Fox 12 in Portland reported a story today about a pair of burglars who Police believe may be posing as door-to-door Window Salesmen.

The video clip of the story implies that the impostors never got inside of the victim’s home, but a couple of days after their visit, a Portland homeowner had his safe targeted in a burglary.

Irrespective of who actually committed the burglary, the notable part of the story was the fact that the victim was keeping $13,000.00 cash in a safe that he had bolted down in his master bedroom closet.

Here’s an excerpt from the story…

On Tuesday, Lee said he found his home trashed. Thieves stole rare coins, jewelry and $13,000 from his safe. Lee said the burglars broke in through a door and used tools from his garage to break into his safe.

“I had it bolted to the floor,” he said. “Evidently, it wasn’t as safe as I thought it was.”

There are few lessons from this story… the first two are the same as in my post about the Apple Store in New Jersey getting emptied in 31 seconds:

(1) You CANNOT make it physically impossible for someone to break in; and

(2) Five-Minute Proofing is the most important security tactic.

Of course, the most fundamental lesson is that you should not keep large amounts of cash in your home… put it in the bank. If you decide that you want to keep cash at home, by all means, put it in a safe and bolt it down. But, if you do not have a monitored alarm that will alert responders that someone is trying to get at your safe… they can take as much time as it takes to remove it.

The time that it takes to remove a safe is a lot less than most people think. Safes, even really, really heavy safes, are only difficult to move around when you are trying to be careful not to damage the walls (or anything else). If you don’t care about making a mess or breaking anything, moving a safe isn’t that hard. Just ask Lindsay Lohan.

Relying on a safe, just like relying on an alarm, often provides a false sense of security. Your security is in your redundancy. It’s all about putting multiple steps/tactics/measures in place.

If you have a safe, but do not have it monitored, you might want to think about how important the things that you have inside of it are. You might be better off spreading your valuables all over your home rather than keeping them all together in one easily movable box.

SIDE NOTE: In the video, the reporter mentions that the homeowner thinks that the impostors were looking for “window burglar alarm tape” on the windows. That’s fairly unlikely given that foil is rarely part of an alarm system that has been installed in the past 25 years.

If they were looking at the windows, it’s much more likely that they were simply looking through them in order to see if there was anything of obvious value that was easily reachable inside.

If they were savvy enough to look for alarm equipment, they would have simply cut the telephone lines.

Police in Marlton, New Jersey are looking for five suspects that broke into an Apple Store and made off with a few dozen Macbooks.

Click below to watch a news clip showing the brazen smash & grab that took just 31 seconds for the thieves to clean the store out of almost every display model.

Although the store had a Security Guard on duty, the crooks were able to smash the front glass doors and each took an ‘aisle’ in the store to grab every MacBook on display. Apparently, one of the crooks motioned to the Guard that he had a gun… forcing the Guard to back-off and not try to intervene at all.

As pointed out by the (incredibly annoying) reporter in the newsstory, the CCTV system in the store did not offer any deterrent value as the thieves simply covered their faces while they were in sight of the cameras.

Beyond the reminder that a CCTV system is not a deterrent, this smash & grab offers a few lessons:

1. You cannot make it physically impossible for someone to break in

If someone wants to try and break into your home or business, there is very little that you can do to make it physically impossible. If they want in, they’ll get in eventually. The trick is to put appropriate security measures in place that help make it easy for a potential burglar to make a decision not to bother with your place.

If you have a full-time security guard, extensive camera system or a big dog in your house, if a crook decides that he wants to try to get in anyways… he will. It’s the combination of the appropriate security measures that provide real security.

Your goal is to create enough perceived hassle for a crook that they make up their own mind that your store, or home, is not worth the effort.

2. Five-Minute Proofing is the most important security tactic

Five-Minute Proofing is the single most effective security tactic that you can implement in your home or business. Simply put, Five-Minute Proofing means that you ensure that, from the point at which the alarm is tripped, it would take a crook at least five minutes to get to what you are trying to protect.

In the case of this particular Apple Store, the store should have been equipped with glassbreak detectors near the front doors. More importantly, the glass panels themselves should have been laminated glass… or at least had security film on them, so that they wouldn’t smash so easily.

