An announcement from Darien Police:
Home security tips while you’re on vacation:
An empty house is a tempting target for a burglar so make sure you do your best to have your home look occupied while you are away:
- Ask close friends, family, or neighbors to watch your house. Give them your contact information in case they need to get a hold of you.
- Never announce your intention on traveling or vacationing blogs, email groups, Facebook, Twitter, or other social networking sites and remember if you check-in on Foursquare or Facebook, everyone knows you aren’t home!
- Install good locks on the doors and windows and use them.
- Never leave a house key hidden outside of your home. If it is hidden in a pot, under the mat, beneath a rock or in a fake rock someone else may find it and enter your home while you are away.
- Stop all deliveries or arrange for someone to pick up your mail, newspapers, and packages. Newspapers piling up at the end of your driveway are a sure sign that you are away.
- Arrange for someone to mow your lawn and maintain the yard while you are away. This keeps your home looking lived in.
- Place your inside lights and a radio on timers so that they go on and off, periodically in the evening hours.
- Hide your garbage cans out of sight. If your garbage cans are empty when everyone else’s are full, it is a sign that you are not at home.
- Turn the ringer on your telephone down low or off so that people outside of your home will not hear the phone ringing go unanswered.
- Be sure to close and lock the garage door too. When possible have a friend or family member park a car in your driveway occasionally so that it looks like someone is still at home.
- Leave your blinds and drapes in their normal position on second floor windows (closed on ground level so no one can look inside and view an empty home).
Remember, when you return home if it looks like someone has entered your home—Don’t go inside! Instead use a cell phone or go to a neighbor’s house or other safe location to contact the police. Let the police check the home before you go inside. Darien Police 203-662-5300
[Some statistics in an illustration on the Darien Police page on Facebook:]
81 percent of residential intrusions occur through the first floor
34 percent of burglars [enter] through the front door
23 percent of burglars enter through a first-floor window
22 percent enter through a back door
12 percent of burglars [enter] through an unlocked entrance
9 percent of burglars enter through the garage
2 percent of burglars enter anywhere on the second floor
Editor’s note: The illustration on the Home page for this article comes from Wikimedia Commons.