Did you know?
If your neighbor becomes the victim of a break-in, you may be next, a study shows.
Why?
Burglars like familiarity; it's often why they rob the same home twice. Or, in your case, they may rob your home because it's similar to your neighbor's layout. Or the burglar thinks your home has similar quality of valuables.
With all that in mind, it's good to know how dangerous your neighborhood is so you can consider strengthening your home's security or even consider moving to another neighborhood.
You can know what's going on crime-wise where you live by using these 2 tools.
Neighborhood scout
Neighborhood Scout is perfect tool if you're looking to move to a new neighborhood. It shows you general information, locations of public schools, appreciation rates, and—most importantly—crime rates. Specifically, violent crime comparison per 1,000 residents and property crime comparison per 1,000 residents.
For example, here's the crime rate index for Atlanta:
Unfortunately, you can only find this information for free at a city level. You have to pay a subscription fee to see crime data at a neighborhood level.
You can, however, get the gist of how safe a neighborhood is for free by hovering over neighborhoods on this map:
As you can see, darker blue means the neighborhood is safe, whereas tan means the neighborhood is dangerous. Use this color code to help you understand how seriously you should consider strengthening your security system or to consider moving to another neighborhood.
To get more granular information about the types of crimes committed near you, use this tool:
Crime Reports
Crime Reports gives you a map view of the crime committed near you. You can select what kind of crime events you're interested in seeing on the map.
If you click on advanced search you'll see this:
Let's say you only want to see breaking and entering, and property crimes in your area. Click "show crimes" and then you'll see this:
Clicking on any of the crimes on the map shows you more details. Does your friend or family live near this crime event? You can easily send them an email using this tool.
Clearly, you don't want to stare at a map all day. So you can get a crime alert sent to your email daily, weekly or monthly.
How to lower crime in your neighborhood (and get paid to do it)
If you already have a security system (if you're an Ackerman customer, we're glad you do!), then you are actually already making your neighborhood safer.
According to this Rutgers study "...a burglar alarm...not only protects the home without displacing burglary to nearby houses, but, in fact, also provides these other houses with protection from burglars."
In other words, when you're protected, your neighbor is less likely to be targeted by burglars. So more neighbors with security systems means a safer neighborhood overall.
Do you know of any friends or family who need security monitoring?
Share with a friend how Ackerman Security has given you unmatched security and you could get up to $500! Simply supply us with their email and we will do the rest.
For more details, contact an Ackerman Security representative or, you can just log into to your MyAckerman account and hit the "share" button under "refer a friend" section. You'll get a pre-filled out email that you can send a friend!