Gennifer
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Jun 26, 2014 8:22:26 GMT
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Post by Gennifer on Aug 11, 2022 15:53:21 GMT
Not. I can easily have a week go without seeing another car drive in front of my house.
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Post by littlemama on Aug 11, 2022 16:00:12 GMT
My front door is always locked. The door between the garage and the house is not typically. It has nothing to do with how busy our area is, it has to do with knowing that bad things can happen anywhere.
My friend from a small town had a guy entering her house at night while her family was sleeping and stealing things. They never locked their doors because they had the false belief that small towns are invincible from crime.
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Post by karenk on Aug 11, 2022 16:07:32 GMT
We keep doors locked, as well as car doors. Lately there have been a lot on local social media about people, mostly when it is dark, trying car doors to see if they are unlocked. Bikes are being stolen. And items in gardens and front porches which normally wouldn’t be stolen have disappeared. Ugh…
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Post by busy on Aug 11, 2022 16:10:54 GMT
Fairly low-traffic neighborhood in a typical suburb. Our neighborhood is quite low crime. Our actual street is a private street and the only cars I see on it are delivery drivers and people who live on it.
Our Nextdoor is 92% lost pets, 3% complaining about kids, 2% My cameras recorded someone walking on the sidewalk at night without ever setting foot on my property or doing anything unusual, should I call the police, 1.5% "crime" reports like someone picked some of my flowers or there's a dick painted on the sidewalk, 1% Was that fireworks or gunshots? (spoiler alert: it's always fireworks), and MAYBE 0.5% actual crime. Someone recently reported their bike stolen from their garage and later came back to update that their kid had just been out riding it 🙄
Anyway, we generally lock our doors when we are home and double check them before we go to sleep. But we're not super vigilant about it tbh. I don't lock the house when I walk the dog. We never lock the door from the garage to the house. We're neither careless or obsessive about it. We've lived here for 13 years and never had a problem. Once our garage door was accidentally open all weekend while we were at the beach and thankfully nothing happened.
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wellway
Prolific Pea
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Jun 25, 2014 20:50:09 GMT
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Post by wellway on Aug 11, 2022 16:13:44 GMT
Like gar I live in a small village, thankfully not called Midsomer! Our village has a very low crime rate, maybe a shed is disturbed once in a blue moon. It is a busy little village with lots of activity, school traffic, shop, delivery vans etc. I tend to lock the front door although there have been occasions its been left unlocked overnight. The back door depends on the weather. Atm, it's wide open. Our back garden is fenced off on all sides with a sidegate so it's not easily accessed. Add in our dog who barks loudly, he's quite a deterrent. Of course, when I open the door he only wants to lick the postman, or whoever. A neighbour living up the road often has his vehicle windows open all night, not something I do. One morning when I went out for a walk with my dog, I noticed another neighbour's car boot(trunk) was wide open, figured they were loading or unloading although I didn't see them. When I got back an hour later the boot was still open and no sign of them. So I rang the doorbell, turns out it was like that all night, they just forgot to close it.
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pantsonfire
Drama Llama
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Take a step back, evaluate what is important, and enjoy your life with those who you love.
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Jun 19, 2022 16:48:04 GMT
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Post by pantsonfire on Aug 11, 2022 16:16:04 GMT
Only time the garage is left open is 1. If dh is doing wood working or anything else in the garage, 2. Kids are playing with the basketball arcade set up, or 3. There was a significant EQ. For number 3, we pull out the vehicles and park but also leave it open in case we need a way out. It is closed at night.
Since I can remember, house doors and car doors have always been locked.
It doesn't matter to me where I live, safety first.
And lots of crime has happened out in the middle of no where...bad people know they won't be seen.
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Post by mollycoddle on Aug 11, 2022 16:18:38 GMT
I have been burglarized twice in my life. I always lock my doors.
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Post by Restless Spirit on Aug 11, 2022 16:24:50 GMT
I live in a medium size (265,000 population) city? Or is that considered a town. Anyway, we live in the suburbs in a housing addition, surrounded by other housing additions. Our house is on a short cul de sac, so traffic is only the neighbors. Our backyard is fenced in, so I’ll leave the door unlocked when my dogs are out in the yard, but I’m mostly in the family room or kitchen and I can see the backyard and the back door from both of those rooms.
We always keep the backyard fence gates locked, the front door is always closed and locked, as are the big garage doors. The side garage door is locked and is blocked by DH’s lawn equipment. Both cars are always in the garage with the garage door closed and locked. Last year we put in a Ring Doorbell at the front door after a UPS package came up missing. There have been some petty thefts in neighboring neighborhoods, package and mail thefts, but mostly people having their cars broken into sitting in their driveways or parked in the street. Many of the thefts are from cars that aren’t even locked. That seems crazy to me. Rhetorical question – what possible reason could there be to not lock your car and leave valuables like cell phones, computers, purses or wallets in the unlocked car?
