Jxab12

Just wondering how people have found the difference in Home Security when moving from the UK to US. In Cambridge we used to lock everything (double lock if we could) including doors,windows, bikes, cars etc. Here in the states nobody locks their house doors (some dont even shut them). Neighbours all look out for each other, cars are normally left with the keys in so that they can be moved if somebody is blocked in etc...........believe me it takes some getting used to!

Interested if anyone else has noticed such a marked difference?

Manc

yeah I have. we don't lock anything.
When my mate came over from Manchester we stopped at a store to buy a few beers and he wouldn't leave the car with his suitcase in it with the car unlocked.
silly sod traipsed around the store with his suitcase, and he was the one who thought I was mad.

Jxab12

And if it starts to rain, the first person who notices normally goes out and shuts everyones sunroof - amazing!

Omega

We used to live in Salisbury and were careful to always lock all windows and doors.

We're now in South Florida and although we are in a gated community and feel pretty secure, we have still had an alarm fitted in the house.

As for personal security.... no problems.... people here are too hot, too laid back, or too old to want to bother you

Jan Alaska

LOL manc my mate did that too, arrived here on holiday and hardly put her handbag down for 2 full weeks. Dunno what it is, maybe we've grown to take the honesy over here for granted. She also couldnt get over the fact that we dont acutally have keys for any of the doors in the house either.

Back in Barrow it wern't too bad security wise, but where mum is in Oxford even if you leave an upstairs window open you'll get burgled !! Sad really ..

The other thing I'd like to mention is the fact that all the stores in town here have their harvest / halloween decorations out .. pumpkins and corn stalks on the sidewalks n stuff, back in dear ole blighty how long would they last ??? even sadder

Jan

Yosser

Great thread by the way...

Isn't it weird here, when I first came over I was so paranoid about having the car pinched and people breaking in left n right and getting mugged but all that worrying was for nothing really. I fell alseep one night on the couch all the doors un-locked, back garage door open with 3 mountain bikes, lawn mowers, weed wacker, 1000's of $$$ of windsurf kit, all my tools and nothing was touched

I had one neighbor come down the road and introduce himself, he is retired and loves being a neighborhood watch type person, he even offered to look out for the house if ever were on vacation and if there's mail in the box he would look after it till we got home

we are having a halloween block party this week, the main entrance will be corned off and everyone bakes a cake or pie and there are fun and games for the kids.....I mean when was the last time we in Blighty done that?

Rockgurl

Great idea for a thread. My girlfriend laughs at me if we stop off for something to eat on the way to JFK and I want to take my bags inside with me. She locks the Jeep, and it has black windows, but it's inbuilt in me to worry about leaving things in the car. I don't even leave a used tissue in my car in London. In the summer she takes the roof off the Jeep and just leaves it like that for weeks...nobody ever touches it. Can you imagine having a roofless convertible in London and just leaving the roof off all summer? My Dad used to have a convertible Cadillac in London, and he always put the roof up but so many times it was slashed by vandals and he had to order a new roof for thousands a pop.

On the other hand, my girlfriend is more aware of different kinds of crimes. She always makes sure I have the car door locked, and is very aware of potential strangers lurking at traffic lights. She also told me never to flash at anyone who didn't have their lights on, because apparently there were some gangs who thought it was a sport to drive around with no lights waiting for the first person to flash at them and then they would shoot them! :scared:

There's more petty crime in London...you worry about your car and garden furniture, but in the US when crime does happen it's really bad!

Pimpbot

Eh? This is the states we are talking about here? I'm afraid we dont live in that utopian society that you all seem to have moved into. We lock cars and houses, and we do live in a good area. But my wife still got her house broken into just over a year ago.

Jxab12, what part of Cambridge did you live in before coming out to the states? I used to live in Robert Jennings Close, just off Milton road, in between the Milton Arms pub and the Golden Hind pub. I never double bolted by the way or had to close my windows in the summer, but then again, I did live on the 2nd floor

Duncs

It does seem so actually. I had such a secure house before and now my parents in law seem to totally neglect home security. It seems wierd when people are so crime obssessed here but the idea of car alarms/immobolisers is viewed as odd and no one locks anything properly. One of the first things i did was get the wife to buy me a gun and now i keep it by the bed, so old habits die hard i suppose.

regards,

Duncan

Yosser

I don't mean to paint the perfect picture with regards to crime in the U.S....because there are certainly some dodgey areas.

