In that case I would get a security system. They are getting quite reasonable in price and you can set them up with WiFi to your smart phone and be your own monitoring service if you don't want to pay for one.Well, Jeff, that sounds like a unique, and somewhat unavailable architecture, for the rest of us guys. Sounds convenient, tho. Unfortunately, the rest of us poor jamokes have houses which we drive up to, and 3/4 of it is concealed.
I'm sure you've heard of the Amber Guyger case. Here was a trained POLICE OFFICER, who, upon returning home, was so unaware of her surroundings, she not only entered the wrong apartment, she shot it's occupant, before she realized anything was amiss. The point here is not guilt, or innocence. What I'm trying to point out, is that upon returning home, not many people are looking for any icing, to add to the stress cake, of a hard day.
I respectfully submit, that while there may be a few people here, who return home, ready to sweep the premises for hazards, each and every single day, there are simply a lot of us, who are just coming home, to what they (perhaps inappropriately) assume is their safe haven. And sorry, but we're not circling the house, looking for broken windows, and jimmied locks.
Dibbs, without knowing your exact situation, I would assess your risk level as highest as you are exiting your car, and still worth considering until you have entered and secured the door behind you to prevent tailgating.So, you come home, after a long, hard day, and you want to just go inside the house, , relax, and eat, like you always do, yet you circle the house, instead, peeking in all the windows, and listening at the keyholes, to discover the intruder in your home, on the specific day the intruder happens to be in there? Exactly how do you figure out which day that's going to be?
There were a few times when I was responding to a report of break in where I knew the owner was onsite and armed that I lit up the light bar coming down the driveway so the armed owner knew it was the police arriving and not accomplices of the intruder he was looking for or holding.You have to be careful to identify yourself to the dispatcher so that this mixup doesn't take place. Certainly don't have gun in hand when the police arrive.
I have a primordial view of such a situation. If my home is invaded in my absence I take the same position as if I were at home. The invader will be shot on sight. My home is my Castle. Invade it whether I am at home or not, and you face a man who will end your behavior..
Dibbs, how many folks don't have modern, monitored alarms nowadays? Do you? Mine goes off like the Wrath of God, launching the Minute Man missiles and bringing the USS Missouri to general quarters.
Does the thought cause you concern?. I'm just saying the possibility exists, that there COULD be an intruder, in your home, who has left no VISIBLE or OBVIOUS signs that they are there.
I've read back over this thread and I really can't tell where you're going with this. Here was your question:
How do you handle coming home to the prospect of an intruder being inside your home, when you get there ?
You've gotten lots of answers, but based on your responses, it seems clear that none of them are what you're looking for.
Maybe you want to qualify/clarify your question a bit to focus it in a direction that's more in line with your situation, or maybe you have something in mind as a solution that you want to put forward for discussion?
Come now.Everybody keeps INSISTING, that when they get within 1/4 mile of their house, they will KNOW an intruder is inside.
What is your assessment of that risk?We get home, at the end of a long, hard day, we're tired, and trying to wind down, and we're not at our most alert, and the possibility may exist, in which, unlike our Exceptional Superhero brethren, we may walk into the house, and close that door, with an intruder inside our home
It's a good thing that the person was only interested in a place to live and food, or things could have turned out very ugly. It's hard to imagine that there's any kind of constructive approach to dealing with this kind of a scenario once the person is already in the house and the homeowner is completely unaware of the situation.There was a guy, in NYC, IIRC, about ten years ago, who literally had a guy living inside the walls and crawl spaces of his home for a couple of weeks, before he ever discovered anything was wrong. HE also got caught, when the forthright occupant of the home noticed food missing from the kitchen, if memory serves.
Ok, so you're clearly concerned about this scenario, but so far you have rejected pretty much any suggestions for solving it the best way possible--avoiding it in the first place.We get home, at the end of a long, hard day, we're tired, and trying to wind down, and we're not at our most alert, and the possibility may exist, in which, <needless sarcasm>, we may walk into the house, and close that door, with an intruder inside our home. <more needless sarcasm>, this has actually happened, and could, again.
The possibility will exist that we will be the victim of an attempted violent crime.We get home, at the end of a long, hard day, we're tired, and trying to wind down, and we're not at our most alert, and the possibility may exist,
That is one possibility. We should consider a few others:....we may walk into the house, and close that door, with an intruder inside our home.
If I come home and there is an exterior entry point that has obviously been breeched and I don't hear my pitbull tearing someone's butt up Im drawing and going in.
Even if the event you're preparing for is unlikely, if you have decided to make a plan, the plan needs to be adequate for the circumstances it is designed to deal with. The unlikelihood of the event may make it reasonable to not prepare a plan at all, but if the decision is to have a plan in place, the plan needs to be reasonably likely to result in a satisfactory solution. For what it's worth, I'm not making any assessment of the viability of your plan, just pointing out that you're mixing the assessment and mitigation planning stages of risk assessment and that has the potential to really mess up a risk management problem.Add to that we're pretty rural, the odds of anything happening in the first place almost make the hypothetical situation irrelevant.
How do you handle coming home
to the prospect of an intruder being inside your home, when you get there ?