How to Improve Your Neighbourhood’s Safety

When your neigh­bour­hood is secure, your home becomes less of a tar­get for trou­ble imme­di­ate­ly. Crim­i­nals rarely strike in com­mu­ni­ties where the res­i­dents know each oth­er, watch out for one anoth­er, and keep an eye on what is going on around the block.

A com­mu­ni­ty that com­mu­ni­cates through casu­al chats over the fence, a local group chat, or an orga­nized neigh­bour­hood watch cre­ates a kind of invis­i­ble secu­ri­ty net. It is not just about pre­vent­ing crime; it is about mak­ing it clear that every­one here is com­mit­ted to fol­low­ing the rules.

By invest­ing in neigh­bour­hood safe­ty, you are not only pro­tect­ing the col­lec­tive but also direct­ly strength­en­ing your own home’s secu­ri­ty. Indeed, well-lit streets, trimmed hedges, and neigh­bours who will notice if some­thing looks wrong all work togeth­er to reduce risks.

If you are away, a neigh­bour who knows your rou­tines can spot an unfa­mil­iar car in your dri­ve­way or a pack­age left too long at the door. In this way, pro­mot­ing com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty is not just good cit­i­zen­ship; it is one of the most inno­v­a­tive, most cost-effec­tive ways to safe­guard your prop­er­ty.

How to Make Your Neighbourhood Safer

If you and oth­ers in your com­mu­ni­ty want to build a safer liv­ing envi­ron­ment, this is cer­tain­ly attain­able by work­ing togeth­er and estab­lish­ing a com­pre­hen­sive and mul­ti-tiered secu­ri­ty plan.

Con­tribut­ing to neigh­bour­hood safe­ty is more than just hav­ing every­one invest in secu­ri­ty devices for their prop­er­ties; prop­er com­mu­ni­ty secu­ri­ty comes from a col­lec­tive effort that involves mul­ti­ple strate­gies and efforts. The fol­low­ing are var­i­ous ways to help make your neigh­bour­hood safer:

1. Get friendly with your neighbours

When you estab­lish friend­ships with your neigh­bours, you can’t go wrong, since such rela­tion­ships often come with mutu­al assis­tance. In oth­er words, if your neigh­bours know you will watch their back, they are much more will­ing to watch yours, result­ing in bet­ter over­all neigh­bour­hood safe­ty.

In addi­tion to hav­ing a true sense of cama­raderie with your neigh­bours and mak­ing your neigh­bour­hood feel more like a true com­mu­ni­ty, the more sets of eyes you have look­ing out for your house, your fam­i­ly, and your pets, the safer you will cer­tain­ly be.

2. Host regular community meetings.

Anoth­er good way to main­tain neigh­bour­hood safe­ty is to orga­nize reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings. These meet­ings can let neigh­bours address var­i­ous issues, with a cen­tral focus on mat­ters relat­ing to com­mu­ni­ty secu­ri­ty.

Not only can you and your neigh­bours bring up and address any sus­pi­cious behav­iour that is noticed around your streets, but you can also brain­storm solu­tions to such issues togeth­er.

Of course, you and your fel­low com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers will need to come to a con­sen­sus about how fre­quent­ly these meet­ings should be held or how to arrange the specifics. How­ev­er, the soon­er you iron out these details, the soon­er you can enjoy the ben­e­fits of increased neigh­bour­hood safe­ty.

3. Start a neighbourhood watch.

You and your neigh­bours can also take a more proac­tive approach by estab­lish­ing an orga­nized crime watch. To arrange such an asso­ci­a­tion, start by iden­ti­fy­ing who is inter­est­ed in play­ing a role and deter­min­ing your group’s goals and the strate­gies for achiev­ing them.

In most cas­es, the mem­bers of a neigh­bour­hood crime watch group take on a vari­ety of respon­si­bil­i­ties, rang­ing from neigh­bour­hood patrol to orga­niz­ing neigh­bour­hood safe­ty events to pro­vid­ing crime pre­ven­tion edu­ca­tion for com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers.

Once you have a col­lec­tive under­stand­ing of enhanc­ing neigh­bour­hood safe­ty, you can then split up the duties relat­ed to these tasks, estab­lish com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels for plan­ning these events, and cre­ate safe­ty and secu­ri­ty rou­tines. You may also reach out to local law enforce­ment offi­cials for guid­ance.

4. Improve lighting in your neighbourhood.

One thing you can almost always count on is that bur­glars and van­dals pre­fer oper­at­ing in dark­er envi­ron­ments. This is because dark­er areas are eas­i­er for them to move around unseen, mean­ing they can case hous­es or cars and even break into them with a low­er chance of get­ting caught. When a neigh­bour­hood is well-lit, though, it is hard­er for crim­i­nals to hide amongst the shad­ows, thus sig­nif­i­cant­ly decreas­ing the risk of crim­i­nal activ­i­ty.

In addi­tion to request­ing that your local gov­ern­ment add bright street lamps (if they don’t already exist on your streets), you can encour­age every­one in your com­mu­ni­ty to keep their porch lights on through­out the night. Adding motion-acti­vat­ed lights to dark­er areas, like your back­yard, can be equal­ly effec­tive.

How Protection Plus Can Improve Your Community’s Neighbourhood Safety

In addi­tion to the mea­sures men­tioned above, which can make a big dif­fer­ence in neigh­bour­hood safe­ty, encour­ag­ing your com­mu­ni­ty to invest in prop­er secu­ri­ty sys­tems can also help. This is where Pro­tec­tion Plus can step in.

As a lead­ing provider of home secu­ri­ty solu­tions in the GTA, we have been pro­vid­ing cus­tomized secu­ri­ty solu­tions and help­ing to make homes and com­mu­ni­ties safer since 1994. Thanks to our part­ner­ships with indus­try-lead­ing brands, such as Qol­sys, Hon­ey­well, and Resideo, we offer a wide range of top-notch secu­ri­ty devices, includ­ing alarm sys­tems, secu­ri­ty cam­eras, win­dow secu­ri­ty bars, win­dow film, and more.

After dis­cussing your spe­cif­ic safe­ty con­cerns at your home or in your com­mu­ni­ty, one of our expe­ri­enced secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists would be hap­py to sug­gest how to com­bine var­i­ous devices and mea­sures to form a com­pre­hen­sive secu­ri­ty sys­tem. If you’d like, we can even per­form a home secu­ri­ty audit, assess­ing spe­cif­ic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties to pro­vide secu­ri­ty solu­tions that would work best.

We also offer video alarm mon­i­tor­ing ser­vices that can enhance your pro­tec­tion fur­ther by hav­ing trained pro­fes­sion­als watch over your prop­er­ty 24/7.

For more infor­ma­tion about how our advanced secu­ri­ty solu­tions can con­tribute to neigh­bour­hood safe­ty, or to learn more about our spe­cif­ic secu­ri­ty solu­tions, call Pro­tec­tion Plus Secu­ri­ty Solu­tions at 1–844-365‑7587 or con­tact us here.