Thursday, October 3, 2013

"WARNING! Poor Lighting"

Early this morning I picked up my newspaper from the steps in front of our house and noted what I believed was an advertisement attached to my door knob.  I looked at the announcement and saw that it was a "WARNING!" notice created by Johns Hopkins University - Office of the Dean of Student Life.  The warning went on to say that our house had an item on a "Burglar's Wish List" and had a box which was marked "Poor Lighting".  

In a way I found it amusing because our house is one of a very, very few in our immediate area that does have exterior lights, with two houses on the south side of the street having no lighting and those on the north side, for the most part, devoid of lighting.  So I said to myself let me check this out and I noted that no other house, on either our block or across the street, nor on several other streets nearby, had one of these warnings left on the door despite the fact that almost none had exterior lights. Yet, ours was the only house with the notification.  Many of the residents of these houses leave from the rear of the buildings so they would not have removed the notices earlier in the morning.

We have one of those energy efficient light bulbs that last a long time and I checked to see if the one in front was operational and it was. We have another exterior light (functional) in the rear of our house, plus back up solar lights and I posted my address number both on the front and rear of the house so that it could be identified by the Fire Department just in case the house was on fire. In fact we have made our house as burglar proof as possible in order to protect ourselves.

Yesterday at the Safety Meeting at the CVCBD we heard that last night was scheduled for a CV West Walk walk, led by former attorney Sharon Guida, now an employee of the CVCBD. As we also heard from Ms. Guida that the CVCA was working on another lighting project (JHU and the CVCBD tried this a few years ago) and that last evening’s walk was to begin on Howard and 27th Street at 6:30p.m. I have to imagine that the walkers misidentified our house somehow as having “Poor Lighting” and that they were helping Johns Hopkins University by hanging these bulletins on chosen sites as they walked. It is very strange that we apparently were the only homeowners to have received this notice when we have both front and rear lighting.

If this group, or whatever group hung the notice on our house, cannot differentiate as to which house has lights and effective crime deterrents then how can this effort be effective as a “safety measure” whether provided by either the CVCBD or JHU?  This is a total waste and accomplished nothing except for people wishing to claim that they have a safety initiative.

Additionally, should we have been away for several days, this notice hanging on our door knob would have actually notified burglars of our absence.  One of items on the “WARNING!” was to guard against having “Accumulated Mail/Newspapers/Flyers”.  So, despite carefully stopping newspaper and mail deliveries while away we could not have avoided having either the CVCBD or JHU putting the flyer on our door which, if not picked up in the morning, would have alerted potential burglar’s of our absence.  What was used as a basis of deterring crime could have been one of the very things giving a burglar notice of our absence.


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