Personal Alarms and Security Products Blog

October 25, 2013

Halloween Approaches!

Filed under: General,Personal Alarms — admin @ 12:58 pm

Halloween is traditionally a time of fun, each year though the police deal with a number of Halloween-related incidents involving criminal damage and anti-social behaviour. Calls, tricks or pranks may be harmless fun to some but can cause real distress to others so be aware that police will take a firm stand against anyone causing a problem. Behaviour such as throwing eggs or flour can also quickly cross the line from being anti-social into causing criminal damage.

Crime Prevention Products would urge anyone who is planning on going out trick or treating to act sensibly and not cause upset to other members of the community, especially the elderly and vulnerable. Equally important is the necessity for the trick or treaters to stay safe themselves & by following a few guidelines, you can ensure Halloween is safe and trouble-free for everyone.

I also would take this opportunity to remind retailers of their responsibilities about selling eggs or flour to children and teenagers at this time of year.

For the safety of the trick or treaters:

• Adults should always accompany their children when trick or treating & young people should never go alone.
• Parents must warn children not to knock on the doors of strangers, remind them that they do not know who is going to answer the knock! – they should only go to neighbours and people they know.
• They must NEVER enter a stranger’s house, just think about the risks here.
• Inform them to ALWAYS keep to well-lit areas and wear bright coloured clothing and carry a torch!
• Unless pre-arranged, they should not visit elderly members of the community and they must be careful not to frighten vulnerable people.
• Most important of all, they must keep their tricks within the law because anything that results in damage is an offence and will be dealt with as such by the police.

Do NOT approach houses with the ‘NO Trick or Treating’ signs. They really are there for a reason.

For the safety of the householder, at any point if you feel unsafe:

Don’t open your door if you’re unsure who is there. Use your spy-hole, look out of a window, and ALWAYS use your door chain if you do decide to open your door.

It is a good idea to have a contact number of a close relative or good neighbour to hand by your phone, just in case you need to call them.

If you are part of a Neighbourhood Watch scheme, let your coordinator know that you will be on your own at Halloween.

If you are a Watch coordinator, please identity people in your scheme that may be vulnerable and offer them reassurance.

Finally, there are a number of posters available to download free from your local police websites for your area should you wish to let trick or treaters know that you are not taking part in Halloween.

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October 15, 2013

Theft from the Person

Filed under: Crime Awareness — admin @ 9:36 pm

Theft From the Person is a police term generally made up of two distinct types of theft:
(1) Snatch Theft (e.g. handbags, purses and mobile phones) where a small amount of violence is used purely to ‘snatch’ the item rather than offering any force against the victim.
(2) Stealth Theft (e.g. picking a pocket or dipping into a handbag) without the victim knowing that the theft has taken place. Naturally in Stealth Thefts, there is no violence involved at all.

Two key measures: The Crime Survey of England & Wales and Police Recorded Crime show that crime, in general, has been falling however Theft from the Person rose 8% last year. Of these, about a half happened in the Greater London Area (with the problem increasingly concentrated in the Inner City areas) and perhaps most tellingly, over 70% of these are Stealth Thefts.
What is clear is that Offenders are prepared to travel long distances to find Hot Spot Areas within the Inner Cities in order to commit Theft from the Person offences and the average age of the thief is 32 (much higher than is commonly believed). Over 60% occur during the day – on weekdays they mainly happen in the afternoon, whereas at the weekend it switches to night time.
Remember that victims tend to be chosen because they are vulnerable in some way, perhaps being on their own or under the influence of alcohol rather than because they appear to be wealthy. It is students and women who are targeted most often.

In order to help reduce the risks:
Be confident in your manner, many victims are chosen simply because they look timid. A good quality Personal Alarm will make you feel safer when out.
Be discreet, nobody expects you to stop using your phone, after all they are designed for use when out and about but choose when and where you use it. For example be careful outside train and bus stations as these really are popular venues for Snatch Theft, often by motorbike.
Do not advertise your valuables, keep them hidden from view (don’t therefore stick your smartphone in your back pocket!) and never leave your phone, tablet or laptop unattended in public view (for example on the table while you pop to the loo).
Never use headphones to listen to music whilst walking home at night alone, be aware of what’s going on around you and take extra care when using cash machines, make sure that nobody is loitering too close and don’t let anyone distract you as you remove your card and cash from the machine and NEVER count your money in the middle of the street.
Keep a note of your mobile IMEI number (type #06# into your phone) so that if your phone is stolen you can block it from being used.
Mark your valuables with a Permanent UV Marker Pen (just your postcode will do) and remember to mark it in a place that is not handled much (beneath the battery perhaps).