That way, when the crooks made their first attempt to smash the glass, the glassbreak detectors (if they were installed correctly) would hear the sound of the glass being attacked and trip the alarm. Alternatively, the camera system could have been set-up to trip an alarm due to someone standing at the front door for too long after-hours.

By designing the alarm to trip while the crooks are still outside, the Police could have been immediately called by the Security Guard to report what was happening and the alarm monitoring company would also be immediately able to assist. If the alarm monitoring company were monitoring the camera system, they could also relay the suspects exact descriptions, in real time, to the Police.

Beyond the front glass, there should be a second layer of physical security inside the store to help slow the crooks down. Expanding gates are often used for this purpose and are best installed several feet away from the front of the store. That way, if the crooks were able to eventually break through the glass to get in the store, they would then need to contend with getting around the expanding gates. Your security is in your redundancy.

Going a step further, each of the MacBooks could easily be locked down… not to make them impossible to steal, but ensuring that noone could simply grab a couple dozen of them in half a minute.

It’s not about making it physically impossible to get in… it’s about putting enough impediments into a potential crooks’ way that he is (or they are) unable to get to your valuables quickly.

If those three (the alarm, laminated glass and an expanding gate) Five Minute Proofing measures had been in place in this particular Apple Store, both the Security Guard and Alarm Monitoring company would have had a reasonable chance to call 911 and report a crime in progress.

The store would have had a damaged front door, but they would not have risked the safety of the security guard or had to worry about five crooks who learned how easy it is to break into their store and clean them out.

Click the video below to watch an excerpt from a recent ‘Preventing Burglary’ seminar where I explain Five Minute Proofing and give a few other examples.

Channel 4 Action News in Pittsburgh ran a story last night about a burglary attempt in West Deer that was thwarted by a 10 year old boy.

The burglar ended up being 21 year old Brett Kreider, who lives in the same neighbourhood, who is now a suspect in 8 recent burglaries. As is often the case with most burglars, the accused burglar had just gotten out of jail… for burglary.

The M.O. of the burglar is almost exactly as I’ve laid out in previous posts about how the typical residential burglary happens… the fact that it ended up being a single person responsible for a ‘rash’ of burglaries is also typical.

Here are a few quotes from the story… (you can read the full story here)

The intruder ignored a dog, but when a 10-year-old boy spotted him and yelled at him to get out, he fled the scene.

[Police Chief Joe] Lape said the burglar had already broken into two other homes in the same neighborhood that day.Investigators said the burglar, who operates in broad daylight, usually takes pills, money, weapons and anything else of value that is easily carried away. He has also taken a truck from one of the eight homes police believe he’s burglarized

The really important lesson in the story, comes next…

Police said on one occasion the burglar knocked on a front door to see if anyone was home. When the door was answered, the burglar said he was looking for a dog and walked away.

This is what happens in almost every single burglary… before breaking in, the crook will first knock on the door to check if someone is home. If anyone answers, the crook will make up a quick story about why they are there and leave as quickly as possible.

The vast majority of burglars are not violent and are not looking for drama… if they were, they’d be robbing a bank or holding up a convenience store instead.

The most important advice about home security that you can give your kids, nannies, housekeepers or other people in your home is to NEVER IGNORE THE DOOR.

If someone knocks on your door, you should always let them know that someone is inside. Don’t open the door, but talk through it to let them know that the house is not empty. If you believe that the person at the door is in any way suspicious, call 911. If you live in Vancouver, you can also call us at 604.664.1087.

Barking dogs are rarely the deterrent that people think that they are. The fact is that most house pets, despite a good bark, are still house pets… and a motivated burglar can get by them without too much hassle. A human being, on the other hand, is almost always more trouble than they are worth… even if they are only 10 years old. In almost every case, a potential witness is far too much hassle and the potential crook will move on to the next unoccupied home.

I’ve written on this topic before on this blog back in 2006 with a post titled Answer the Door and another one in April after a Delta teenager ended up having to call 911 from a bedroom closet after a burglar had broken into her home after she ignored the knocking at the door.

