When considering how to defend your home, it’s useful to think in terms of layers of security. The most obvious layer in the house itself. The structure provides shelter, privacy, and a level of security from people attempting to force their way in. There are many sources of information about how to slow down a break-in by reinforcing doors and windows. Note that I said “slow down” not prevent. Given time and tools, any structure can be breached. The idea is to discourage someone attempting burglary while you are away based on time consumed getting in and fear of being caught. Or, if you are home, giving you time to gather the family to a defensive position, grab weapons and call police.
An optional inner layer of defense is a safe room somewhere in the house. This is often the master bedroom with a reinforced door. This works since you there at night anyway, it’s usually close to children’s rooms and it is a likely place you have firearms and your cell phone. The idea is that you barricade the family inside and wait for the cavalry (police) to arrive. But what happens if there is an event that distracts police or a crisis where they are unavailable? This is when you need an extended defensive area encompassing whatever property or neighborhood around your home that can be secured and monitored. The outer edge of this larger area becomes your perimeter.
The idea is to discourage (or engage if necessary) anyone attempting to enter your area as far from the house as possible. This gives you the opportunity to use the element of surprise, make use of available cover and maneuver as needed. Waiting to defend until someone is at the house places you at a severe disadvantage since they can enter from multiple locations while defenders are limited to single location each with limited visibility and angles of fire.
The perimeter can be made effective by a variety of methods – ideally several methods combined.
· Signs – a private property or other warning sign is useful in normal times and will at least establish aggressive intent if ignored during a crisis.
· Electronic monitoring – namely sensors and/or cameras. These provide an alert via the cellular network (if available) or WiFi or over a radio frequency band. These will be covered in more detail in a future blog.
· Barriers – these can range from a chain across the driveway to surrounding the property with razor wire. The idea is to slow down entry and/or channel aggressors into known avenues of approach that you can more effectively defend.
· Overwatch – if the threat of violence is high, you can establish an overwatch position to monitor one or more likely entry points. This is labor intensive but ensures that an armed defender can assess the threat, communicate with other team members to get help, and immediately engage if needed.
The perimeter concept can be further refined for large properties to include an outer zone where you detect and warn intruders (several hundred yards out) and an inner zone where you have a “red line” to engage (100-200 yards out).
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