Guidelines to Protect Your Family – New!!!

Posted by admin | Posted in Articles | Posted on 30-04-2012

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The purpose of this article is to create awareness for everyone on possible steps to be taken before, during and after any incident related to protecting your family. It may not be directly linked with dogs but it concerns about public safety. Having dogs to protect your family is only part of the solution. There are other factors that needs to be considered to make our home to be a real heaven.

Safety Measures (Proactive)

  1. Please make sure your gates both outside and inside are always locked. There are many school of thoughts about the selection of locks. But many people forget about the location of lock. Make sure it is convenient to lock from the inside rather than just from outside. This is a real life saver when it comes to emergency.
  2. If you have the budget, you can install CCTV as a form of automated surveillance. But remember unless and until you go through the recorded footage, you have no clue of preparing yourself against any danger. You have to do your homework which means you have to view the recorded footage regularly to detect any unwanted movements around your home. This is proactive measure
  3. Get the contact number of the nearest Police Station. Get feedback from on any reported cases in your vicinity. If possible make friends with the officers to keep their personal contact numbers with you. You never know when you need it.
  4. Form a neighbourhood alliance among residents of your housing area. Meet each other once in a while to keep everyone informed of any happening in your area. Malaysians are really weak on this, to the extent I feel they put their egos ahead of them  to the fullest extreme of being foolish. The pathetic mentality is “your problem is exclusively yours until it hits me”.
  5. Make surprise rounds around your home during your working hours to check if anything funny is going on unnoticed.
  6. Always make sure your kids are never left unattended. They must be under your watchful eyes. We are horrified by the kidnapping cases going on now. Make sure that there is an adult (by this I mean realiable adults) around them. Always tell your child not to take anything or follow or talk to any strangers.
  7. Never ever speak about important matters that involves money, property etc in front of your maid, driver or even neighbours/friends/relatives whom you know will discuss it with others even if the discussion is not intended to be for bad reasons. Most cases that we hear of are from news that travels from insiders to outsides.
  8. Keep dogs regardless of breed and size. I know of many people who’s life and property has been saved by even toy dogs which alerted everyone in their home of the oncoming danger. I have also come across situation when the perpetrators have decided the to drop their plan due to the presence of dogs in a home. You must understand that dogs do not altogether rule out the possibility of a robbery. But they are a deterrent factor. The perpetrator has to give a serious thought before attempting. The dogs are there to protect you when you at home. So when you’re away you can lock them up safely in their kennel. Sometime it helps to have a dog inside your house when your sleeping at night provided you have no health issues with this kind of arrangement. It will be a good idea for your child to grow up with a good and reliable protection dog that will be his or her personal security guard wherever he goes.
  9. If you have no choice and have to hire a personal security guard, please check the background of the company if they have all relevant documentation in place to offer the service. Also please check if the personnel put to work is one with a suitable character to carry out this duty. I wish not to elaborate further on this, as you are a better judge.
  10. Whenever you go out and come into your house, take a minute or two to look around if your movements are being watched by unknown people around your housing area. Sometimes we are too busy to note this. If you have time, take a brisk walk around your housing area to spot suspicious activity.

Re-Active Measures

All the above is well and good until something goes wrong. Let’s pray that we do need to come to that point. But what if we do?
  1. I know it is difficult, but stay calm, and don’t panic or breakdown. You are the supporting morale pillars for your family. So they need you during these times. Therefore take a few steps back and relax to begin strategize.
  2. Make a Police report and speak to the officers you know about how to go about this case. Please get definitive deadline on each activity that will be carried out by the Police. If results are not produced within the planned timeline, you can begin tagging the case as serious or critical for further actions.
  3. For third party witnesses, please just don’t shut up and lock yourselves in your homes. Please have some humanitarian values by stepping up to provides eye-witness account of any evidence that you may have. Your statement can potentially be a life saver. Don’t be a self-centered creature with the selfish mentality that if it does not affect you, it’s none of your problem.
  4. Try to gather evidence and support from your neighbours. Reassure them that their identities will be not be revealed in this process, that everything will remain confidential.
  5. Re-play your CCTV footage and start going through everything frame by frame. This will be quite exhaustive but will be very helpful.
  6. Engage private investigators if you have access to such expertise. This could be costly as well.
  7. Try not to move things around your home as it could hold the key evidence for Police investigation
We all have to work together to ensure the safety of our family and property. Times have changed. The criminals have updated themselves with latest techniques to carry out their activities. As such concerned citizens as well need to get themselves aware of the situation and update themselves with the latest and best crime prevention and fighting techniques and also learn to work together with the relevant authorities.

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