My parents live on the corner of a busy street. Two times they were broken into around noon or a sometime after. They got an alarm system and nothing has happened since.
I've NEVER...NEVER...EVER heard a story about a family being murdered while that alarm wailed. Never. Response time is unimportant. What is important is the perception of the guy who is breaking into your house to begin with. That alarm goes off, and people go running. It's deafening. It literally hurts your ears. And the assumption is that the authorites are on the way. The problem with response time usually has to do with it being hooked to HPD. If your neigborhood has a paid constable patrol, make sure they are notified FIRST. In my neighborhood, they are never less than 6-7 blocks away. And if HPD knows you're in a neigborhood with a paid patrol, they won't even show up....happened to my parents after calling 911 when a guy started banging on their front door and would not go away.
In our house in Houston, we had a security system from ADT. We had all the doors, windows, glass break, etc. One night the thing starts wailing. I wake up like WTF?? All of the sudden my wife screams, "Someone's breaking in!!! Go see what it is!!!" and proceeds to kick me in the back and completely out of bed. We have a keypad in the Master Bedroom so I can see that its the glass break. I go downstairs and one of the cats knocked a glass off the kitchen counter and it broke on the ceramic tile. I go back upstairs and tell her that it was the cat and a glass. By now my back is absolutely killing me. It was still killing me when I woke up the next morning and I have to go to the doctor. Come to find out, her kicking me in the back made me slip a disk and I had to go through 3 months of physical therapy. That is how our security system saved me.
We have had ours about 6 months. The company we use has a local call center. We have tripped ours twice by accident. The first time we were home and they phoned within 30 seconds of the alarm going off. The second time I set the alarm and forgot our housekeeper was coming that day. She set it off and they called the house. When they got no response they immediately sent out the police who were there within 10-15 minutes of the initial alarm. They also called my wife's work and told her. She cleared everything up and all was fine. That said it does give me piece of mind at night to know that the house is secure, especially when I am away for work or when I know I am going to be home very late. We pay $33 for 3 months($11 a month). My suggestion is to go with someone local. Some friends have used ADT and had nothing but trouble. My wife works in the industry and a lot of the techs that work for them had worked for some type of national company (ADT, Brinks, etc.) before that. They will tell you that the reponse is not always fast, and that those companies usually make their money off of monitoring services so the systems they put in are usually cheap.
One night my life and I were laying in bed trying to sleep and we heard a door shut. We were kind of freaked out. I got up to check it out. It turns out I just left the speakers on high on my cpu and the door we heard shut was that of AOL Instant Messenger.
A couple of months ago some members of a family were murdered in Sugar Land when they returned home from having dinner. The last person out forgot to set the alarm. In this case the intruder was not deterred by signs of an alarm.
When I was in high school, my parents put burglar bars up on all the doors and windows and had a fake "This house protected by ADT" sticker on the front and back doors. Why? Because my dad was transferred out of the country for 6 months and my Mom didn't feel safe with just her and two kids. When I went to college they moved into a new house with an alarm system. They had it activated immediately and used it from day one. It has only gone off once, during summer vacation of my junior year in college. It was my first time in the new house and I was feeling hot in the middle of the night. So I opened my window and that sucker just started wailing like a madman. I saw lights go on around the street and my parents came running out of their bedroom freaking out. The cops called five minutes later to find out if there was a problem... rather than showing up. I don't know if that's the norm, but it seemed pretty stupid. Needless to say I don't open a door or window in that house without permission anymore.
Criminals almost always go after the weakest, easiest prey. Why rob a house with an alarm with a *chance* of getting caught when you can go to the house without one? Some family friends went on vacation and someone tried to rob their house. The back door window was broken and the door was opened. Nothing was taken. It appears that whoever tried to get in ran as soon as the alarm went off. All that being said...if a criminal wakes me up in my house by the alarm going off, they'll be welcomed by a 12 gauge to the face.
Is this true or is this just an urban legend? it sounds like the type of rumor that an alarm company would enjoy having floating around.
My pops used to tell me that all you have to do is **** a pump action shotgun and any smart criminal will start running. shotgun
I've lived in Vermont for three years and have locked my doors a total of four times (all vacations). Nobody on the block locks their cars or houses, and there hasn't been a crime here in years. We just don't think about crime. I lived in the same Houston area neighborhood for 20 years and never heard of any burglaries. I know there are criminals out there, but I think the perception of crime is much different from reality. We all hear about the house that's broken into, but there are hundreds of thousands that weren't burglarized that night. Or ever. We're moving to the Houston area, so I'm going to install motion-detecting lights and lock my doors, but that's about it. Use common sense and take reasonable precautions. The chances of anything happening are so remote that it's not worth losing sleep over. And if something does happen, my dogs will go nuts, and I'll spring outta bed swinging my Barry Bonds special. Maybe I'm naive, but I've just chosen not to live my life in perpetual fear.
This is what I tell every peron at work that asks me about firearms and home protection--shotguns are fool-proof in that capacity. Rack the slide and listen to 'em scamper.
You may want to ask the burglars how many of them decided not to burglarize a house with a Brinks or ADT sign outside. I would qualify that as a "success story".
I've got hk .45 Glock 30 Berreta 9mm hollow points for all of them. I've got the louisville slugger under the bed. Smith and Wesson .357 under the pillow. Sig sauer strapped to the ankle. And my conan sword between the mattress. Keeps me pretty safe
Not being a GUN enthusist Isn't a 12 gauge a rifle. . . why is that better than a HAND GUN? Seems a bit slowed on the draw Rocket River
When I lived in San Antonio I had a gun target with bullet holes that made a happy face and several tightly grouped shots to the chest with a sign that said "this could be you" taped to the outside of the bedroom window that faced the street.
It's worked once for me. I saw someone trying to break into my wife's car when we lived in another part of Georgia in an apartment complex. I cocked my Scattergun and the would-be thief ran away like a scalded cat.
A 12 gauge is a shot gun, not a rifle. Its just a big tube that blows shrapnal out of the front of it (pellets) or a big slug. The reason that shotguns are recommended is that they are easy to use, pack a big punch, hard to miss with (has a spread), and just seeing one is usually deterent enough. My shot gun is an over/under hunting gun. It doesn't have the threatening pump action sound that is scary enough, but its effective enough.
