Protect Your Home and Family With a Camera

 
In this age when home invasions and break ins are quite common you can discourage such criminal activity or at least make sure you have photographic or video evidence of the criminals involved -- if you have installed a high quality residential camera system.



Many of these systems are wireless and quite easy to install as well as connect to your camera in your home as well as your computer at work, or even your laptop if you are on the road a lot.



You might think that any camera would be easy to take out by someone before they break in or invade your home but while some of these cameras are quite large not all of them. You can also install what is often called a pinhole camera with lenses no larger than the eraser at the end of a pencil and these can be concealed above doorways or windows without much expertise. Of course it is not a bad idea to have one of the certified companies install these for you to make sure the installations and set up are done correctly.



The critical thing in all of this is that you don't just run out and buy the first residential camera system you see. Do your homework. Check out several brands first as well as the services of companies who specialize in such residential camera system installations.



There is a wealth of such information on the Internet such as: www.homesecurity.com, www.surveillancevideo.com, and www.youdoitsecurity.com for starters.

Remember to do your independent research and build a good background knowledge of what is out there in the way of residential security camera systems and ask a lot of in-depth questions when speaking to sales and service people before buying and installing any system.



A security camera system can be a valuable ally in your efforts to protect your property and family – if you go about selecting and installing a system carefully.


 

 

How Well Do Your Know Your Site?

Whether your site is some construction project, an industrial or retail complex or condo tower if you are a professional security officer – or whether it is your home, office, or other place of business how well do you know the layout? In an emergency could you get around it in the dark – without the aid of a flashlight?



You should be able to so you could navigate through the building or area quickly and safely if some emergency did happen and you were caught without a flashlight – or it was too dangerous to let others who had invaded your property know where are.

You should practice this on a regular basis of some sort, particularly if you live or work in an area which has a history of break ins, building invasions, or other problems like power failures etc.



You should know where all the doors lead to and where all the places of refuge can be found. If you frequently work outside in the late night or early morning hours you should know where all the routes inside your site or property lead to as well as what roads or trails lead up to the perimeter of your site or property. You should know where they come from as well as who normally uses these routes – and where they would take you if you had to retreat from the area for some reason. 




And you also want to keep in mind whether roads or trails, or access points  converging on your position from two or more different directions would leave you vulnerable to attack from two directions. Then keep an eye of these routes periodically while you are working – in an alert – not paranoid fashion.



This type of awareness about your property or site should become a habit, particularly for security people stationed in outside area but often it does not All too often you can walk or drive right up behind them from a direction they were not monitoring and catch them completely off guard – particularly guards sitting in their own vehicles listening to the radio or I pods etc.



No, problems do not happen often on most sites, but it takes only one when you are not alert to ruin your day (or night).


 

 

Create The Whole Picture

Create the whole picture when you meet new people; it could be critical to do this.

This was clearly illustrated in a recent incident involving a young Asian man who attempted to hide his true identity when he boarded an airplane headed for Vancouver, B.C., by wearing a mask that created the impression of a very old man. This combined with false identify papers initially helped him slip past trained officer at loading check points who assumed he was this elderly person returning to Canada.

He would have gotten away with this except he made two mistakes: First he forgot to make sure his hands matched his facial features and for some reason he decided to abandon his mask in the airplane's washroom mid flight.

The alert passenger next to him had already alerted the flight crew that something was suspicious about this person because young hands did not match his old facial features so when he emerged from the washroom as a young Asian man the crew immediately alerted the authorities in Vancouver and he was nabbed when the airliner landed.

Who knows how many other people use such disguises. If you read Eye Spy magazine you'll agree that there are probably many, many incidents like this in other settings. And this type of thing can be very hard to detect as any good makeup artist will show you.

I can be done, however, if you get into the habit of capturing or creating the complete picture of the person you are confronting or see – their face, their eyes, -- their hands -- as well as other features and even body language – everything you notice about that person.

Do they create a picture of the person her or she is supposed to be?