Home Safety Tips - Stop Crime at the House!

Home Safety Tips


1. Close & lock all doors; including cars and garages, whether you are home or not. Windows accessible from the exterior of the home should not be left open. This is just about the same as leaving your door wide open. (Extra Tip: Casement windows are the safest windows to use if you are building a home or replacing windows)

2. Have good lighting outside and inside your home. Many electrical companies have solar lighting that can brighten a 1/2 an acre or so.

3. Position lights to expose hiding places around shrubs, bushes, corners, garages and entrances

4. Be aware of how your residence appears from the outside. Example: drapes and shades

5. When leaving home, leave lights on inside your home - There are timer gadgets you can use to make your lights (tv, radio also) go on and off at certain times, showing consistent life in the residence.

6. Never leave a message on your answering machine stating you are not at home. "We are not available at the moment" or "we screen all of our calls" is acceptable.

8. Alarm warning window stickers and yard signs are good deterrents.

9. Leave more than one pair of shoes outside at the door

10. As much as possible, leave a vehicle in your driveway.

Crime Stopping Travel Tips

Travel Tips:

1. Check gas levels and general car maintenance prior to traveling. Preventive actions!

2. Always carry standard tools such as flashlights, first aid kits, tire changing tools and a spare tire. A batttery operated siren light device is good too.

3. If you become lost, seek help at busy, well lit businesses. A GPS is very affordable and can prevent this from ever happening. Turning down the wrong street, or into a "nice looking" community can sometimes be lead to trouble.

4. Notify friends & family of your travel plans and time & date of return. Use platforms such as Twitter where you can "Tweet" or "Text" your status, and concerned friends and family can follow you via the Internet or your phone. There are also Twitter application that you can use that will "Locate" you and pinpoint where you are when you submit an update.

5. Always have a cell phone handy, charged, and on. When an emergency happens, you do not have time to dig and find it, find a charger, and or turn it on. Also have a telephone book available in your car

6. Never pick up hitchhikers; if someone is stranded don't stop, get the approximate location (Example: Hwy 5, headed South, around mile marker 74), and call 911... or drive to the nearest police station for help

7. Get in the habit of locking the doors of your vehicle. Lock them once everyone is in, lock them when someone gets out for a minute, and lock them after they get back in. Forming habits such as these can prevent car-jackings, robbery, kidnapping, and more. If someone approaches your door and asks to open the door or get in... say "NO", leave, and call 911

Quick Crime Stopping Shopping Tips, please add on comments

Crime Stopping Tips:

1. Avoid dark or isolated areas
2. If suspicious looking people enter an elevator, step off
3. Always have car key/opener in hand before leaving the store, finger on alarm trigger
4. As you approach you car, visually check both sides of your car & underneath
5. Check the back & front seat for intruders; leave immediately if there is any concern
6. If a suspicious looking person is near your car, just keep walking
7. Report suspicious looking people to security guards. They want to help
8. As much as possible, keep yourself in the plain view of others

CPTED Design Recommendations

Natural Surveillance/Visual Connection

• Provide an opportunity for people engaged in normal
everyday activity to observe the space around them. Place
activities where individuals engage in those activities so they
become part of the natural surveillance system without
interruption to their activity.

• Provide a good “visual connection” between residential
and/or commercial units and public environments such as
streets, common areas, parks, sidewalks, parking areas and
alleys. Place actively used rooms such as kitchens,
living/family room and lobbies to allow for good viewing of
parking, streets and/or common areas. Managers, attendants
and security personnel should have extensive views of these
areas.

• Provide for the ability to see into a room or space prior to
entering.

• Take advantage of mixed use if it exists and provide good
“visual connection” between uses. This may enable natural
surveillance during the day and evening, (i.e., a commercial
zone that becomes vacant in the evening or a residential zone
that is uninhabited during the day).

Natural Access Control/Spatial Definition

• Provide clear well-lit paths from the street to the development
through all parking and landscape areas, and within the
development to building entries.

• Avoid indistinct walkways and entries where occupants and
guests may become “lost or disoriented” or must search for
the correct entry or unit.

• Provide adequate lighting, width of path, definition of path
and ability to see a destination.

• Provide obvious physical security techniques such as locks,
lights, walls, gates and security signs.

Three CPTED Strategies

Natural Surveillance
Surveillance is a design concept directed
primarily at keeping intruders under observation.
Therefore, the primary thrust of a surveillance strategy
is to facilitate observation and to accomplish the effect
of an increased perception of risk. Surveillance
strategies are typically classified as organized (e.g.,
police patrol) mechanical (e.g., lighting) and natural
(e.g., windows).

Natural Access Control
Access control strategies are typically classified as
organized (e.g., guards), mechanical (e.g., locks), and
natural (e.g., spatial definition). This lesson plan
outline will concentrate on the third strategy of
natural access control. The primary thrust of an
access control strategy is to deny access to a crime
target and to create a perception of risk in offenders.

Territorial Reinforcement
The concept of territoriality suggests that
physical design can contribute to a sense of
territoriality. That is, physical design can create or
extend a sphere of territorial influence so potential
offenders perceive that territorial influence. For
example: low walls, landscape and paving patterns to
clearly define the space around a unit entry as
belonging to (and the responsibility of ) the residents
of that unit.

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design

• Provide clear border definition of controlled space (e.g.,
fences, hedges, paving patterns and low walls). Avoid
unassigned space. As much as possible, all space should
become the clear responsibility of someone.

•Provide clearly marked transitional zones that indicate
movement from public to semiprivate to private space. For
example, the sidewalk represents public space and the main
path into a residential development is semiprivate, and a path
that branches to an individual unit(s) becomes semiprivate
and the interior of the unit becomes private space.

• Relocate gathering areas to locations that provide natural
surveillance and access control, as opposed to locations away
from the view of would-be offenders. For example, all play
areas should be located within the central common area of
the building with as many units as possible able to glance or
actively watch children at play.

• Place activities in locations where the natural surveillance of
these activities will increase the perception of safety for
legitimate users and risk for offenders. For example, well used
common areas (safe) may overlook a parking area
(unsafe) to provide additional security for the parking area.

• Place activities in locations to overcome vulnerability of these
activities with natural surveillance and access control of the
safe area. For instance, common toilet facilities and laundry
rooms should not be located in a remote corner of the site or
at the end of a long nameless hallway. Locate these facilities
(unsafe) adjacent to the entry or location where there is
normally high foot traffic (safe).

• Redesign or revamp space to increase the perception or reality
of natural surveillance.


The term CPTED is used to describe a series of
physical design characteristics that maximize
resident control of criminal behavior within a
residential community. A residential environment
designed under CPTED guidelines clearly defines all
areas as either public, semiprivate, or private. In so
doing, it determines who has the right to be in each
space, and allows residents to be confident in
responding to any questionable activity or persons
within their complex. The same design concepts
improve the ability of police to monitor activities
within the community. The proper design and effective
use of public and private space can lead to a reduction in
the incidence and fear of crime, reduction in calls for
police service and to an increase in the quality of life within a
community.

*Thank you to the LAPD for supplying this great information http://www.lapdonline.org/
Also see http://www.cpted-watch.com/