A new gang threat uses day labor construction workers to scout locations and report patterns of potential prey. Scaffolding, ladders, or roof views, expose floorplans and where valuables are located. Then the informed criminals, under the cover of night, break in with riskless planning. Daytime robbery occurs when patterns are determined. I.E. Moms doing school runs or realtors living in the community doing open houses.
Even more ghastly and brazen are thieves entering houses while owners are at the far end of their own home. Those can easily turn deadly or into ransom situations. Below is an open letter to one such community that is chillingly insightful and may provide unexpected ideas on how to deal with your own danger.
At the very least it is a shocking depiction on the impact of illegal immigration on Americana.
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The police will not save you from intruders.
After my confrontation with three hooded men in my study on a peaceful Sunday night, roughly 14 officers showed up. Two with automatic weapons, a police dog and a drone. I had already used the force required to rid the intruders from inside my residence. The police were professional and polite. For their display of massive force they get “Far Exceeds”. In clearing the house,for a second time, “Meets Expectation” but “Unsatisfactory” in end goal of long-term safety.
Once on the scene, police escorted me out to clear the house, which I had already done with a weapon. My CEO acumen recommendation, “use the extra show of strength to patrol the neighborhood and catch the perpetrators.” They focused instead on searching my house. After two hours the criminals were long gone and the community no safer. My other ignored request was to allow my dog, traumatized by their presence, to wait outside with me. Interesting how once given or elected to authority people discount inalienable rights and intellectual skill of those they serve.
We are First Line of Defense
Help usually comes after an incident. Hoping the authorities will step in during a crisis is not a strategy. If it happens to you, it will be in a split second. On the night of June 1st, I strolled into the office anteroom and felt my dog’s terror as she froze. In front of us, the hoodlums were in my doorway. Disbelief turns surreal and then… Yes “now what.” It is hard for us to conceive the brutal unmitigated gall, of breaking into a home to steal. Their plan was surprise, suppress and take control. Looking in the face of such violence six feet away is an event no one else here, need experience.
I was blessed to have responded tactically and with the right tools. My essence is nonviolence, an extension of my surfing passion. As an executive I used surfing’s core of balance and adaptation to train new leaders. Today, a Vinyasa Yogi, still practicing beingchill, I have a firearm. A seemingly walking contradiction but when a peaceful person buys a gun, they hope it will never be used. Then somebody invades your home, puts your family at risk, and you thank God you have one. Being human is complicated, we are all combinations of left-brain right-brain, hard, soft, good, bad. No one knows how they will respond in a life and death situation.
The BOD Cannot do it Alone
It is time for hard choices on how we defend ourselves. Even with best intentions administrators or boards become mired in other concerns so it takes a whole community to be actionable. Gate master Andy took preemptive action, reported the incident and pushed for roving security previously promised, now seen. Caution from the HOA to take, “common sense security measures” is fine but an elderly woman living alone can’t defend herself.
No one in this community should be sheltering in place with a knife or sleeping with a bat. Locking doors every time the yard is used seems incongruous. Our threat should not solely require a self-solution from inside the home but one from outside as well. A consensus of looking out for each other and watching for unusual activity within the gates is essential. This horror is part of a national problem but can only be solved on a local level.
A Neighborhood Network
Since prehistoric days, Homo sapiens gathered in groups. The benefits were simple, easier hunting, better protection. Today modern life brings isolation. False safety comes from digital nonreality screens while the real world viciously evolves. Wealth disparity has become severe, and moral breakdown of hard work is dissolving. Research in my first book showed how hundreds of millionaires worked hard, sacrificed, and succeeded honestly. Yet some see our community and say, “that’s not fair” and would rather steal than work. If I felt disenfranchised and broke into their home, unwritten rules would apply. Break into my home, put my family at risk, deal with the fallout!
As a community, safety may require a coalition to have each other’s backs, question the activity of non-residents, and work diligently with those who are elected or hired to serve us. Questioning non-residents about their business here seems rude to my upbringing, but criminals count on people looking the other way. We can and should exercise more inclusive responsibilities as neighbors by empowering ourselves.
If we cooperatively discuss facts without filters, we then can have proper dialogues to plot a course of action that solves problems and maintains best practice policies. Most of all, it begins a process of looking out for each other, paying attention and watching our streets and fairways as advocates in PPCCE.
Humbly submitted
footnote: *report to U.S. House of Representatives on January 17th, 2024