That’s about it, keep safe and keep checking back for more useful advice.

Comments (2)

August 11, 2013

PROPERTY MARKING

Filed under: Property Marking — admin @ 7:10 pm

Have you been a victim of a shed, house, garage or outbuilding break in and had property stolen such a distinctive bike, valuable tools, or electrical equipment including mobile phones, I-Pads or televisions etc.?

You can assist the police (and yourself) in helping to identify your stolen property, by first of all searching for the specific brand or model stolen, on obvious sites such as Ebay, Amazon and Gumtree. This will help speed up the process of identifying and locating your property because you will be much more familiar with the appearance or look as well as the specific details of your property.

You should think about Property Marking all your valuables as this really helps police identify the legal owner of stolen property and will get the items returned to you much quicker. The best way to Property Mark anything is to simply use your Postcode and house number, just 2 small lines of writing or etching will identify your house completely.

Having marked your property you should then join a scheme like Immobilise (the UK National Property Register at www.immobilise.com) which is the world’s largest FREE register of possession and ownership details. This completely FREE register allows the public or businesses to register all kinds of property, including bikes, laptops, computers and all other types of gadgets in order that they may be speedily reunited if they are ever lost or stolen.

Here at Crime Prevention Products, we recommend that you Register with Immobilise right away and at least get started by adding a few of the more vulnerable items into the Register, should you ever have any of these stolen, just log in to the site and FLAG the item as stolen. If you have an item that is not yet registered, stolen, just log in and add it, THEN flag it as stolen. In this way you make the information immediately available to the police nationally.

Please also think about the following preventative measures to keep bikes secure:

Get a good bike lock, ALWAYS lock your bike at home even if it is in the garage or shed. Naturally, when out and about lock your bicycle up in a SECURE LOCATION such as a bike rack or a lamp post and remember to lock it even if you are only leaving it for a few minutes!

If you have ‘quick release’ wheels, secure them as well and remove lights from the bike and take them with you.

Keep safe, keep secure and by all means keep checking back with our blog for more useful suggestions that appear from time to time. One of the easiest ways of getting these blogs is to go to our Home Page and click the ‘Like our Facebook’ banner, you will not only get the blogs coming through but we also have a free draw every 3 months or so for all such followers.

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June 18, 2013

Do you know how to report a fraud?

Filed under: Crime News — admin @ 2:38 pm

Action Fraud was introduced as part of the Attorney General’s Fraud Review back in 2006 and has now finally gone live nationally following successful pilot schemes across the country. National figures suggest that Fraud costs this country £73 billion every year and that’s only based on the crimes that are actually reported!

If you believe that a fraud has been committed you can now report these crimes direct to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 following which you will receive a national crime reference number and they even provide a dedicated email address for people to contact, in order to get updates on their own fraud report.

This new concept of a One Stop Shop for reporting fraud allows ALL information collected to be collated nationally on a daily basis and sent to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) which is located with the City of London Police where it is analysed together with information obtained from government departments, financial institutions and many other organisations. Any reported fraud which results in useful intelligence or a line of enquiry that should be followed up will be sent by the NFIB direct to the individual force to investigate.

The benefits of this national call line is that it provides a SINGLE POINT of contact for victims WHEREVER they are located, and not only that but it will help considerably to identify repeat offenders approaching the vulnerable. For example if a fraud is reported to a police station in an area of Leeds, they will not necessarily know quickly that identical types of fraud are being carried out in York and London against the same type of victims.

The only exception to this and when police should be called rather than Action Fraud, will be if the crime is taking place now with the fraudster either still at the scene or is nearby or the victim or person reporting the fraud is vulnerable or significant evidence could be lost if the police do not attend immediately. In these cases always dial the number of your local police station if you know it or else dial 999.

To give an example of the sort of successes to date: two businessmen were recently jailed after making thousands of pounds from selling fake British Gas Insurance Policies from their offices in London.

It works! and Crime Prevention Products are doing everything they can to spread the word of this excellent initiative.

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May 21, 2013

Home Security over the Half Term

Filed under: Personal Alarms — admin @ 12:25 pm

As half term (and hopefully better weather) approaches it is time to begin thinking about security in and around your home. Whether you are simply going out for the day or lucky enough to be going away on a short holiday a would-be thief or burglar will be fully aware that there is a good chance that a house is going to be unoccupied.

