We have blogged about this a bit before, but it is worth touching on again – the value of outdoor security lighting! During the past month in the Rochester suburbs (not including the City) there have been over 45 instances of break in and/or burglary of private homes. In not one case reported was there adequate outdoor security lighting. Nor were there any motion detectors or alarms inside any of these homes.
As a point of fact, the majority of those 45 homes had set themselves up for providing the ideal staging for crimes. Most of them had shrubs, bushes, or low trees near the house, giving the break in artists a place to conceal themselves while they checked your home out to make sure the owners were out or asleep AND that there was no security system in place. Security lighting, with motion detector controls, had they been in place…strategically in place…would have taken away the safe hiding place for the burglars and would probably have prevented the crimes before they even began.
A gent we know was the victim of a home break in a few years ago. The damage to the home and the loss of money and valuables was bad enough, but the experience left him feeling violated and angry for a very long time. It affected his wife even more dramatically and left her dealing with a fear of leaving the home at all combined with an understandable fear of being there alone…ever. In the end, she required dozens of counseling visits and her husband had to come up with the money for those visits.
“How much simpler and cheaper it would have been,” he told us, “if I had just called you like I had planned to and had security lights installed.” And he was right. For a few hundred dollars, he could have prevented the break in and ultimately have saved many thousands of dollars, aggravation of incalculable value, and the guilt of knowing his procrastination was a major contributor to the problem in the first place.
Look, that motion activated light over your garage door is great, especially if the crooks plan on driving up to your garage door. Think about the areas around the outside of your house that someone can get to – and hide – unseen. I bet you were pretty good at hide and seek when you were a kid. Walk around your property after dark tonight. How many great hiding places near or next to the house can you find? Then call us at Lon Lockwood Electric tomorrow morning and ask for help with outdoor security lighting! We’ll be waiting to hear from you!
