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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