I walk during daylight hours through the connecting neighborhoods or along the paved sidewalk/pathways the city installed along nearby busy heavy traffic streets. The connecting pathways & sidewalks were installed to encourage people to walk and Bicycle around town.
I always feel pretty “safe”, but as my mother used to say - use common sense and “why borrow trouble”.
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Post by crazy4scraps on Aug 11, 2022 16:33:42 GMT
I live in a small city in a suburban area. In spite of the fact that my community feels small and safe, we keep our house, garage and vehicles locked up 24/7. Just because I live in a relatively safe area doesn’t mean we’re immune to having something bad happen because *newsflash!* bad people have cars (even though they’re sometimes stolen) and what better place to go around criming than in upper middle class areas where people tend to have better stuff?
While there doesn’t tend to be a lot of vehicle traffic through my neighborhood we do have a lot of foot traffic because we live close to a park. Lots and lots of walkers, people pushing strollers or accompanying little kids on bikes, people walking their dogs, runners. Most of these folks look typical but every once in a while we’ll see someone out walking around that just doesn’t seem to fit the usual profile, or someone driving through seeming to be doing a slow roll through the neighborhood maybe looking for packages left on porches, open garage doors, etc.
The big things in my area lately are: - people going through cars at night (typically unlocked)
- people stealing catalytic converters off cars parked outside at night (or as the people on NextDoor like to post “Cadillac converters” 🤣)
- people stealing mail out of mailboxes (we bought a locking mailbox after the first year living here)
- people porch pirating packages left out in the open
- people stealing trailers (snowmobile, ATV, etc.) out of driveways
- people stealing stuff out of garages (again, usually unlocked or they get in with an opener left in an unlocked vehicle parked outside)
- people stealing cars that are left running unattended to warm up in the winter.
I grew up in the city so I have deep seated trust issues and I’ll own that, LOL.
ETA: As I mentioned in another thread, we recently switched out all of our entry door locks with the keyless push button code kind. It has made life exponentially easier for all of us to be able to leave the house and not have to have house keys. It also makes it exponentially easier to always keep those entry doors locked regardless of whether we’re home or not, especially the one between the house and the attached garage.
We also went one step further and put smart plugs on the overhead garage door openers that we put on a schedule that turns those outlets completely off during the overnight hours or when we’re away, so even if someone happened to have a garage door opener or a universal opener device, it won’t work unless we also turn the smart plug outlets back on with our phone.
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Post by ~summer~ on Aug 11, 2022 16:36:39 GMT
We live in a sleepy suburb though it is right next to very high crime areas and we do have burglaries. That being said we often leave doors unlocked and our windows are almost always wide open unless we are in a heat wave.
However when I walk these high crime areas(I’m “walking every street” ) I am extremely diligent - I park my car in high traffic areas with absolutely nothing in it. I walk with no jewelry, no watch, no purse of any kind just phone, keys and cards in pocket. And no I’m not being paranoid lol. Our Nextdoor is off the rails - mugging, smash and grabs, car jackings :0
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Post by papersilly on Aug 11, 2022 16:52:50 GMT
our doors are always locked because why wouldn't you? it's just habit for me and sometimes it drives DH bonkers because i'll walk into the house through the back door and lock it automatically. a minute later, guess who's knocking on the locked door? then he says, "why did you lock the door?". i say "habit. would you rather that i learned not to?"
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Post by epeanymous on Aug 11, 2022 16:56:48 GMT
I live in the center of a large city. Yes I lock my doors. But I grew up in a smaller area, and personally knew two nearby families with break-in murders, so I would do it anyway.
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QueenoftheSloths
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Member Since January 2004, 2,698 forum posts PeaNut Number: 122614 PeaBoard Title: StuckOnPeas
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Jun 26, 2014 0:29:24 GMT
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Post by QueenoftheSloths on Aug 11, 2022 17:02:18 GMT
I live in a small town in a rural area. I don't kid myself that small town=no crime.
Door to garage is always locked, we don't park in the garage or come and go through that door.
Back door is always locked unless we are in the backyard.
The front door is always locked except at times when DH will watch for UPS or something like that and leave the door unlocked so he can quickly pop out and meet the driver so they don't have to come all the way uo to the house. He'll also unlock the door if he's expecting me home in a few minutes so I can get in because I don't take my house keys with me when I go out to work.
