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Home Defense, Geek Style?
Yo Maing writes "So my mom got lives alone, and got her car broken into last night. We have a motion sensor light in the driveway, and the car has an alarm but apparently both of these deterrents were ineffective. Crime has been rising around her neighborhood, and only action the police can take is to file a report. So I ask you, Geeks of Slashdot, what tricks do you guys have to defend yours and your loved ones homes against crimes like this? Not looking for anything that would get someone injured, but more in the area of detection and repulsion. Anyone have a holographic Yeti generator to scare away intruders? :)"
Buy a gun.
First I would suggest watching Home Alone 1. That kid is pretty damn clever and easily fended off joe pesci and that ugly guy. Next I would buy an outdoor webcam with some motion detection software.
I live on an air force base. No problems. :)
drive a yugo
the extra "got" in his first sentence. Now everybody move along now.
I'm a minister!
My cousin in Texas has outdoor motion sensors around his house, hooked up to a PA system than when activated, play a recording of a pump shotgun being cocked. It sounds real as hell, and you can't really tell where the sound is coming from.
How bout a full sized cardboard cut-out of goatse in the front hallway? I'd run....
http://request-header.info
Studies have shown a dog with a good bark scares away most would-be attackers. There have also been studies showing dog companionship actually lowers the blood pressure of seniors.
www.hiredinsight.com
If you don't have anything of value, then you don't have to worry about someone ripping off your valuables. The things in life that are worthwhile are rarely tangible. If you're living in the crossfire of someone else's greed ... Move!
It sounds like you're concerned primarily with property crime, yes? That's actually pretty darn easy to prevent if you think about it logically. Don't leave anything in your car if you park it outside. Keep your garage door closed even during the day so people can't see in. Plant thorney bushes under the windows. Put up a couple of flood lights to take out the shadows in your yard. Keep your yard neat so it's obvious somebody lives there.
In terms of detection, nothing beats a well-trained dog. Train 'em to give a couple of barks whenever someone enters the yard (although just a couple so it doesn't get irritating).
This isn't a complicated problem, but as with a lot of things the best solutions are the obvious solutions.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
netfilter.
i think you might want to have a look at this paintball gun then...
Recognizing that crime is often (not always, but often) a product of personal desperation I vote for candidates who will do things like:
At first, it may seem that, economically, you are better off keeping more of your dollars in your pocket (especially if you need them to pay the fees for your gated compound or personal home defense equipment). There is another equilibrium, which does mean higher taxes but on the other hand, makes the streets safe and crime less common, which is to reduce the societal risk factors that promote crime. Most wealthy Americans, for whom gated life and home defense is a minor cost, call this "rampant tax and spend looney pinko socialism". Many Europeans call it "responsible government".
Admittedly, shooting the "perp" and/or throwing him in jail does lead to a satisfied feeling that you have avenged, say, your Mum's honour. As many non-white citizens of your country can tell you, and good research has shown, your current system does actually promote, rather than prevent, the crime you wish to stop (cf. recent Cringly article as a starting point).
Want a safer society? Make sure it's one where everyone has a genuine chance, which doesn't oppress you if you're poor/black/unlucky, which is based on sound research and reasoning about policy (not 4000-year old policies promulgated in middle-eastern nomadic herding societies). Keep the police around to keep the hard-core cases under control.
It takes a little longer, and you guys nearly had it in the 60's, but it's worth it.
