The Consumer ALARMS AND DIVERSIONS

There will be 70 burglaries committed in Dallas today. Fifty-five of them will occur between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. The perpetrators will be juveniles, drug addicts, transients, opportunists and a few pros. Oak Cliff and South Dallas will be hardest hit, followed closely by Lakewood and close-in East Dallas. The Beltline/Preston Rd. area will receive its fair share of attention. There is no immunity in any neighborhood. The inevitable 70 hits a day can occur anywhere. But you can greatly improve the odds against being ripped off if you will follow the advice offered by city police, suburban police and federal law enforcement experts.

The front door. This is where it all begins. A burglar can case a front door without getting out of his car. He knows that a single mechanism lock is probably a spring latch, and that he can open it with a credit card quicker than you can open it with a key. But if he spots a dual mechanism lock, he figures that it’s a dead bolt. The dead bolt lock is the one universally advocated defense against burglars. But not just any dead bolt. You need a steel-centered dead bolt lock with a one-inch throw. A 5/8 inch throw is not enough. And a lock without a steel center can be hack-sawed.

Even a dead bolt lock is little more than a nuisance to a burglar if you have a hollow core door. You must have a solid wood door. And if the door has decorative glass, you need a double cylinder dead bolt lock which is operated by a key from within as well as without. In fact, the double cylinder is recommended if there is any glass within arm’s reach of the inside latch of the front door. It’s recommended, that is, by everyone except the fire marshal. If the inside of your door lock is accessible through glass, you will be far safer from burglars with an inside lock that can be opened only with a key (the double cylinder). But if you select this type of lock, leave the key in it at all times when you are at home. The risk of disaster from a blocked fire exit outweighs the advantage of being more secure from burglars. The key should be removed every time you leave the house, because removing it will normally afford you a high degree of protection when you need it most, during the 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. high risk period.

There is still more soul-searching to do before you decide on a double cylinder dead bolt. On the plus side, if a burglar gains access through a window, he will be greatly limited as to what he can depart with if he can’t exit through a door. But on the other hand, you want him to have an easily accessible route of departure should you return home and surprise him.

If you don’t have a viewer, install a wide angle peep hole in the front door. These are much safer than chain locks that allow the door to be opened part way. You can have a door viewer installed for $7.50. A dead bolt lock will run $30 to $35, five dollars more for a double cylinder. Solid core doors cost from $35 up.

The sliding glass door. Law enforcement officials are no fonder of these than burglars are of dead bolt locks. The standard latch is easily sprung by a burglar, and a sliding glass door can simply be lifted off its track and out of the way with little effort. One suburban policeman recommends that you drill two holes and partially insert two screws at the top of the upper track. This will still allow clear passage when you want to slide the door, but will prevent the door from being lifted off. If you want to take the door off yourself later for some reason, simply remove the two screws.

This will prevent removal of the door, but further measures are necessary to prevent a forced lock and slide opening. Perhaps the simplest measure is to drill a small hole on the right side of the door where it overlaps the metal rim of the rigid glass frame. Drill the hole at a downward angle and slip a metal pin (a nail will do fine) into it when you want to secure the door. Some people like to drop a broomstick in the door track to prevent it from opening, but this can be lifted out, just like an auto door lock, with a coat hanger. A Charlie Bar (sort of a built-in metal broomstick) is better, but not foolproof. Since we’re dealing with glass, the best supplemental lock is the dead bolt double cylinder. It has the same advantages and disadvantages as on the front door.

The back door and garage. Builders like to save a few bucks on back doors. As likely as not, the door leading from the house to the garage, and the side door of the garage opening to the back yard are hollow. Both should be replaced with solid wood or metal doors with dead bolt locks. You’re in trouble if a burglar can gain access to your house through your garage. He has all the time he needs to work on access to the house in complete privacy. Weiser makes a dead bolt that’s ideal for back doors. It has a free floating steel core that turns on contact with a hacksaw and is very difficult to defeat. Your main garage door also needs some help, such as a padlock on the opposite side of the door from your regular locking mechanism. And if there is garage access to your attic, this should be secured to keep a burglar from gaining access to the interior through the ceiling.

The windows. There are several ways to secure your windows, but here again you are walking the tightrope between security and fire hazard. Burglar bars provide the ultimate security and the greatest danger in a fire. You can buy bars that open with a key, which are better, but this still involves the same considerations as the double cylinder lock. It is considerably less expensive merely to set blocks in your window tracks to prevent an opening of more than six inches. At least you could get out in case of a fire by knocking out the window. But the best compromise is probably to drill a hole in the top of the window and drop a metal pin or nail in the hole to prevent opening except from inside. Of course any measure short of window bars is susceptible to defeat if a burglar breaks the glass, but they abhor such drastic measures, especially since there are probably houses alt over your neighborhood that are more accessible.

The yard. Be sure that your house numbers are easily discernible from the street. Police receive calls all the time from houses they can’t find, at least not until it’s too late. If you have a fence, keep it securely locked. Otherwise you might as well not have it from a security standpoint. And keep the front and back well lit at night, consistently, whether you are there or not. Law enforcement officials recommend pole-mounted mercury vapor lights, 175 to 250 watts, which cost from $30 to $60, and which produce two or three times as much light as regular incandescent outdoor lights.

Burglars are nature lovers. They are particularly fond of huge magnolias with limbs touching the ground masking a house from view. Overgrown loquats or ligus-trums in front of windows are also favored.

Burglar alarms. None of the law enforcement officials we talked to were particularly impressed with residential burglar alarms. “We apprehend a lot more burglars on calls from neighbors than we do from burglar alarms,” said one policeman. If you buy one, be sure it’s a unit that sends a silent alarm to a central system where the security service can call the police. A supplemental noise alert is helpful to prevent your coming in on a burglar when you return home before he expects you.

Your possessions. If you are pessimis-tic and assume that none of these precautions will deter a burglar, there is still something you can do. Mark all of your valuables with an electric engraving pencil. Use your driver’s license number, prefixed by “TX.” “We think it’s great if you can remember the exact spot on your color TV where Uncle Fred laid his cigarette last Christmas,” says Officer Dave Hooten of the Dallas Police Crime Prevention Unit. “But if you expect to get your property back, you’d better have that driver’s license number on it.” The electric pencils can be borrowed from any police station or any branch of the Dallas Public Library. A sticker on your window notifying burglars that you have marked your belongings also seems to be a deterrent.

“You have to recognize that if someone really wants to get into your housebad enough, he will,” says F. B. I. AgentLarry Steging. “But if you can make itless attractive for him, more than likelyhe’ll go somewhere else.” It’s sort of likelightning. You can’t keep it from striking,but it doesn’t have to hit you.