Neighborhood Watch CEO Veronica Larsen shares their top five tips for ensuring your home is secure if you’re going away over the Easter break which include leaving outdoor lights on, letting neighbours know and keeping valuables out of plain sight

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Our Neighborhood Watch in the Northern Territory. They use information
from the police and the community to develop and deliver
safety resources that help Territorians to stay secure and become
more connected in an effort to feel safer. Now that
advice no doubt going to be incredibly useful as we

(00:20):
head to the East long weekend. Plenty of people planning
to go away. So what exactly can we do to
make our homes and our property more secure if we
are planning to go away. Well, joining us on the
show is Veronica Larson, who's the CEO of Anty Neighborhood Watch.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Good morning, Veronica, Good morning to you, Katie. Thanks for
invading me on.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
This lovely to have you on the show live from
Alice Springs, aren't you.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yes, that's right beautiful.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Is it nice weather down there this morning?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
It is lovely this morning. It's not too hot. So
when you're looking good.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Good to hear. Now, Veronica, tell us a little bit more.
I mean, we know that is traditionally a time when
a lot of people do either head into state or
they go camping for a few days. What tips do
you have for people who are heading away in terms
of keeping their property secure.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Up certainly, We've sent out sort of a top five
list and I'll just catch on those very quickly. We'd
love people to have a preventive look around their home
and make sure things like their outdoor house lights are
working so they can leave those on will stare away,
as well as checking their windows and locks around the
property to ensure that they are working and they can't

(01:34):
be accessed from outside of the house. Yes, we love
to encourage folks to double check that their house member
is actually visible from the street. It's quite surprising how
many are not. And in case there was an emergency,
people emergency first responders need to be able to see
your home as quickly as possible for a multitude of reasons.

(01:54):
We also encourage people to let a responsible neighbor know
that you're going out of town. Perhaps if they're good
enough MAKED, you can request if they collect your mail
and your bins and keep an eye out for suspicious behavior,
because of course we definitely want to report that to
the non emergency line to the police. We would like
them to as well not be putting things on social

(02:16):
letting everyone know that they're going out of town ahead
of time. As criminals can obviously see that you'd be
leaving your home unoccupied. Another visible issue that we're having
is the purchasing of expensive items such as cameras, laptops,
new phones that you might be taking with you on
the holiday, and just making sure those boxes are not

(02:36):
set out on your property near your bins or in
view of the street if the backside of your property
has a lane way, making sure that it isn't seen
from that direction either. Just you know, we want to
reduce the idea of opportunistic crime for people, unlessen everyone's
chances of becoming victim to opportunistic crime. And then the

(02:59):
last one, and I would suggest maybe the most important
is going on NHWNT website to check out our Absentee
Advice form. It is a form that we send the
police and we work with them to let them know
that a person is leaving their house unoccupied. We collect
a person that's local that we can contact in case

(03:22):
of an emergency, as well as how they'd best like
to be contacted. And over the holiday, Over the Christmas holiday,
it was just terrific. I had several police officers call
me to run a query for the people that were
actually out of their homes. So the police are really
going above and beyond to check in on these people
and do additional drive bys and just ensure that the
property looks secure and that nothing's really amiss. So it's

(03:44):
a great thing to do. It's completely free of charge.
You can do them as often as you like, whether
you're going away for just one night or ten nights
or a month. So please access that through the Neighborhood
Watch in Tea website.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
I had no idea you could do that, Veronica.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, good, I'm so glad that we can get out
a little bit more educate it.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
And I think, you know, particularly like for everybody of
course having right around the Northern territory, but particularly in
some of our smaller town centers like Catherine Alice Springs,
you know, Tenant Creek, something like that's actually, I would imagine,
really quite useful if you don't have somebody else coming
into houseit in terms of the police, you know, or

(04:24):
in terms of people doing a bit of a drive
a drive around, but also should something go wrong, the
police they're knowing immediately after contacting you guys that hey,
this person's actually away.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
That's exactly right, And the response time, it can just
be so much more, so much faster, and everyone can
get to you a little bit quicker. So that's really
a helpful thing for people to have.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Now, are there any tips for people in terms of
keeping our vehicles secure or different things? I mean, obviously
locking the car and have it in a locked garage
if that is a possibility, But are there other things
that we can do.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Certainly, so when you are going out of town, make
sure you're taking those keys with you, so if someone
were to break in those keys, they would not be
able to at least take the car with the own
set of keys. And there are high statistics around how
many cars are actually taken with the owner set of keys,
so we definitely want to prevent that from happening. And

(05:26):
we also want to make sure even if it's even
if your car is parked in a garage, but there
aren't additional valuables in it that would increase someone's likelihood
of breaking the windows to access those goods.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
And I know that some people, you know, you can
get those little apple track I don't know what they
called those air drops or whatever they called those apple ones.
People put them in their cars as well, so that
should your car go missing, I guess it can be tracked.
Is that something that you recommend people do, or is
that you know something that you hear of people doing.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yes, I do hear of people doing that, and I
don't think it has any harm, and it could be
beneficial to someone should their card disappear. But I think
it's really important to know that those Apple devices do
run on batteries and so they will run out eventually.
So if you're going to use one and you want
to make sure it's you're getting the full effectiveness of

(06:22):
the piece, please ensure that you're checking it often on
your on your phone and on the device to make
sure that it is still working and that the signal
is readable and trackable.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
Again, very good advice, Veronica. Is how important is it
as well? If some way possible, you know that good
old fashioned knowing your neighbor and letting your iba know
that you're going away and and just having that conversation
and just keeping an eye out for each other. How
important is that?

Speaker 2 (06:52):
It is critical? And it's one of our core values
that Neighborhood Watch. We know that the better connect to
the community is the safer a community is. So your
neighbors are really the people that you want looking out
for you, because they're doing it even if you don't
ask it, even if they didn't know you were going away.
They're the people that see you day to day. They
know who's coming into your home, they know what kind

(07:13):
of cars are in your driveway, and they would know
immediately if something looked a bit suspicious. So it's really
they do it even when they don't mean to be
doing it, but it's even better should they know to
be looking out for you. So we definitely encourage that
we have Hey their Neighbor Cards as a bit of
an icebreaker that you can access again through our website

(07:34):
on our resources page, again free of charge. You just
fill it out and you can put your name and
give it to your neighbor and let them know how
you'd like to be contacted. We're setting up we're getting
a lot of traction under setting up Facebook community groups
or what's that Facebook community group where people can share
up to date information about what's going on in their neighborhood,

(07:57):
opportunities to connect in their neighborhood, to get you know
one another, and sharing even information from our website to
assisting that educational piece of just keeping everybody as safe
as possible with preventative safety tip.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Just remind us of that website, Veronica, or if anybody
is listening this morning and they're keen to get a
little bit more information.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Certainly that's NHWNT dot org dot au.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Well, Veronica Larson, CEO of Neighborhood Watch, really good to
speak with you this morning. I really appreciate your time.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
It's my pleasure, Katie, thanks again for invading me.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Thank you