dude that had been debunked time and time agien "This myth, stemming from a superficial "study" of firearm accidents in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, represents a comparison of 148 accidental deaths (including suicides) to the deaths of 23 intruders killed by home owners over a 16-year period. 2 Gross errors in this and similar "studies"--with even greater claimed ratios of harm to good--include: the assumption that a gun hasn't been used for protection unless an assailant dies; no distinction is made between handgun and long gun deaths; all accidental firearm fatalities were counted whether the deceased was part of the "family" or not; all accidents were counted whether they occurred in the home or not, while self-defense outside the home was excluded; almost half the self-defense uses of guns in the home were excluded on the grounds that the criminal intruder killed may not have been a total stranger to the home defender; suicides were sometimes counted and some self-defense shootings misclassified. Cleveland's experience with crime and accidents during the study period was atypical of the nation as a whole and of Cleveland since the mid-1970s. Moreover, in a later study, the same researchers noted that roughly 10% of killings by civilians are justifiable homicides. 3 The "guns in the home" myth has been repeated time and again by the media, and anti-gun academics continue to build on it. In 1993, Dr. Arthur Kellermann of Emory University and a number of colleagues presented a study that claimed to show that a home with a gun was much more likely to experience a homicide. 4 However, Dr. Kellermann selected for his study only homes where homicides had taken place--ignoring the millions of homes with firearms where no harm is done--and a control group that was not representative of American households. By only looking at homes where homicides had occurred and failing to control for more pertinent variables, such as prior criminal record or histories of violence, Kellermann et al. skewed the results of this study. Prof. Kleck wrote that with the methodology used by Kellermann, one could prove that since diabetics are much more likely to possess insulin than non-diabetics, possession of insulin is a risk factor for diabetes. Even Dr. Kellermann admitted this in his study: "It is possible that reverse causation accounted for some of the association we observed between gun ownership and homicide." Law Professor Daniel D. Polsby went further, "Indeed the point is stronger than that: 'reverse causation' may account for most of the association between gun ownership and homicide. Kellermann's data simply do not allow one to draw any conclusion." 5 Research conducted by Professors James Wright and Peter Rossi, 6 for a landmark study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, points to the armed citizen as possibly the most effective deterrent to crime in the nation. Wright and Rossi questioned over 1,800 felons serving time in prisons across the nation and found: 81% agreed the "smart criminal" will try to find out if a potential victim is armed. 74% felt that burglars avoided occupied dwellings for fear of being shot. 80% of "handgun predators" had encountered armed citizens. 40% did not commit a specific crime for fear that the victim was armed. 34% of "handgun predators" were scared off or shot at by armed victims. 57% felt that the typical criminal feared being shot by citizens more than he feared being shot by police. Professor Kleck estimates that annually 1,500-2,800 felons are legally killed in "excusable self-defense" or "justifiable" shootings by civilians, and 8,000-16,000 criminals are wounded. This compares to 300-600 justifiable homicides by police. Yet, in most instances, civilians used a firearm to threaten, apprehend, shoot at a criminal, or to fire a warning shot without injuring anyone. Based on his extensive independent survey research, Kleck estimates that each year Americans use guns for protection from criminals more than 2.5 million times annually. 7 U.S. Department of Justice victimization surve
Car alarms are based on proximity? I thought they were just on a timer, set to go off at 3am.
1. Motion sensing lights at proper heights placed for full coverage of important areas
2. Motion detector webcam with pre-programmed scanning capabilities (the wireless Toshiba unit is superb http://www.toshiba.com/taisisd/netcam/index.htm)
3. Alarm system securing all major entranced points, and if you can afford it all the screens as well
4. Dog. Even if its a cuddly licker like a lab, dogs can hear and sense things no alarm system can handle. I'm constantly amazed how my lab KNOWS when someone is coming to the house, even when the car is still in the road!
Under no circumstances get a gun. It is a stupid precaution that only serves to increase your risk substantially. Killing someone is a tough thing, and your more likely to get shot with your own weapon (or get sued by someone you shoot) than you are to successfully defend your home.
Or as my friend always says, if you DO end up having to shoot an intruder make sure you finish the job...
-rt
I highly recommend this route. To avoid having to go through training issues and increasing demand on the puppy factories out there, seriously consider looking into a rescue dog. These are dogs that typically are taken from shelters before their time runs out. The volunteers who run rescues tend to pick dogs who have exceptional traits like intelligence, affectionate, etc...
In the rescue system, they are typically potty trained, given obedience classes, speyed or neutered, screened for diseases, full immunizations, and are socialized with other dogs. I adopted a 2 year old pit bull a few years back(I went to see a germen shepherd but this dog suckered me). I couldn't have asked for a better dog. She came potty trained(mostly) with basic obedience training and she's extremely loyal. She does really good with my infant children and she scares the crap out of strangers.
I highly recommend rescue dogs after this experience.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
If you decide to get a dog, PLEASE rescue one and do not buy a puppy. Too many great dogs are euthanized every day because nobody wants them.
While living in downtown Miami, my passenger-side window was bashed out one night at a time when I lacked the funds to replace it.
Nearly every night thereafter for several months, there were intruders into my vehicle. Bums slept in it, random shady passersby stuck their heads in for a look just in case anything good might have been forgotten there; the crappy broken CD player was ripped out of it (I should have thought to stick a little post-it on the thing that said 'only the radio works on this one, please ignore') which sucked because it left me to drive in silence (aside, of course, for the blaring wind and driving rain which couldn't be helped.)
I was living, at this time, in an apartment directly above the busy street (Biscayne & 24th, for those familiar) on which I left the car parked, and became obsessed with running to the window to see if anyone was rooting through my poor little car, and dialing 911 and giving them descriptions of the people in the car right then.