Reuters reported on Monday that Lindsay Lohan was the victim of a second burglary in less than 3 months in her Hollywood Hills home.

Apparently, the most recent burglary was discovered around 3am when Lohan came home to find her safe ripped out of a wall. Lohan’s father suggested the burglary was an inside job due to the fact that the alarm had not been armed by a member of her house staff.

Whether it was an inside job or not, leaving/forgetting to arm your alarm can create a major risk. However, if you are relying on other people to arm your alarm system in your home or business, there are a few things that you can do to minimize the risk of someone forgetting… or forgetting on purpose.

1. Partition your alarm system

Most alarm systems are capable of having at least a couple different ‘partitions’. A partition is a group of zones that can be armed/disarmed independently of other groups of zones (ie. other partitions). Most often, we use this feature to separate a basement suite or garage from the main house…. or a Manager’s office from the rest of a retail store.

In cases where clients have staff working in their homes, particularly when they are not home themselves, sensitive areas such as a home office, master bedroom closet, wine cellar or other similar areas can be armed independently. If a safe has been installed, we can either arm the safe itself, or the closet/room that it is installed in, to it’s own partition. This way, even if the main house alarm is not set, the safe is always armed and will trigger a response anytime that access is attempted. (For more details about security for your safe, click here.)

If it’s artwork that you need to protect, we can install sensors that will trip the alarm (with or without a siren) anytime that a painting, sculpture or anything else you’d like to protect gets moved… whether or not the rest of the alarm system is armed.

I discussed how we use this technology to look after paintings in a Global TV News story that was filmed after the UBC Museum of Anthropology was broken into last year. Click on the link below to watch a 50 second excerpt from that clip. (You can watch the entire clip here.)

2. Set up ‘Supervised’ Openings & Closings

In commercial applications, Provident provides ’supervision’ of the arming and disarming of client’s alarm systems.

The way this service works is that different staff members are assigned different permissions in our monitoring software. For example, while a business owner will be allowed to arm or disarm their business at anytime of the day or night that they please, a junior staff person may only be allowed to use their code between 8:30am and 7:00pm on weekdays. In the event that they attempt to use their code outside of those hours, we can either (1) program the alarm to simply deny access; or (2) allow access and send a silent alarm to the business owner to follow-up.

This service is also used to ensure that an alarm has been armed by a certain time. For example, if the last person out of your business typically leaves by 8:30pm, we can create an alarm that will automatically trip in the event that the alarm has not been armed by 9:00pm. If someone has forgotten to arm the system, we can either respond in person or remotely arm the alarm for you. Either way, the alarm is not left disarmed all night long.

Community Security TV will go live on May 20th at 7:00pm…

As each of our past seminars has quickly sold out, we’ll be trying something new on the 20th… we’ll be streaming the entire seminar live on the internet. If you’d like to watch from home, or wherever you are, click here to watch. Not only will you be able to watch and listen to the entire seminar, you can also ask questions using the ‘chat room’ feature.

There is no need to register or login to watch the seminar, but if you would like to be able to use the chat feature and ask any questions, you will need to have a UStream.tv username & password which you can get by going to www.ustream.tv and clicking on the ’signup’ link at the top of the page

Either in person, or on the internet, we hope that you can attend on May 20th.

Click here if you would like to attend in person… we’ve still got a few seats left.

Today, CBC reported about a disturbing sexual assault that happened when a man entered a home in Coquitlam around 3:30am and assaulted a 12-year-old girl who was asleep in her bed.

In this case, the man was able to gain entry to the home through an unlocked door. Luckily, the girl was able to fight the intruder off and scream for help.

This story reminded me of an incident in Kitsilano in 2006 where a very similar crime was committed.

While these types of incidents are not regular occurrences… they do raise the issue of how to best secure your home while you and your family are in it… especially while you are sleeping.

Beyond the obvious advice of ensuring that all of your doors and windows are locked, here are a few other things to consider:

Arm your alarm in STAY mode when you go to bed

With most alarms, certainly with each one that we install, there are several ‘modes’ that you can arm it in.