During the summer locked front door means the storm door only, as long as someone is on the main floor of the house they can hear if someone is at the front door. The cats have a perch in front of the door and like to look out and get fresh air. If no one is on the main floor then locked door means the regular door as well. We also will have the windows open in the summer, but will close and lock the ground floor windows if no one is home and at bedtime.
We park in the driveway, and we keep the car locked and don't leave anything valuable in there. We also take out going mail directly to the post office instead of leaving it in our box for pickup.
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Post by busy on Aug 11, 2022 17:03:43 GMT
We live in a sleepy suburb though it is right next to very high crime areas and we do have burglaries. That being said we often leave doors unlocked and our windows are almost always wide open unless we are in a heat wave. However when I walk these high crime areas(I’m “walking every street” ) I am extremely diligent - I park my car in high traffic areas with absolutely nothing in it. I walk with no jewelry, no watch, no purse of any kind just phone, keys and cards in pocket. And no I’m not being paranoid lol. Our Nextdoor is off the rails - mugging, smash and grabs, car jackings :0 I have a friend who lives walking distance to the FB main campus and he was recently mugged and had his very expensive (six digit) watch stolen just a couple blocks from home. They must have followed him or otherwise been watching him because he was wearing basketball shorts and a ratty hoody. There was nothing about him that looked like he'd be a good target, but they demanded the watch while his sleeve was still fully covering it.
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Post by ~summer~ on Aug 11, 2022 17:12:16 GMT
We live in a sleepy suburb though it is right next to very high crime areas and we do have burglaries. That being said we often leave doors unlocked and our windows are almost always wide open unless we are in a heat wave. However when I walk these high crime areas(I’m “walking every street” ) I am extremely diligent - I park my car in high traffic areas with absolutely nothing in it. I walk with no jewelry, no watch, no purse of any kind just phone, keys and cards in pocket. And no I’m not being paranoid lol. Our Nextdoor is off the rails - mugging, smash and grabs, car jackings :0 I have a friend who lives walking distance to the FB main campus and he was recently mugged and had his very expensive (six digit) watch stolen just a couple blocks from home. They must have followed him or otherwise been watching him because he was wearing basketball shorts and a ratty hoody. There was nothing about him that looked like he'd be a good target, but they demanded the watch while his sleeve was still fully covering it. yes people are now sitting in their cars and watching people specifically looking for watches and jewelry. My friend was walking in a “nice” area of Berkeley at 11am, two people approached her with a gun and had her remove her diamond rings and took her watch. I never wear my diamond anymore. Eta - also would never ever work on a laptop at a cafe - someone could just run by and grab it.
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Post by maryland on Aug 11, 2022 18:10:38 GMT
We lock the door before bed, but it's unlocked and the door is open (we have a storm door) all day in the warm weather. We are in the suburbs so it's somewhat busy.
My kids make fun of me because I go around for 30 min. checking the entire house (and taking pictures of most outlets, oven, stove, etc.) to make sure everything is off and unplugged before a trip. If I am just going to the store and being gone less time, I still check for at least 10 min. of the rooms I was in that day. But they say that I never worry about the door being locked.
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Post by Eddie-n-Harley on Aug 11, 2022 18:16:03 GMT
My aunt lived in the middle of nowhere. Her driveway was half a mile long. We lived nearby. No one ever locked the doors.
And then my aunt's home was burglarized.
So then we started locking doors, even in the middle of nowhere.
Where I live now, I lock everything all the time. Lots of opportunistic thieves sneak into apartment buildings by way of the garage door... or neighbors propping open the locked exterior doors.
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Post by Gem Girl on Aug 11, 2022 18:39:29 GMT
I don't understand the idea of not locking up because one is in "a quiet/good neighborhood." For one, remember that the family victimized in the fact-based novel, In Cold Blood, lived out on a farm. Criminals don't break into homes in their own, cruddy neighborhoods (because nobody has anything worth taking). Once a criminal is inside, he can do anything he wants to to you or your loved ones. Besides, being in a quiet neighborhood just means that nobody will be able to hear you scream.
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Post by Linda on Aug 11, 2022 18:52:01 GMT
I live in a small quiet subdivision in a rural area - on a cul-e-sac of only two houses. We lock the doors and the cars. The attached garage door (overhead) is only open if we're actively going in and out - the doors between the house and the garage aren't lockable. The detached garage - we'll leave open if we're working in the yard or on the cars but not if we go inside.
But I don't kid myself that quiet and rural = crime-free. The high school had 3 bomb threats last year and three teens were arrested this week after a fight at orientation the previous night and apparently they've been responsible for many vehicle burglaries locally as well.