Anyway, I finally solved the problem (until I was able to replace the window, anyway) with a home-made, zero-cost, silly-as-fucking-shit system of my own device: I ran a piece of twine down from my window and around the opposite side of the car, such that it was tied to the inside door-handle of the passenger side. That way, if the passenger door were to be opened, the bag of loud things I tied the other end of the string to would jingle! Ingenious, I know! I did this every single night.
Sure, the system could have been circumvented easily enough, but it wasn't! My car was never entered by another single foreign body. Which leads me to the MORAL OF THE STORY:
Don't shy away from doing silly shit like this, because it doesn't even matter whether it would work or not: it's the psychology of the thing that's important. If you make people feel like they're being watched--especially if you're able to make them feel like they're being watched by a crazy, potentially violent person (as I no doubt did and possibly was)--then they will leave your shit alone.
Insightful as all get-out, I know.
Art Schools Dietzilla
We had an attempted break-in this summer, and man did it freak me out. They didn't get in, but I could see the handprints on the windows they had tried to open. I called the police.
When the cop arrived, he pointed out a few things that he said could make the house more inaccessible, but he said that in all his years of investigating break-ins that he's never seen anything taken from a house with a dog. Not a fuzzy laprat -- a dog of 40 pounds or more. In fact, he mentioned that the people across the street from me were broken into that night and had some cash and jewelry stolen. They don't have a dog.
Then, a week later, I received a packet from the local police department, about 50 pages or so on how to protect your home. It included some very useful information. It showed the differences between cheap and useful locks on doors and windows. It showed how thieves try to circumvent most common types of doors, windows, and locks. It covered security lighting, alarms, realistic opinions of subscription security services (i.e. waste of money), landscaping considerations and patio furniture considerations.
So, rather than ask a bunch of tech nuts, just call your local police department and see if they have such a packet. As much as we hate cops when we get speeding tickets or raided for warez ops, when it comes to protecting your family they're generally willing to help.
I'm not kidding. Watch geese make a whole lot of noise when they spot an intruder, and they're aggressive, too. They also have the effect of confusing the hell out of some would-be criminals.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
The goal here is to get people aware, know that there's someone in the neighborhood who cares, and get them calling the police whenever something isn't right. Having known a number of police in my lifetime I can tell you that they don't mind checking out a "suspicious car/person" while their on duty. Just like Open Source, many eyes improves security.
****
"I'd never want to join a club that would have me as a member" - G. Marx
Dogs are for weenies. What you really want is a guard baboon. Seriously, who's going to mess with this?
Killing someone because of trespassing? Someone that's almost surely unarmed!? That's the last solution I would've chosen, if at all.
Flame me all you want, but deep down you know it's wrong. Guess Michael Moore was into something in the movie Bowling For Columbine.
A couple of months ago I had a neighbor break into my house and thought I wouldn't notice. As soon as I got home I did, and on consulting a camera in my living room I found pictures of her where she shouldn't have been.
Video cameras are great, but require lots of tape and can wear out, even digital ones require large amounts of disk space.
I was very happy that I was using a MemoCam that I had picked up in a thrift store back in December. I was very eager to use it as I had a pair of DVD's disappear the month before, and after many months of sitting idle it found my burglar (at least in this one case).
As for the camera, it's a small B&W cam that uses IR to detect motion, when detected it starts snapping pictures to a MMC card. It even supports scheduling so I have it automatically enable motion detection soon after I leave for work and disable it again just before I get home.
With such a device, there is always the risk that it could be stolen, along with the pictures it contains. To help prevent such an occurrence I have since improved my camera arrangement in my home... all I will say is that I now have more than one camera and not even a burglar setting fire to the place could prevent me from having good, usable pictures of the event.
For those who didn't go to the link above, my burglar initially denied everything until she was confronted with the pictures by the police. She's now facing charges of 2nd degree burglary and petty theft, charges that carry maximum jail terms of 10 years in the state pen and 30 days in the county jail respectively.
We are now at 3 months to the day since the break in and still the wheels of justice are turning slow... but at least they are turning, all because I am paranoid enough to have a camera in my home.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Yeah, and if the thief got nuked, your friend would have been liable.
:P Told them I'd make any statement they wanted once I was allowed to talk with my lawyer -- why do you need an attorney, they asked, unless you are guilty...well if I'm not being charged, let me go...if I'm being charged, I think I need to talk with someone. And thats how the entire conversation went...for 5 fucking hours.
I say this after being interrogated for 5 hours because I booby trapped my lil' Triumph Spitfire several years back when I was in college.
