Tales of the Village - Crime Prevention

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For years my neighbours left their front door open, often when they left the house and not only when they were home. Their back door tended to be open so the dog could run around. It's fair to say they weren't very security conscious. Here in the village, even the lazy, trusting and sceptical are getting a bit more alert to the risk of burglary and the village Facebook page acts as a usual 'first warning'. It might be Eddie the Window Cleaner alerting people that he's seen a couple of furtive characters in a car parked up and watching some houses, or people passing the word that people are going around door knocking. This could be charity collectors (real or fake), Jehovah's Witnesses (poor folk, my hubby always asks them in) or this week there's been a lot of speculation about the 'deaf artists'. Two men have been knocking on doors supposedly to try to sell drawings. They have ID (of questionable origin) that says they are deaf. It's also, of course very handy if you just don't speak English very well. They've been caught out a few times. If you're hanging out by somebody's door and the householder shouts "Oy!" and you turn around, it's a bit of a giveaway that you're not quite as deaf as you're claiming. Warnings suggest that one distracts people at the front door whilst the other checks if the back door is open. We don't have a back door and we also don't have anywhere to hide and we live on a short, private road that doesn't go anywhere. So far, so lucky - we've not had any attention. Whilst I worry that some of the Facebook page warnings come close to being rather racist in their comments, I do think that it's generally good that the page is being warned to alert people to the activities of potential bad guys. Crime is getting more mobile and moving out from the bigger towns and cities.