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side door too. If the thief knows he
can be seen clearly and will be un–
der suspicion whi le he's trying to get
your door open, he'll feel a lot less
confident. For this same reason, you
should ensure that your front door
is well-lighted, so that a person
standing at the front door is easily
seen from the road. You can do this
by installing overhead lights- far
enough off the ground so the thief
can't reach up and unscrew the light
bulb-or by keeping porch lights
bright enough to illuminate the
front door.
The door itself should be as
strong as possible, preferably made
of solid wood, not built up of thin
vencer panels. lron doors, in fact,
are a good idea in urban areas.
Glass doors, or doors with a lot of
glass panels in them, may appeal to
the eye, but they' re useless as secu–
rity devices. A desperate thief, like
the one who stole TVs while people
were watching them, would put his
fist right through a
gla~s
door, per–
haps taking time to wrap his jacket
around it fi rst.
Deadbolt Lock
The lock on the door is perhaps the
most important feature of all: lnsist
on a deadbolt lock, and accept no
substi tutes. The alternative to the
deadbolt lock is the slipbolt lock.
Physically, you can identify a dead–
bolt lock by the square edges on the
bolt, the part of the lock that goes
into the door frame and secures the
door. lf the bolt has a slanted tip
facing outside, it's a slipbolt lock. l f
the bolt has a slanted tip facing in–
side, it's a reverse slipbolt lock,
which is a little bit better, but still
not good enough.
The reason that the deadbolt lock
is so importan! can be simply ex–
plained: A slipbolt lock can usually
be opened simply by sliding a strip
of scmirigid plastic, such as a credit
card, against the bolt and pushing
and jiggling until the bolt slides
back into the lock and the door
opens, leaving your house "easy
pickings" for the burglar. This sort
of ultrasimple lock-picking isn' t pos–
sible with a dcadbolt lock. The
deadbolt lock, in fact, requi res a key
both to open and to shut and Lock it.
Sorne deadbolt locks have a special
switch that can be used for a quick
The
PLAIN TRUTH May 1978
'l:e lock on
the door is perhaps
the most important
feature of all:
Insist on a deadbolt
lock, and accept no
substitutes.
exit, from the inside only, in case of
fire.
Besides a deadbolt lock, your
door should also have a latch chain
and/or a peephole. The latch chain
is used to open the door partially,
while holding it shut against anyone
you don't recogni ze or want to ad–
mit. Even the strongest chain is only
as st rong as the wood it's screwed
and bolted into. which is why the
peephole is a better idea-you don ' t
have to unlock your door to see
who's outside. l f your house doesn' t
now have a peephole, sorne hard-
ware stores or security-equipment
dealers sell miniature telescopes
made with special lenses, the two
parts of which can be inserted into
either side of a 1/4-inch hole in
your door and screwed together.
The fish-eye lenses in these mini–
scopes allow you to see who's knock–
ing.
For total sccurity, it's not a bad
idea to buy a latch chain for your
main door if you habitually use an–
other back or side door to leave the
house. The thicf, if he picks your
main lock. may be thwarted by the
unexpected chain, or may fear kick–
ing it in because of the noise in–
volved.
Open or unlocked windows also
tempt the break-and-entry larcenisl.
Stoplocks are available which limit
window openings to ventilatio n
spaces too small to allow entry.
Sliding glass windows and
doors- traditionally easy marks for
burglars- can be fitted with simple
broomsticks cut to size and placed
in theslidingjamb.
Burglar Alarms
For the homeowner who lives in a
high-crime area, or the person who
has a lot of property to protect ,
sorne form of electronic burglar
a larm is a must. The subject seems
more complicated than it really is,
because burglar alarms basically do
for you what you would do for you r–
self if you wcre home: spot the
prowler and alert the neighborhood
or the police. Briefly, the simplcst
alarm systems are those in which a
mild electrical current forms a com–
plete circuit. When the circu it is in–
terrupted- by somcone making an
illegal entry- the sensor (in this
case, the broken electrical circuit)
touches off an alarm. This may be a
si ren, a bell, or evcn a silent alarm
which lights up an indicator in a
police station. The noise itself will
probably frighten the burglar into
beating a hasty retreat.
The typical homeowner will prob–
ably want a simple electrical sensor
like this on each ground-floor win–
dow, and one that covers the door, if
he lives in an extremely vulnerable
neighborhood or has a lot of valu–
ables to protect. Those who havc
more specialized possessions may
need more specialized alarms. Step-
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