I had gotten a removable cd player from a friend that owed me money -- he pulled it out of his car and said it was collateral. Turns out, he took off the week after that and never came back. So I had to figure out how to put the thing in my car and with the help of a friend that was an EE major...I don't think they were intended to work without the cage, but we got it working and build a new nonremovable enclosure for it and popped it in where the radio should have gone.
Spitfires are convertibles and the locks never worked, so with the help of the same friend, we worked on a trap. Got two frames and embedded razor blades at a 45 degree angle inward on both sides. Very easy to put your hand in, but pulling it out is a little difficult. For added effect, we tinsnipped the blades to be a bit more jagged.
For the final portion, Mike hooked in a charged capacitor to a bar in the middle...slap your hand up against it without discharging it and you are going to have a nasty shock. Most likely try to yank your hand out...hmmm...see where I'm going with this?
Not less than two weeks later I come out to my Triumph to see the leather pulled off the front of the radio (I did try to conceal it by pimping out the console in leather -- looked really nice). and my radio was half pulled out...and a pool of congealing blood on the passenger side seat and floor.
Turns out some neighborhood kid tried stealing it and ended up at the hospital (which was only 2 blocks from my dorm). There was still some skin on the blades...when I removed them (I started freaking out because I knew the possibility that this would come into use, but didn't think about what would happen if it was used).
A few minutes after trashing the razor'd frames I get a knock on my dormroom door from the police asking me some questions.
For the next 5 hours I was interrogated about trapping my vehicle and if I knew it was illegal. I claimed ignorance. One cop tried being the good guy while the other was the asshole. The good guy confided to me that in his day he too set some 'nigger traps'. His words not mine. I found it pretty appalling as most of my friends at the dorm were black including the EE that helped me set the trap. C'mon, he said, I'm a good ol' boy -- you can tell what you did. I simply told him I was going to file a complaint about his use of racial bigotry and that he shouldn't be a cop and that the fact that the video camera in the back of the room with the taped over record light was visible recording as you could still see the light and I thought his captain should know about this. A thief is a thief and I've had far more white people fuck with me than blacks ever have...so he really pissed me off with this line.
His mood changed and the asshole cop came back with the boys mother. The 'boy' was 17 and it was said he almost lost his hand (doubtful) and that he had to get his arm required 60+ stitches and some vascular surgery on his vein. Poor baby...fucker tries stealing from me, and he is being coddled while I am being interrogated. Fuck him and fuck his mother...I told her point blank I hoped he did loose his fucking hand and maybe he could see what it really is like to go without for a while.
5 hours of this alternating between police officers. it was bullshit. And it was 8 years ago, so I'm well past the statutes of limitations on this as charges were never files and I never made a statement
The fuck
No, he didn't set out intending to kill anybody at all. In response to repeated roberries, he set out to defend his business, which he has every right to do. Why the hell are you defending the robbers anyway, instead of the poor old man who was repeatedly victimized? Get your priorities straight!
Too agressive. The last one we elected, invaded Iraq on some rather flimsy evidence of WMDs.
I mean, who's going to mess with your pet cougar, or puma?
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
Its the Japanese student incident. Pity this home owner didnt have a hologram wookie...
.44 Magnum-carrying Rodney Peairs. Yoshihiro, thinking he had
found the party after all, stepped towards Mr. Peairs and said, "
'We're here for the party' ". Webb Haymaker then found himself
standing over his dying friend, Yoshihiro Hattore, a victim of
unintentional homicide."
Baton Rouge, Lousiana--October 17, 1992--8:30 P.M
"A Japanese exchange student, Yoshihiro Hattori, was searching for a party he had been invited to. Thinking he had found the house in which the social would take place, Yoshihiro knocked on the door. Not knowing that they had the wrong house Yoshihiro and his companion startled the proprietor. After having the front door shut in their face the two boys began walking back to Yoshihiro's car. Yoshihiro Hattori and his friend, Webb Haymaker, then turned back towards the house upon hearing the carport door open behind them. Instead of seeing the party's host, these two boys were greeted by a " 'Freeze' " and a
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Canadians are also better educated than Yanks. Go figure.
-- "...I'm a bad guy because I, well, I sing some rock-and-roll songs." M. Manson
You calling me stupid? I'll bust a cap in yo ass!
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
The assault rate per 100,000 is higher in Canada.
Sexual Assault, 32.8 per 100k US to 77.5 Canada
Robbery higher in US, 144.9 to 88.0 but there is no mention if this includes use of a gun
Aggravated assault, Canada is higher with 761 to 323.
These are numbers for 2000...
Only problem aligning the two is definitions... I found that Aggravated Assualt in Canada is 3 categories but usually all clumped together.