AWAY mode tells the alarm that you would like to arm every single device in your home, whereas STAY mode tells it to arm only specific zones. While the default programming is to make STAY mode arm all perimeter devices (typically all of the door and window contacts), we can program STAY mode to be anything you would like.

For example, we can program STAY mode to arm all of the perimeter devices as well as glassbreak sensors and motion detectors in the basement and certain areas of the home.

This allows you to arm your alarm, but walk around in your home without setting it off.

Your alarm system can only offer value if it is armed.

Ensure that you have portable telephones easily accessible

In the event of any type of emergency, it’s incredibly important to be able to call for help as quickly as possible.

While having a cellular phone is good, having portable telephones that use your landline (that are fully charged) offer the added benefit of providing Caller ID information to the 911 call centre so that even if you are unable to speak, they know what address to respond to.

Your security is in your redundancy… in the event that your phone lines are cut, a cellular phone is an important back-up measure.

Consider keeping your cellular phone charger in your bedroom (rather than downstairs in the kitchen) so that your phone is always charged and sitting on your nightstand.

Remember that home safety is much more than burglary detection

While these types of incidents cause a lot of fear, the reality is that the frequency of incidents like these are very rare.

A much more likely scenario is accidentally leaving something on the stove or something else that causes a fire to start. How old are your smoke detectors? Do you have monitored smoke detectors outside of each bedroom in your house?

A 14 year old in Delta is being commended for both keeping calm and acting quickly to help the Police catch a burglar in her home.

The teen was home alone when she heard someone at the front door… she ignored the knocking and ended up having to hide in the closet to call 911 while the crook went through the house – including into the room where she was hiding.

This story is only the latest example of why it is so important to always answer the door… without actually opening it.

Almost every burglar will first knock on the door to try and determine if someone is home… if they think it’s empty, they’ll break in.

If you have young children, babysitters, nannies or other people in your home, it is very important that they be told to always let the person at the door know that someone is home… but that they just can’t get to the door. At the very least, turn a light on so that a potential crook knows that the house isn’t empty.

If the person at the door doesn’t leave, call 911 immediately to report the incident… if you live West of Oak Street, you can also give us a call at 604.664.1087 and we’ll be happy to come by to check things out.

Click here to read about another similar case in Ohio last year.

One of the security risks with the majority of sliding glass doors is that they are relatively easy to lift out of their tracks…

In the past, we’ve always recommended that clients hire a locksmith to install locks on both the top and bottom of sliding doors to help deal with this risk.

I came across a much cheaper, do it yourself, solution for this issue on Shawn Flaugher’s blog.

“A washer screwed into the top part of the door that prevents it from being raised any higher then the side of the washer protrudes from the door’s edge.”

Click on the image to get a bigger version that’s a little easier to see.

Shawn is a Security Consultant in Raleigh, North Carolina and his blog has a lot of great content… especially for commercial and industrial properties.

Click on the video below to watch an excerpt from Tuesday’s home security seminar where I explain what happens when an alarm trips and why Police response is not the best option…

Police response to burglar alarms does not work. The only reason to have (and pay for) a monitored alarm is to generate an immediate response. Given that 98% of all alarms are false, the Police simply cannot be expected to treat them as a priority.

The solution is private response. At Provident, we guarantee a five minute response time… we treat every alarm as a real incident and do not make any attempts to verify an alarm over the phone. If a client has caused a false alarm, it is their responsibility to call us to let us know… otherwise, we’re assuming that they need us to attend immediately.

Our next seminar is being held on Tuesday, March 3rd… click  here for details and to RSVP

We’ve received a number of calls/emails from people today asking if they can just show up to tomorrow’s home security seminar in our Kerrisdale Showroom. Unfortunately, given space restraints, we really cannot fit anyone else in.

However, we have added another event next Tuesday, March 3rd…. exact same details as tomorrow’s event, just on a different day.

If you are interested in attending, please click here to RSVP for our March 3rd event.

If you are involved with a block watch and/or other group, let us know if you would like to book a private home security presentation… you can either bring your group here to us, or we’ll be happy to come to you. Contact Rebecca Bligh by email if you’re interested in more information.