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Post by katlady on Aug 11, 2022 19:01:50 GMT
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Post by flanz on Aug 11, 2022 19:40:30 GMT
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scrapngranny
Pearl Clutcher
Only slightly senile
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Jun 25, 2014 23:21:30 GMT
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Post by scrapngranny on Aug 11, 2022 19:42:13 GMT
I live in a small city, on a dead end road. Our doors are always locked. I really don’t see a reason to leave them unlocked. Our garage is separate from our house, behind a wrought iron gate. DH does leave that unlocked during the day, because he is in and out of it all day. My car sits in the driveway away from the street on the side of the house and it is locked when not in use. Better safe than sorry.
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Post by gar on Aug 11, 2022 19:45:21 GMT
I would guess this will end up being known as a family dispute or similar but who knows at the moment.
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Post by bc2ca on Aug 11, 2022 19:55:57 GMT
We don't have much traffic on our street other than residents and deliveries. During the day I don't pay attention to whether the door is locked or not. I always lock it when I leave if no one else is home. If someone is home, it feels weird to lock them in. DH leaves the garage door open all the time. He might be in there, in the backyard or at Home Depot. I only shut it if I'm going out and his truck is missing. I also lock up before going to bed. It isn't unusual to get a text from a neighbor telling me the garage is open. I assume they are checking that everything is locked up before going to bed, including out place. Windows are also open for a good portion of the year. I never leave the ground floor windows facing the street open at night, but we often leave the ground floor slider open and maybe a side window or two depending on how hot it has been.
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Gennifer
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Jun 26, 2014 8:22:26 GMT
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Post by Gennifer on Aug 11, 2022 20:16:51 GMT
Someone recently reported their bike stolen from their garage and later came back to update that their kid had just been out riding it 🙄 I love this so much. 😂😂😂
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Gennifer
Drama Llama
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Jun 26, 2014 8:22:26 GMT
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Post by Gennifer on Aug 11, 2022 20:23:33 GMT
Since this has segued into home security:
If someone gets past the two locked gates, has a snowmobile handy (or plans on walking a mile, literally uphill with an elevation change of 500 feet), somehow finds their way to my house without GPS or any cell service, and gets past my two 150lb dogs, all while managing to find a time when no one is in our house… well, I guess they’re welcome to whatever they can carry out on said snowmobile or their back.
Chances are far more likely they would have stopped at one of the empty vacation homes along the way, though. Much easier.
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Post by busy on Aug 11, 2022 20:29:21 GMT
DH leaves the garage door open all the time. He might be in there, in the backyard or at Home Depot. I only shut it if I'm going out and his truck is missing. I also lock up before going to bed. It isn't unusual to get a text from a neighbor telling me the garage is open. I assume they are checking that everything is locked up before going to bed, including out place. DH used to forget to close the garage quite a lot and it bothered me to discover it had been open all night, no matter how safe our neighborhood is. More than anything else, I was afraid of the pets getting out. We upgraded our garage door opener to one with an app that allows us to open/close remotely and also to schedule closes. So now we have two "tests" scheduled every evening/night to check if the door is open and if so, close it.
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Post by busy on Aug 11, 2022 20:35:05 GMT
Someone recently reported their bike stolen from their garage and later came back to update that their kid had just been out riding it 🙄 I love this so much. 😂😂😂 You'd really love the one where someone said (paraphrasing - though the all caps is 100% accurate), "Only a few of my carefully planted bulbs bloomed this year and I discovered why - almost all of my bulbs were stolen out of the ground! CRIME IS OUT OF CONTROL." Ok, sure, it's definitely more likely that someone dug up and stole your bulbs than, idk, an animal did.
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Post by disneypal on Aug 11, 2022 20:40:03 GMT
I live in a big city, which sadly has a lot of crime, like most big cities....doors are locked all the time and it is very busy here. I live on a cul-de-sac and my neighborhood is small but I have noticed that my area is getting busier by the day. Within the past couple of years, I have to sit at the stop sign to pull out onto a side street. This morning I sat there a good 5 minutes before I could go, but 3 or 4 years ago, I barely had to stop since there was NO traffic on that side ride. They built 2 huge new apartment complexes nearby so I guess that is why it is worse now...they are building, building and building new condos and apartments everywhere I look!!
I feel safe in my neighborhood but I always keep my home and car doors locked.
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Post by playingcinderella on Aug 11, 2022 20:43:57 GMT
I live in a semi-rural area on a dead-end street. My front door is always locked, the back door is unlocked during the day if we are home because the dogs and kids go in and out 5,659 times a day. The gate is closed but not locked usually.
All doors are locked at night and if we are leaving the house even just for a walk.
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