What the numbers usually imply that if the criminal knows your not supposed to be armed you are an easier mark. This was proven a few times in Washington DC by comparing the times of day when certain crimes occured and how ofter. DC has very strict gun control laws...
Laws don't mean anything to most criminals. Access to guns is very easy and the better deterrent is to make yourself unattractive to would be assailants.
This can include..
1. Stay in very visible areas.
2. Living in a well lit area
3. House on the main street of a neighborhood
4. Front side apartments
5. Living where gun ownership is permitted (esp carry/concealed)
6. Having nosy neighbors
7. Keeping doors and windows locked and closed on ground levels.
8. Having a well lit backyard. (fences can work against you)
9. Dogs are nice.
10. Home security systems and signs to help "advertise it" - (will deter some)
There are many things to deter crime, don't for a minute think laws have much to do with it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"Guns don't kill you - rappers do."
When you're sleeping, those aren't particularly effective. ;-)
But the NRA and CRPA bumper stickers (and the "I'd rather be hunting" license plate frame) on the car in the driveway IS. B-)
In particular, the burglars that were working their way down our street a few years back skipped two houses - the retired cop two doors up (whose son had similar stickers) and ours.
Current neighborhood has a couple gangs trying to move in. They've intimidated witnesses - with both minor and major vandalism - elsewhere on our block. They have NOT done that to OUR place. B-)
Closest they came is when their spokesthug came buy and asked the wife (an NRA-certified fireams / personal-protection instructor B-) who smokes on the front porch and watches neighborhood goings-on) whether she was worried about attacks or breakins. She said, no, she'd just shoot anybody who tried to attack her. But wasn't she worried about her guns being stolen while she was gone? No, because the firesafe weighs too much to steal without special equipment.
Been here over 5 years, no problems so far. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
My high school physics teacher had problems every Halloween with kids blowing up his mailbox with fireworks. He finally took a laser home from school, set up some mirrors and ringed his mailbox with laser tripwires. This was hooked up to a freakin' loud alarm. You get the picture.
If you wanted to take it a step further, you could set up strobe lamps and a camera like the intersection ticket boxes. Multiple view angles would help in case the person has their back to the camera. That way, when the police came by you could hand them glossies and a DV tape of the guy.
The number one rule of burglars must be to go for the low-hanging fruit. (Wow, same rule applies to performance tuning...)
I think burglars are smart enough to notice the burglar alarm sensors around the windows. Just the sight of these can make them choose another house instead of yours. I know someone whose neighbors have all been robbed, even during the afternoon with all sorts of people around, but his house has been spared all these years, thanks to the alarm system.
Get an alarm system with the monitoring through a reputable company.
It's usually illegal to have a static firearm with a trap mechanism.
They used to have things like this all the time in Europe and North America for both setting traps for deer, boar, bears and to keep poachers away, they became illegal a while back I think.
So what you are talking about is always pretty much illegal, with the guns at least.
- His car, a Holden HZ sedan, with the door open; and
- His steering column partially disassembled; and
- Traces of blood and hair on assorted knobs and corners under the dash and on the door; and
- No car thief.
You see, 105dB at 3m in free space equals 117dB at about 40cm, which was the approximate distance between the screamers and the thief's ears as he lay in the footwell jiggering the ignition switch on the steering column.This is in a mostly-enclosed hard-walled space, which has to be worth at least another 12dB. And there were two of them, so add another 3dB as icing on the cake, draw a line, 132dB.
The threshold of pain, for reference, is 120dB.
If you're going to bother building a car alarm, get it right. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It's common for Europeans to believe that they're enlightened enough not to need guns. Unfortunately, they're living in a dream.
That is what YOU say. Now consider the following statistics, which I have taken from this report and which are for the year 1991: (I cut the list by some countries in the midfield)
And now tell me again that having a gun in your flat is a good prevention. I guess I need to say that I am from Switzerland and have an automatic gun (SIG Stgw 90) at home (from the army), as every male citizen has, but you can`t get bullets for it (the ones you have are in a sealed package).
As for the question for security: I lock the door, that`s it, but I guess in the US that is unfortunately not enough.
this sig is useless
Out of sight out of mind: He closed in his carport so you couldn't see his car
Inconvenience potential burglars: a pet fence around the back yard (with the gate locked), storm windows and storm doors extra locks on widows and doors.
A thorny defense: All the windows had holly bushes growing under and around them.
looking like you have nothing to steal: The house wasn't the best in the neighborhood or the worst and all the improvements were either invisible to the casual observer or common place.
In summary the house was the least attractive target on the whole block with many inconveniences visible from the street, where presumably the potential burglars case the property.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.