It’s a fallacy to think that most burglaries only happen at night, they don’t, although they can happen at any time they are far more likely to be during the day than at night when they could so easily be stopped by a passing police patrol car. A burglar is unlikely to simply smash a window and hope that nobody is home, they will spend a bit of time observing the front of the property and will even ring at the door to see if anyone answers. Their next move is to check the rear garden area and look for a suitable window or door to gain entry. Much safer to work in the back than to risk being spotted trying to break in through the front!

Now you know what they will do, what precautions can you take to put them off?

The first things on this list are fairly obvious:

If you have a burglar alarm remember to set it! Pretty obvious I know but you would be surprised at how many people forget or think it is not necessary because they are only going to be away from the house for a few hours.

Stop the milk and papers and ask a neighbour to check the house regularly to remove the post and put it somewhere out of sight. A thief will always look through the letter plate to see if mail is building up on the floor – a dead givaway.

Ensure that any side gate is locked if possible. If they have to start climbing over fences to get into the back of the house it makes things just that bit harder for them.

Lock up sheds and garages securely, making sure that valuable garden machinery and tools are properly secured and NEVER leave a pair of ladders or other tools sitting around to help the thief get in.

If you have recently bought a nice new computer or flat screen TV – NEVER leave the empty packaging outside, it is a sure invitation that there is something worth stealing inside.

Lock all doors and windows securely, and don’t leave the keys to the windows in view. The aim is to stop making it easy for them.

If you haven’t got one, buy a plug in timer switch so that you can plug a lamp into it to turn on during the evening. Best to purchase one of the digital type of timers that allow different times on different days, otherwise a good burglar will notice that the light comes on at exactly the same time every day!

An upgrade to the timer switch, is to buy an inexpensive Fake-TV which is a clever little gadget that flashes in different colours and formations flickering in such a way that from outside the house, it looks genuinely as if the TV is on. The Fake-TV has a built in timer device or can be set to operate at any given time after dusk. A burglar knows that if the TV is on, then somebody must be at home watching it. Obvious really.

That’s it, Crime Prevention Products sincerely hopes that you will keep safe.

Comments (2)

March 13, 2013

Join Us On Facebook And Win A Personal Safety Kit

Filed under: General — admin @ 1:23 pm

It’s competition time again! We have a fantastic Personal Safety Kit Giveaway we’d like to offer to all our Facebook friends old and new from Crime Prevention Products.

We will be giving away a Personal Safety Kit to one lucky follower of our Facebook page.

Our Prize Draw will take place on Tuesday the 2nd of July 2013.

The Personal Safety Kit from CPP is packed with a

All you need to do is just click the ‘Like’ button on our page and you’ll receive one free entry into our Personal Safety Kit draw.

So, what are you waiting for, get ‘Liking’ CPP on Facebook and don’t forget to share this with your friends.

Don’t worry if you’ve already ‘Liked’ our Facebook page, as ALL followers of the CPP Facebook page will be entered into the draw.

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November 22, 2012

Using Fake Cameras For Home Security

Filed under: Dummy Cameras — admin @ 2:42 pm

The debates over the usage of Closed Circuit Cameras on our British streets forever rages on. There are plenty of positve and negative arguments around using CCTV as a preventative action to help reduce street crime. We’ve also seen the rise of CCTV being used in Schools and local transport such as buses and trains.

Just how many Closed Circuit Cameras there are in Britain is anyone’s guess. Some organisations have tried an educated guess of a figure between 2 and 4 million. The fact is no-one really knows as there is no qualified body set-up to collect this information. Nowadays, anyone can install a CCTV camera on their premises and residents are doing just this every single day as the sales of home CCTV camera systems are growing exponentially.

Over the last decade we’ve seen the humble CCTV camera mature from capturing grainy, black and white images to using the latest in high-definition, digital technology which can produce images or video, no matter what time of day, with outstanding results.

When it come to home security, it’s best to understand that most crimes undertaken are of the opportunistic variety. Likely intruders will prey on homes with poor or no visible security measures.

This is what the Metropolitan Police have to say on the subject, “Making your home as difﬁcult to get into as possible will help deter criminals, and that starts with your boundaries.”

In a year, when we’ve all suffered through the recession and cost cutting exercises, Crime Prevention Products has made home security products more affordable to families. Take for example our alternative to running a home CCTV system by installing Fake or Dummy Cameras.

