Why You Should Never Confront a Burglar

17 Apr 2023

Home invasions might seem like a distant fear, but they occur much more often than you might think. Every year in the U.S. roughly 2.5 million burglaries occur. The loss and damage from a break-in is bad enough. In 72% of cases, a home robbery occurs when no one is home. But if you happen to be in your home during a home invasion, you should never put yourself in danger. It is a bad idea to confront a burglar. For one, you can't be sure if there are more than one intruders, and more importantly, whether or not they are armed. It's important to try to remain calm and make the safest decisions. Protect yourself and your family by not confronting a burglar, instead here are some ways to stay safe if there is an intruder in your home.

Stay Quiet and Assess The Situation

One of the most important things to do is to stay quiet. If an intruder believes no one is home, that buys you the extra time and safety to get out and seek help. Do not draw attention to yourself and try to remain as quiet as possible. Do your best to determine how many intruders are in your home and where they are located. From there, if you can quietly find a safe, obscure route, exit your home as quickly as possible.

Find Any Means Of Evacuation

If you can escape safely and quickly, do it. Just like fire safety, it never hurts to have an evacuation plan in case of an intruder. Map out all of your possible escape routes from each room in your house. Think about possible entry and exit points like:

Windows
Roof access that you can safely climb down
Back or side entryways
Garage or basement doors

Come up with a plan for what you could do to safely leave your home in case of an intruder. If you can identify where the intruders are, you can then choose a route and exit point that is as far from them as possible.

Retreat To A Safe Room

There's a possibility that you may not be able to escape your house. Especially if you have limited options for exit points or if intruders are potentially blocking your route. If you can’t evacuate your home safely, it's important to still remain quiet. Enter a room as far from the intruders as possible. Lock the door if you can, and quietly barricade it so that the burglar can’t enter even if they are able to unlock the door. Try to remain calm and quiet until the ordeal is over or until you have the opportunity to escape and seek help.

Call The Police

If you believe you have an intruder in your home, it's important to make the call to law enforcement as soon as possible. These days you likely carry a cell phone on or near you around the clock. As soon as you confirm a burglary or home invasion in process, make the call! Then continue on with your escape plan. In the event you can't reach a cell phone and you have a landline, try to reach it. But not at the expense of your personal safety. There's also the possibility a landline could be cut to keep you from calling the local authorities. If you have a home security system installed, it will call the police for you in the event of a break in and, since it’s wireless, it will work even if phone lines or power have been cut. But what can you do if you are face to face with a burglar?

Try To Negotiate

It's important to try to keep a cool head. If a burglar is armed and threatening you, let them take whatever objects they are after as long as they leave you and your family alone. The sooner they get what they want, the sooner they’ll leave. Never try to stop a burglar from taking anything as they may panic and react violently.

Fight Only If You’re Attacked

Do not initiate physical violence to catch a burglar if you are not a trained professional. But sometimes, physical altercation is unavoidable. If you're unable to escape, you're discovered while hiding, or if you or your family are physically threatened, do whatever you can to deter the intruder physically, including using any objects or weapons to defend yourself. But only as a last resort. Even then, you should still look for the opportunity to escape and seek the help of law enforcement.

Home Security Systems: The Ultimate Burglar Deterrent

Did you know only 25% of Americans have a residential security system? Alert 360 wants you and your family to stay safe in an emergency. And you're 300 percent more likely to be robbed if your home doesn't have a home security system. Installing a home security system can prevent interactions with a burglar by contacting the police as soon as an attempt to enter your home is detected.

Burglary Prevention

You can also take some of these simple additional steps to help protect your home against a burglar:

Window and door sensors from Alert 360 give you instant alerts to help you know when someone has trespassed onto your property.
An Alert 360 yard sign and window decal can be a powerful deterrent to would-be burglars.
Never let strangers into your home or tell them you are home alone.
Check for legitimate identification for anyone claiming to represent a company and call the company to verify their ID and/or badge number before letting them in the house – door-to-door scams are still far too common!
Never enter your home if you see signs of forced entry. Call 911 immediately.
Consider additional home automation upgrades like surveillance cameras, video doorbells, and video monitoring from Alert 360.

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