While burglaries do happen at night, it is a misconception that they always happen in the dead of the night. Burglars will check out a property they have their eye on and the most common first point of contact will be when they brazenly knock on your door. If they get a response, they may well be looking beyond you and reccying the property. Read people’s body language – if they are looking as far into your house as they can, there is the possibility they are caging the property out.
If there is no response from the knock of the door, would be burglars will tend to have a walk around the property and glean as much information as possible as to the potential bounty within the house. Opportunistic thieves will tend to go for easily portable but high-ticket value items such as laptops, jewellery, iPads and the such. Highly portable and easy to lift items should be left out of sight.
The walk around serves as an information gathering exercise and burglars may go as far as trying to see what is on the family calendar – we all like to have a countdown to a weekend away or a holiday but a big prominent “OFF ON HOLIDAYS” on the calendar is a great invite.
Once a burglar has knocked on your door and received no response the most common thing they then do is to give the front or back door a damn good kick at the bottom of the door to see if it is deadlocked. If they detect some movement on kicking the bottom of the they will then start to pay more interest in the potential of burgling that house.
One area that we all commonly overlook is the value in data and documents in this day and age of identity theft. Driving licences, passports, bank details, utility bills and are easily portable items that have resell value for the connected burglar. Where possible keep these in a hard to access point.
Signature Security specialise in making your home or business safe. CCTV coverage of entry points can capture video or still images of would be burglars that may knock at your door. CCTV not only acts as a deterrent but can be used to identify and prosecute burglars. For more information on how Signature Security might be able to help please call 1300 655 944.
