The most common objection to acquiring a burglar alarm is that, faced with a wailing siren from an absent neighbour, most of us will just tut and go about our business as usual. We naturally assume that there could only be two reasons for the unwanted noise, and they are that either our neighbour's alarm has developed a malevolent malfunction whilst they're absent, or they simply have forgotten the very basic instruction of how to turn the damn thing off when they trigger it accidently. Either way, they are a damned nuisance, noise polluters for sure, and we will downgrade their good neighbour status by at least one point; maybe two.
So the main reason for not getting a home alarm fitted is because nobody responds to them. Or do they?
Do you ever stop to think, as you're considering the security of your home, how many career burglars will size-up the opportunity of breaking in and stealing all your worldly possessions? How many will be casually assessing each and every property on each and every road they cruise down in an attempt to target the most vulnerable? Do you ever consider what burglars do with their time besides breaking and entering with intent to steal? A standard burglary is over in a matter of minutes, with the perpetrators long gone before the unlucky victims become aware of their misfortune. I would therefore suggest that the rest of the time they are 'working', they are developing a list of target properties, with a view to further investigation and ultimately a place in the pipeline of new nefarious actions. If your house looks a soft touch, it goes on his to-do list.
If you have been a security-smart homeowner, and your house shows off your awareness of the routine assessment it undergoes from the criminal fraternity, you stand a lesser chance of becoming a line in their little black book. Because, if, during the course of a break-in, the intruder manages to set off the alarm, he is immediately under severe pressure to make his escape. Because no amount of pre-planning can tell him what the response to that alarm will be. Is there a vigilante in the vicinity, in the shape of a police officer who lives next door, or a switched-on security guard who's just finished his night shift and whose ears and brain are hardwired respond to the sound of an alarm siren? The intruder has no way of knowing, and that unknown factor is enough to have them retreating off the premises, pronto.
So the person most likely to react to your active burglar alarm is your active burglar, whether that's in making him beat a sharp retreat back under the stone he crawled out from, or dissuading him from 'calling-in' in the first place.
A nice, new external alarm bell box is probably the single best deterrent you can put in place to keep the most unwanted of visitors from your door.
