Same thing happened to me a couple of years ago. The police chopper was circling around first telling everybody to be on the lookout for a pair that robbed one the local corner stores. Then they told everybody to get inside. The last thing I saw before closing the blinds was a cop strolling around out front with his sidearm out.

I lived in a first floor corner apartment at the time. I closed all the doors and windows, and hunkered down on the living room floor with a newpaper and waited it out (the lower half of the exterior wall was brick and the living room had the most barriers between myself and any stray bullets).

About 10 minutes later I hear Pop...POP...POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP coming from the north. About 2 minutes after that, it came from the east. I kinda doubt the two robbers got to stand in front of a judge, at least not the mortal kind.

EDIT


Dumb question, but why overcomplicate things? What part of "get and gun and..." does not connotate that the S is about to HTF and immediate compliance is required?

I can understand it as part of a school or other potentially high loss of life situation, but not at home.

There is an app for that. Oo Tunes app for iPhone streams radio stations all over the country and includes police scanners for a lot of cities. I do fire mine up when things occur near my house just out of curiosity.

Mark_R....my teaching assignment for a little over 30 years was primarily a 9th grade intro chem and physics class... and found out early on that especially when explaining lab procedures it was not enough to tell them what to do or not do eg. "you need to have your goggles on as there is a chance that someone will let a thermometer fall to the countertop, and I've had them propel shards of glass"...not just "wear you safety glasses"...you saved a lot of time and had much better compliance if you took the time to explain why you ask them to do something...after the initial explaination, just a "goggles" command was enough... just thought it would be a lot quicker to have a compliance word, explaination will follow if time is critical..

Thanks guys. No problems on my front but the guy basically got away despite our keystone cops dragnet. So things have calmed down considerably. Regardless since they didn't catch him the wife/I are still on alert. I like some of the ideas in this thread but to be honest the biggest thing on my mind right now is fixing that glass door to actually be secure (since unfortunately replacing it altogether is cost prohibitive for the time being).

I like the idea of the police scanner to see where they are as well, that's something I hadn't thought of.

Online live police and fire scanners (courtesy of another ETS member):

http://www.radioreference.com/apps/audio/?mid=18


We recently had a lengthy thread about home security. The thread title was something about someone's house being "cased."

For a sliding glass door: charlie bar and alarm.

Centrally-monitored alarm system and a big dog are the big deterrents to home invasion/burglary, according to DC police.

DC police also advocate bars on doors and windows but that would look odd outside the inner city. Yes, more law-abiding people than criminals in DC are living behind bars....

The smartphone scanner apps are basically streaming the online scanners. I was going to suggest going to radio reference anyway to see whats used in your area and you can tell what type of scanner you need, i.e. analog, digitial, encrypted digital.

OK, that explains it... I remember 9th grade chemistry and physics. 9th grade metal shop had the same thing: "hot metal" meant "I'm coming through with a 900F piece of steel, get out of the way NOW!". Ironically, it was the dumb stuff, like reaching in front of an oxyacetelane torch that tended to get the kids. Nobody every got burned from moving glowing steel.

I like "Lock and load. Prepare to shoot. This is not a drill." Simple, direct, and to the point. Can be spoken over the intercom and will gain immediate attention. Both from the good guys and the bad.

As far as all the other "safehaven" varients that were mentioned, a simple "Get your gun" covers all the bases. Anybody should know to secure the home when hearing that. If you are a truely prepared family, this will all be redundant anyways, because your house is always locked and you always have your gun at hand. As far as "flee safehaven" goes, the person at home at the time is in a much better position to judge the situation than a voice from afar on the telephone.

When the weather is nice and there's no specific threat, we often leave the windows and back door open. We will often leave the front door open as well, although this requires an adult to be within line of sight of the door. We're by far the hardest target in our neighborhood, and if there's a reason to we harden up some more.

HMP Castle Huntly Prison is about 3 miles away from where I live and there have been quite a few prisoners who have escaped (well more of failing to return to the prison when they are meant to return after being let out to visit their friends and family or Job etc whilst they are let out on license). Some folks in the local area around the open prison such as the village of Longforgan aren't to happy with this state of affairs.

I don't think I've even seen a policeman with a gun here in Scotland except perhaps at Glasgow Airport.