Protecting Your Home Security in Oakland

If you are a typical homeowner, you are probably quite concerned with your home security. A proper house is the biggest investment most people will ever make - both financially, and emotionally, as your physical dwelling will become a space in which countless memories are made. That is why it is so important to protect your home security by taking such basic actions as investing in a good home alarm system and making sure to lock doors, etcetera.

Protecting your home security used to mean simply making sure to lock the door when you left for the day or went to sleep at night. Those measures used to seem like big actions in the name of protecting you and your home! Then came the days of home security systems. Suddenly everyone in your neighborhood in Oakland, California proudly displayed lawn ornaments and window stickers advertizing the name of company that was protecting their home. These signs, you and your neighbors hoped, would show potential robbers and home invaders that they had no business on this property - the second they smashed a window or picked a lock or bashed in a back door, the police would be alerted and they would be caught red-handed. And this logic makes sense on the part of home owners. Prevention is always preferable to the justice that occurs after a crime is committed. Even if a home security system does its job and sets off a loud alarm the second a break in occurs, waking you up (assuming it's the middle of the night and you are sleeping) and alerting the authorities that this horrible event has occurred, you will still be left with a lessened sense of security. You will feel violated that someone felt that they could target you and your family and break into your home in the middle of the night.

But unfortunately, having a sign on your front lawn often is not enough anymore, especially in cities like Oakland with higher crime rates. You cannot always prevent crimes from happening, so you need to prepare for the fact that they can occur. Your goal should be to minimize harm when they do occur (and unfortunately, for most people they will at some point). So it is always good to take a number of other measures to prepare you and your family emotionally for the possibility that a crime will occur.

One step is talking to your children about the potential for crime to occur. Let them know that there are bad people in the world who want to take things from those who have money. Do not scare them unnecessarily - make sure they understand that the chance of your family being targeted is small, but that it is possible. But then show them all of the steps that you have taken to make sure it never happens. Tell them about the security door you installed, and the home alarm system that you activate ever night before going to bed. Show them the sticker on the window, and let them know that you sleep with one eye open to keep them safe!