What To Do When A Burglary Occurs in Your Neighborhood

A burglary is scary - whether its your neighbor's home, your home or a family's home. It's a difficult thing to process and shatters any security you felt before the burglary which can be a hard adjustment into a new reality. Unfortunately,  home is burglarized every 16 seconds in the United States. if it happens in your neighborhood, these are the first few steps you should take.

1. Check your video doorbell and outdoor security camera

Contact those in your neighborhood to see if there is any footage available of suspicious activity the day of the burglary. With wireless outdoor cameras becoming more popular, it's likely your neighbors will have some sort of outdoor security device to review their own footage. If you have your own wireless video doorbell or outdoor security cameras, you can check your previous footage to see if any person is around your home. This will help identify further who the person is and further be aware of their face if another burglary in your neighborhood occurs.

2. Lend a helping hand to your neighbor

The aftermath from a burglar can be very taxing on a family so offering support where you can will make the neighbor feel better that someone around them is looking out for them. Forming a neighborhood bond is important for many reasons regarding home security, so offering a helping hand can help bring back the sense of security they have lost in the burglary process.

• Offer to help clean up if there is a lot of damage around their home
• If the total damage has affected the family greatly, work together with your neighborhood to host a fundraiser to donate money to the family through bake sales, cooking sales and yard sales
• Keep in frequent contact so they feel more secure
• Consider forming a neighborhood watch

3. Talk with your family

After new is released about the incident, talk to your children and other family members about how they feeling. When a burglary happens, it's a good time to reevaluate your own home security and educate your family members on burglary statistics and evaluate the safety of your neighborhood through  sites like NeighborhoodScout to see the crime statistics of your area. With this discussion, you can also speak to your family about how they can better have a peace of mind and rebuild that sense of security. Through these conversations, you can form an emergency plan of if a burglary happens to your own home, discuss any fears and talk about implementing more safety measures throughout the home.

4. Update your home security and consider doing a revamp 

With the events in your neighborhood, it's important to think about your own home security and how to implement more preventative measures. There are many devices available to help improve your home security and further peace of mind like smart locks, wireless video doorbells, key safes, window smart locks, light motion sensors and more. 

During this time if you have wireless outdoor cameras or video doorbell, you can look to  evaluate the cameras you have. During this evaluation, make sure all your settings are where you want them, make sure you are updating the app and firmware and everything is working properly. If you have a DIY home security system that has a monthly subscription plan, consider looking into the more advanced plans that your current one to see if there are advanced features you would like.

Unfortunately, burglars tend to go back to the neighborhood of their first crime within a few weeks so keeping your house safe during the first few months of the incident is crucial. 

Here are some tips to implement to make sure your home is safe:

• Lock all doors, garage doors and side doors always
• Keep your key in a safe space or lock box. We recommend to not place keys under the mat or under a plant since many burglars know to look there
• Replace your locks or do an audit on the current locks around your home to make sure they not damaged and work as intended
• Maintain your yard to remove any personal belongings, toys, newspaper to make the home look more maintained
• Get smart lighting so when you are not home, you can turn on the lights to make it look like someone is home

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