I remember reading in a Brit newspaper just before I came out here, that Dallas had the worst crime rate, so I was expecting to get mugged the second I stepped off the plane, I now realise that there is alot of media hype as most citys anywhere in the world has there "rough areas".

The city of Rowlett were I live has the highest ratio of policemen to population, I see at least 3 police cars every morning on the way to my work (4 miles). The biggest crime in my city is speeding! I brought a local newspaper to check out the weekly crime rates and going ons and it was mainly traffic offenses or the odd domestic dispute.

Now, not every city is like that around Dallas, I took the family to the state fair last week, we drove out of the parking lot and you have to drive through a pretty bad part of South Dallas to the highway, every traffic light had a hooker and Pimp/drug dealer, so just like Rockgurl said, thats the time to lock all doors, don't stare at people, and don't pull up alongside youths at traffic lights like your going to race them it just pisses them off.

Its all about common sense, do your homework on areas that you are going to move too and ask Brits on this forums for advice.

just a quick funny storey....I always set the house alarm when leaving for work, one day I forgot to tell my mother-in-law the code to get in, the maintance chap was coming around and she was going to open the door for them and stay whilst they completed the work, anyways of course the alarm went off on one, 2 MINUTES later, 4 Rowlett policemen came screeching to a halt outside like something from starksy and hutch I.E rolling over the bonnet of the car, guns drawn (all this in a sleepy neighborhood) handcuffed the mother-in-law and questioned her for 20 minutes on her Identity.....Um, as you might guess I was not the most popular son-in-law that day, but we all laugh about it now......2 things learned 1. The house alarm works. 2. Yes the policemen do carry guns....

Jxab12

Pb,

We used to live in Alpha Road which was over the road from Magdelene College - just by Castle Hill - Northern part of the City.
We backed onto a park and unfortunately it wasnt the safest area. Everything had to be locked up.

Jxab12

One more example:

I have a large corporate customer in Stamford, CT which sells booze (all sorts of spirits). One of their brands in Captain Morgan rum and they have a 6ft tall model of the Captain outside their building. Not chained up, not bolted down just freestanding outside. It's been there about 6 months now - it the UK I doubt it would have lasted 6 mins. Particularly in a University town.......

snorkmaiden

Well, we had our garage broken in to just a few weeks after we got here. So now I have to get out of the car and lock the garage, which is such a pain.

Apparently they are using the fact people don't actually lock the doors, they just use the electric garage opener thingy's to gain access to people's houses.

Luckily for us our house was all locked up securely and the door to the garage is metal, so they would have had a hard time getting in but they did get our lawn mower. Thankfully we hadn't put much else in there.

We have arrived home a couple of times now to find someone has been into our garden and tried the back door, leaving the screen door open. This week I am actually going to be putting something nasty on the door handle to make sure someone is trying to get in and then I am getting the local constabulary back on the job.

It's quite a nice area we live in, the problem seems to be that no-one is in around here during the day so there is no-one to notice people breaking in.

Pulaski

It amazes me all the stuff that stores like Walmart, Home Depot, and Lowes leave outside the front of their premises. Obviously the lawn mowers and garden furniture are chained down, but most branches of Walmart currently have big piles of pumpkins lying around. Small town America (pretty much everywhere other than downtown NYC, DC, LA and Chicago) might have some crime problems but petty theft from stores doesn't appear to be one of them.

nathan barley

Haha, I felt more uneasy during a 2 hour layover in London than I ever have in a year and a half in NYC, despite the fact NYC always seemed to get a bad rap in UK news.

On my way to Heathrow to fly to NY, I stopped over in the city center to wait for the connecting coach. I took my suitcase and bags into the toilet stall with me because I knew that they'd disappear the second I took eyes off them if I left them outside the door.

Here, we can leave our mail and delivered parcels out on the doorstoop all day and no-one will touch them. In England, they'd be gone before the postman had turned his back!