Keeping My Family Safe

Accent Every Room  

One of the biggest benefits of a Diversion safe is cost. The use of hidden safes is an inexpensive alternative to the more highly priced safes you can buy for a lot more money. Prices generally range from $12.00 to $35.00 which is way less than most conventional safes. Determined burglars can easily remove very heavy safes, even ones that are bolted down to the floor. Help yourself and not the burglar; hide your valuables and treasured items in plain sight! There is a diversion safe to accent every room of the house.

Remove Papers and Mail

Many burglaries occur when a home is unoccupied, like when the family is on vacation. One sure sign that no one is home is a pile of uncollected newspapers and an overflowing mailbox. Have a family member or trusted neighbor collect your mail and newspapers while you are away. This will make it seem more like the home is occupied. Leave a light on. If you have someone you trust, have them come in and turn a different light on each night. Keep your valuables in a diversion safe. Don’t leave valuables out or in obvious places.

 

Common Themes For Home Security 

There are several common themes when it comes to home security. The universal theme is to keep your exterior doors locked. Locks are the obvious first line of defense, but many articles also recommend alarms and other home security devices.

Every family member should be taught to ensure that all doors are locked. An unsecured lock is pretty useless! If you feel the need to hide spare keys for those who lose them or forget to take them along, don’t place them under a mat, rock or other such place. Consider leaving spare keys with a trusted neighbor or put them in a coded lock box.

Many people are victoms of burglary by a “friend” or associate that was actually invited into their home for one reason or onother. Keep your valuables such as jewlery and cash hidden, or even better in a safe. A diversion safe is a safe that looks like a common household item, such as a can of soda or even a clock or a candle. Diversion safes are affordable and practical because you can keep them anywhere and they blend in. No one nows it’s a safe, so it’s less likely to get broken into.

There are some ingenious designs for diversion safes available for storage of your valuables.  Diversion safes decrease the risk of theft in the event of a home invasion burglary.

Statistics show that most thieves only spend six minutes inside a home during breaking and entering.  There are safes in the form of food in cans and jars, bottles of water or soda, containers of cleaning solution, electric wall outlets, books and many other ordinary household items. 

4 percent through an unlocked entrance;

2 percent through a storage area;

and only 2 percent entered anywhere on the second floor.

A study in Connecticut showed that 12 percent of burglaries occurred through an UNLOCKED door and that in 41 percent of alarmed homes that were burglarized, the security system was not turned on.

* Lock your doors and windows.

* Alarms can often send the offender on their way.

* Try a hidden safe or two to hide your valluables. Different styles include can safes, candle safes, or mabey a hidden book safe.

* Have your self defense devices like pepper spray or stun guns in easy to get to places in your house. 

Burglary Facts and Statistics…

* Property crime makes up slightly more than three-quarters of all crime in the United States

* In 2005, law enforcement agencies reported an estimated 2,154,126 burglary offenses-a 0.5-percent increase compared with 2004 data.

* An examination of 5- and 10-year trends revealed a 1.8-percent increase in the number of burglaries compared with the 2001 estimate, and a 14.1-percent decline from the 1996 number.

* Burglary accounted for 21.2 percent of the estimated number of property crimes committed in 2005. The average dollar loss per burglary offense in 2005 was $1,725.

* Of all burglary offenses in 2005, 65.8 percent were of residential structures.

* Most (62.4 percent) of residential burglaries in 2005 for which time of occurrence was known took place during the day, between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.

* Among burglaries of nonresidential structures when time of occurrence was known, 58.0 percent occurred at night.

* A burglary takes place in the U.S. every 14.6 seconds according to the Uniform Crime Reporting Program Crime Clock.

* According to the FBI Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January-June, 2006, “burglary offenses showed an increase, up 1.2 percent from the 2005 level.”

* Overall, in about 84% of all burglaries, the offender gained entry into the victim’s residence or other building on the property.

Source: Crime in the United States 2005 Department of Justice - Federal Bureau of Investigation Release Date: September 2006
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics

Don’t wait untill you are a statistic!
Simple steps can help protect your valuables.

* Lock your doors and windows.
* Alarms set at doors and windows.
  (These can be simple and affordable.)
* Diversion safes such as a can safe or a hidden book safe to
   store money and jewelry.
* Be freinds with neighbors. Ask them to keep an eye on your house.
* Decoy or fake security cameras and/or signs or stickers
  giving the apperance of a security system.

Living in fear won’t help anyone, but taking a few extra precautions can make all the difference.
 

 Burglary Defined

What is considered a burglary…

Burglary is defined as the unlawful entry of a structure to commit a felony or theft. The use of force to gain entry is not required to classify an offense as a burglary. Burglary is categorized into three sub classifications: forcible entry, unlawful entry where no force is used, and attempted forcible entry.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Report 2005

Protect your valuables in your home or office with a hidden safe. Try a can safe, a clock safe or even a hidden book safe.

Leave or Risk Discovery

Rationale of Diversion Security Safes
The Chicago Crime Commission has found that a burglar spends an average of six to eight minutes robbing a home. This amount of time does not give the burglar much time to meticulously search a home for money and valuables. He must find and gather items quickly and leave or risk discovery. Since a household may contain hundreds of everyday goods and products a burglar cannot search them all.

Other Advantages
Because diversion safes are not manufactured from expensive, heavy materials such as thick steel, nor are they equiped with complex security devices such as electronic locks, they are quite inexpensive. Most of these safes range from about $20 to  $35. The low cost of diversion safes also permits the consumer to buy a number of safes, that he/she may spread throughout the house and not concentrate valuables in one location. A peanut butter can safe in the pantry, a pillow safe in the family room, and a hair spray can safe in the bathroom. Thus, in the event that a burglar does discover one of these safes the total number of safes limits losses.

The Many Forms of Diversion Safes

Creative manufacturers have succeeded in transforming many different household objects into small safes. Examples include bottles of household cleaner, wall sockets, soda cans, books, candles, paint cans, clocks, pillows, and many more. The products are intentionally designed to look and even feel like genuine products. Some of the products may actually double as genuine products like a useable flower pot. A diversion safe like a can safe is an affordable piece to add to your overall security plan.

Unconventional Security Measures

Diversion safes are among the most unconventional of security measures. They are essentially safes disguised to appear as everyday objects. Since burglars have a very short time period to pilfer homes and leave before anyone notices that a burglary had taken place, they tend to look in the most obvious places to steal valuables, overlooking ordinary household items. If you were a burglar would you check out each can of dog food? My guess is a jar of peanut butter in the pantry is probably safe too. My Grandma uses the rug and room deoderizer can safe in her bathroom closet. Sometimes the easy answere is actually a good choice.