Stop the criminals in their tracks. What can you do to try to make sure that your home is not a target?

 

• Install sensor lights outside your house and your gate.
• Encourage your neighbors to do the same - this has been proved extremely successful in the streets where everybody has installed sensors to light up their pavements.
• Make sure these lights are switched on every night.
• Use your home alarm at all times
• Test the alarm and panic buttons at least once a month. Remember that if you are robbed and your alarm did not work insurance will not pay out, so it is in your best interests to make sure your alarm is on and working.
• Home your alarm in "Stay" or "Home" mode at night when you are asleep.
• Keep your car keys, house keys and cell phone with you in the bedroom at night. If someone gets into your house at night and has access to all your keys and cell phone, it makes their task that much easier. You will need your cell phone with you to make emergency calls if someone breaks in when you are at home.
• Complain to your armed response if you do not see them patrolling your area on a regular base - you pay for that.
• Save the emergency numbers on your cell phone as well as display it in visible places in your house.
• Make sure your house number is clearly visible in the event of security or medical personnel needing to get to your house in an emergency.
• If you live near an overgrown property please try and get the owners to clear it up as it is an ideal place for criminals to hide in your area.
• And please set your alarm! There are a frightening number of incidents that occur where there is an alarm, but it hasn't been turned on!
• Please please please report all incidents to SAPS. Often all the hard work, time and effort spent on trying to catch criminals come to nothing when people cannot be bothered to report the incident to SAPS. Report any and all criminal incidents no matter how small they may seem. Do not wait for a serious break in or actual robbery to occur. If a person enters your property without permission, damages your vehicle, graffiti's your wall, get down to the SAPS office or get the SAPS to come to you to open a docket. It takes a bit of time to open a docket but if we consistently record the minor incidents we will very quickly have more intelligence on what is happening and will have an official recorded profile of repeat offenders which is extremely useful when the time comes for us to convince a prosecutor to be less lenient. Incidents that are not reported are not officially recorded and therefore in the minds of the powers that be never occurred. The allocation of resources to fight crime is based on these statistics so every time you do not make the effort to report a crime you are in effect ensuring that you, the tax paying rate payer, will be getting less of the resources for which you are paying. This is a bit like investing thousands of rands and then forgetting to collect the interest. Surely you handle your investments with more care than this?
• Be a citizen and do what needs to be done. Participate in the interests of your own, your families, friends and neighbour's best interests. Don't expect underpaid, under trained and over worked police officers to do it on their own. If you have not attended the Community Police Forums and NW management meetings you have no idea of what you are asking of those true SAPS officers, who are dedicated to the task of keeping you safe by working in an environment that I can only equate to as being as depressing as working underground in a coal mine 7/24 for 30 days straight.
• Don't believe that you can simply buy security for your home and avoid the effects of crime that comes in the shape of muggings and cons at the ATMs, bag snatches in restaurants and pubs, run by muggings, cell phone grabs from your kids, theft from vehicles, theft of vehicles.
• The fight against crime needs the community, to be aware, to be vigilant, to report incidents, to be involved. You cannot be an island in this regard. Securing your own home is the first step, but it is only the first step. Remember that if your house is safe but your neighbors are robbed where this could have been prevented with some vigilance, it also affects you - in the form of property market value, and in all sorts of other ways.
• Keep an eye out for each other.