Home Security Resources - 08

How to Deal with an Intruder in Your Home
Ideally, you proactively take steps to secure your home from intruders. But what if you wake up in the middle of the night and hear a noise? Or you see a man standing at the end of your bed with a knife? This article on wikiHow offers 16 steps for dealing with such a situation. First, if you hear a noise, take action and shut, lock and barricade your bedroom door, perhaps with a chair or heavy dresser. Use your cell phone to call the police and turn on your lights. If you don't have a gun, arm yourself with the most effective instrument to use as a weapon that you do have, such as a golf club or baseball bat. Open your window for an escape route if needed, but try to stay put until the policy arrived and have cleared the house. Ask the police to check your attic, loft and/or basement. Wouldn't it be terrible if they left but the intruder was still in the house? Now if you wake and an intruder is in the room, feign sleep, since he's probably just a thief and it's best not to alarm him if possible. But if it's clear he does mean you harm, and he's approaching, do everything possible to resist, and do not hesitate. Throw objects, rip, tear, bite, strike the eyes, nose, throat neck and groin—show no mercy. Kill or incapacitate. If you can make it, flee.

Keeping Your Kids Safe and Secure in College
Campus Sentinel is a free mobile app for the iPhone and iPad for college campus safety and security. For parents and students, it provides crime statistics for more than 4,400 colleges and universities, safety resources, and security news and information. When you or your college-bound student is looking at schools and going through the application process, this app can be used to understand crime and safety information for the schools under consideration and to compare these schools’ self-reported crime data to one another. Once the student is enrolled and attending school, this app is a great resource for questions regarding safety and security issues both on and off campus. One parent giving a testimonial for Campus Sentinel make the point: For my son in college, I have the information I need to talk with him about important concerns such as how to stay safe while he's studying abroad and how to protect his online reputation. He might not seek out that knowledge on his own, so being informed to have those conversations with him is essential. This app can also be helpful for accessing safety resources and for planning for a safe spring break, or travel abroad experience.

Burglar-Proof Your Home: Simple Ways to Foil Burglars
The psychological trauma of being burglarized can stay with you for the rest of your life. That's why it is imperative that you take a few minutes to learn some simple ways of making your home less attractive to burglars, that to InsureMe.com, a Bankrate company selling insurance policies. Remember, burglars are opportunistic, for the most part, which means they will break into the easiest target. By taking just a little time to make your home just a little less appealing to a burglar, you could save yourself from a lifetime of trauma. For example, remembering what many police officers refer to as the "3/7 rule" could stop many burglars cold. This means that all shrubs near the house are shorter than 3 feet high, and the lowest branches on any trees near the house are 7 feet off the ground, making it much more difficult for burglars to make use of them. One thing that most people never consider is exposed phone lines. How easy is it for a burglar to walk up and snip your phone lines, making contact with the outside world almost impossible? Crushed rock beneath a window is much more noisy than soft grass and tends to make burglars shy away. These are only a few of the many suggestions this site has for making your home less attractive to burglars.