Early Friday morning, thieves broke into two cars parked in a driveway at a home in Dunbar while the owners were out of town. Because the car doors were never opened during the thefts (the windows were smashed), the car alarms did not trip. The thieves stole loose change and other small items including the remote garage door opener… which they used to gain entry to the garage.
Fortunately, as soon as they stepped into the garage, the home alarm’s motion sensor tripped, alerting the neighbours and sending a signal to our office. We responded immediately and found the garage open but nothing had been taken from the garage. Luckily, the sound of the alarm alerted a few of the neighbours who ran out and likely scared the crooks off.
This incident could have been much worse, and serves as a good reminder to never leave a garage door opener in your car.
It also reminded me of an incident that I was invloved in when I worked for the RCMP in Surrey before starting Provident. It was during the summer of 1995 when a family had gone to spend a day at the PNE. Shortly after they parked at the Fairgrounds, thieves broke into their minivan and hotwired it. By checking the insurance papers, the thieves got the family’s address and drove the van to the family home. Once there, the thieves used the remote garage door opener to open the attached garage and drove the stolen van inside. Once inside, they closed the garage door behind them and then broke into the house without anyone being able to witness their activity.
The van was not reported stolen until almost 6 hours later after a full day at the fair. The family eventually called a cab to take them home and thought that a stolen van was the worst of their worries. Unfortunately, they came home to what I still, after 11 years with Provident, would call the absolute worst burglary I have ever seen.
The crooks would have had to make at least half a dozen full trips with the van as they had stolen not just the typical items that get taken in a burglary, but just about everything else including artwork, televisions, stereo equipment, furniture and even most of the family’s boxed storage in the basement. There was not a single room in the house that had been stripped of anything of value. In fact, about the only thing left at the home were the two bench seats from the minivan that the theives left in the garage in order to make room for all of the stolen goods.
(obviously, they did not have a home alarm system)
Suggestions?
Rather than using the remote control that came with your garage door opener, consider integrating your garage to your alarm system so that you can use a high security keyfob (that fits on your keychain) to open your garage. We can easily do this for you.
Once installed, clients then use one of our keyfobs to open the garage door as well as dis-arm the garage. Because the keyfobs are attached to your keys, they rarely get left behind or lost. However, in the event that a keyfob is ever lost, we can remotely disable it so that it will no longer work. Or, as we have done on a couple of occasions where a client has felt that the keyfob was stolen intentionally, we can remotely configure the keyfob to send a silent alarm when it is used. Either way, the important thing is that we can quickly, and remotely disable the device if required.
We have integrated garage door openers to hundreds of clients’ alarm
systems and typically the installation only takes a couple.
Another feature is that anytime an alarm keyfob is used to open the garage door, the alarm system will keep track of who opened the door and when, in the same way it keeps track of who has armed or disarmed the alarm at a keypad.
Later this week, I will post about how to secure your garage and what considerations you need to take into account when determining whether or not to extend your alarm system to your garage. If you have any specific questions, please email me.