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5. Practical Home Security Tips
10 Basic tips to help you increase your safety levels. Many of these tips are things you would know or have heard of, and we have tried to make them easy to implement, and cost effective tips. These are only applicable to your house, not the yard or outer perimeter defence.
1. A good thing to have on all outside doors, is an inside safety catch.These come in different shapes and sizes (see example below). The idea is to not only lock the door’s own lock and the Yale lock, but to then also have a safety latch or safety catch for that extra security. This can cause would be “door breakers” to spend more time on opening the door, causing more noise and warning for you inside.
2. Keys in door locks – never leave the key in the lock – you never know when someone might pull the old newspaper under the door trick to retrieve your keys. Especially older types of doors and locks (I know, I’ve done it successfully myself before). Ensure you take your keys out of the door and store it somewhere safely away from the door. Also do not hang keys next to the door, close to a window where it will be visible from outside or easily within reach if I break the window.
3. Key control – ensure that you know who has control of which keys of your house. Do not store a spare key under the mat, behind a flower pot, above the sill or anywhere. If you need to give someone a key to your house, do it in person, or via someone you know that you can trust. If your kids have keys, ensure they are taught about key control.
4. Safety and security gates – these need to be locked at all times, else you are defying the object. No use having a security gate and it is open, or the key is in the lock or it is never locked. You need to be very strict. This might be the only barrier between yourself and a would be attacker, ensure you and your family lock security gates when passing through. And that these gates are not left open unnecessary.
5. Curtains – ensure you keep curtains closed when night falls. So many people forget this simple method. Anyone can literally sit in your garden and watch the inside of the house through open curtains and get a perfect and clear pattern of what is happening inside the house and where all the occupants are.
6. Visitors – if you control visitors, you control who is on your premises. Don’t allow beggars etc to enter your property. Keep them on the other side of any locked gate. And you keep at least 2 metres away from that gate on the inside. It is very easy to grab someone standing very close to a gate or fence and overpower them there on the spot. If you keep away, you are out of reach.
7. Suspicious sounds outside.We all watch movies and we all see how the hero reacts to suspicious sounds outside his house – please DO NOT DO THIS. If you hear something strange outside, please do not exit the house at night. Also do not fling open the curtains and start looking outside. Hearing a noise outside is good, as this is early warning, and can give you time to regroup inside. This is when you take your gasgun and up your defence condition. If you need to look outside, do it from a dark room, no lights and try and look through the curtains or netting.
8. Dogs – we all know that big dogs outside is not much of a deterrent, except if they are trained to attack. Criminals themselves say that one of the best deterrents are a number of smaller dogs inside the house, as these will act as early warning systems. Once again giving you time to regroup and get your family squared away with their gas guns.
9. Torch – having a large and effective torch at hand can be doubly effective. This can act as a weapon and a light. Just ensure the batteries are up to speed and it works. Test your equipment regularly.
10. Gas gun – these are highly effective less lethal options that can stop attackers in their tracks. Shooting a mixture of nylon and pepper balls and giving you up to 200 rounds of ammo means you can lay down a lot of suppressive firepower. What’s more, no licence required, no recoil so women and children can shoot them and have I mentioned the huge rate of fire? If you don’t have a gas gun yet – have a look here
