovery.
• Have a neighbor or other party park their car in your driveway.
• “Place lights, radios and televisions on timers that are programmed at different times and days to provide a “We’re at home” appearance.
• Install motion-sensitive flood lights on the outside of your home which will turn on if approached by a person. These are relatively inexpensive and easy to install.
• Register all of your charge cards with a credit card security company that will instantly de-activate them and help protect your credit rating if they are stolen or lost.
• Pack smartly and don’t bring expensive jewelry or other valuables that can make you a target and result in a theft.
• Set your home alarm prior to leaving and double check all windows and doors (including garage doors) are secured.
• Never leave any “emergency” spare keys under mats, in flower pots or other easy-to-find locations.

Preparing for vacation takes some work. Whether you’re heading on a road trip or you’re heading out of the country, taking a vacation requires careful planning and preparation. But all that extra work will result in you much more likely coming home to pleasant memories than having to call your insurance agent.

About John Garrigan: John is an accomplished and highly respected security professional with over 35 years of leadership in contract security, corporate security, risk management, training, and public safety.  He has served as administrative assistant to the Boston Police commissioner and held senior executive positions in some of the largest security companies in the US and the private sector. Early in his career, he developed a wide range of public safety improvement programs for a variety of US cities, including Atlanta, and the US government. John has been intimately involved in helping to establish high value strategic public-private partnerships between the public safety and private business/security sectors.