Our Fake/Dummy Cameras use real camera housings, making them extreamly difficult to tell the difference between them and a ‘real’ system. By setting up Fake/Dummy Cameras as part of your home security gives you a cost-effective way of protecting your valuables from intruders by creating doubt in their minds.

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September 28, 2012

Cash is King But Don’t Let Forged Money Make a Joker Out of You

Filed under: Counterfeit Detection — admin @ 12:33 pm

As the song goes, ‘Money Makes the World Go Round‘, but how would you feel, if you happened to take your hard earned cash to the bank only to be told by the clerk that it’s worthless?

Each year in Britain, tens of millions of counterfeit cash finds its way into circulation! In-fact, as far back as 2009, The Bank of England revealed there were around 566,000 counterfeit notes in the UK (95% of these were found to be twenty pound notes) around 1 in 5,000 was a fake note (source).

Many business owners understand that over the next few months, they’ll have the ability to give their business a boost as the Christmas spending spree kicks-in. Many also understand that there is a criminal element that’s only to willing to exploit young and inexperienced workers that have cash handling duities – often leaving their premisses with goods purchased with ‘dodgy‘ money.

With our country still in the grip of this latest recession, consumers will be unwilling/unable to use their credit or debit cards, so cash will become the main way to purchase goods.

Cash is King when times are tough and businesses will welcome customers willing to purchase with their hard-earned. This is when it becomes apparent that with cash sales every note placed into the till has to be genuine!

Here at Crime Prevention Products we pride ourselves in supplying the best counterfeit detection machines on the market.

Our Standard Banknote Counter With 3-Fold Counterfeit Detection will not only count up to 1,000 notes per minute but can also automatically check for counterfeit money using triple detection (UV, Infrared and Magnetic Ink).

With the recession lasting longer than expected, business owners have to make sure, more than ever, that every note is legal and theirs to keep!

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April 27, 2012

Don’t Break the Bank to Protect your Possessions

Filed under: Home Security — admin @ 10:18 am

When it comes to protecting your treasured possessions, there are various home security devices which residents can install to ensure they’re safe from harm… Modern Wireless Burglar Alarms that will alert you, your close neighbours and inform the authorities that someone is trying to gain entrance to your property… Home CCTV systems and garden security lighting that can record and store High Definition images/video of any intruders breaking into your home.

However, installing home security systems can sometimes be an expensive outlay and families with financial commitments may understand the benefits of a home security system but just can’t commit due to the cost involved.

Over the last year, Crime Prevention Products has been warning our readers about the real threat of opportunistic theft and the fact that it only takes an instant for someone to steal your property.

This is why, we feel everyone has the right to feel safe and secure in their own home… And why many home owners shouldn’t have to ‘break the bank‘ to afford home security.

At Crime Prevention Products we have a range of security hardware products that will ensure your goods are kept safe, without it costing you a small fortune…

Enhance Window Security
Products such as window bolts, window opening restrictor kits and universal press-operated window bolts can restrict the amount of theft through an unguarded window.

Enhance Door Security
There’s nothing more disturbing than an unexpected chap at the door, secure your door with a heavy duty door chain or better still a 180 degree door viewer so you can see who is waiting on your doorstep.

These are only a few examples, that we have to offer, which can protect your possessions without it costing you a small fortune. Look through our website, it’s got everything you’ll ever need for home security.

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March 22, 2012

Don’t Miss Out On Your Easter Holiday Caravan Meetup

Filed under: Travel Security — admin @ 1:01 pm

With the Easter holidays looming and the warmer weather starting to grace our shores this can only mean one thing for some, it’s time to hitch up the caravan and head-off for the first big caravan meet of the year.

In just a few weeks time, thousands of caravans will be hitting our roads, as they head off to their little bit of paradise. However, there will also be those caravan enthusiasts that will be missing out on all the excitement due to the fact that their pride and joy has disappeared from their gardens, driveways and compounds.

As we head into Spring and then Summer there is a sharp increase in the amount of caravans that are stolen, or attempted to be stolen, and the sad thing is that many will not have been insured (as it’s not a legal requirement in the UK).

Here at CPP we understand that many of our readers love nothing better than to hitch up their ‘van’ and head off to enjoy their ‘sense of freedom’. We also know that if a criminal really wants to break-in to your pride and joy then chances are they will!

However, deterrence is often the best form of prevention, that’s why we have several caravan security devices that will prevent anyone from simply driving off with your mobile home from home.

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