TRAVEL CRIME PREVENTION- Take Steps to Protect Yourself and Your Property

 

With the summer months fast approaching, doing some travel often becomes a priority. Here are some tips to help you keep your property secure while you are away.

 

Physical Security

At Home: Things you can do to make sure that a burglar does not steal anything from your home while you are away include,

·         Don’t announce that you will be away on social media before you go or while you are away. You don’t want a burglar to know no one will be at home.

·         Have your mail and newspaper held so that they do not pile up in your mailbox or on your front door, a clear sign to burglars that no one is around.

·         Let a trusted neighbor or two know that you will be away and ask them to keep an eye on your house.

·         Lock up your valuables in a safe or locking file cabinet and put away small electronics like laptops, tablet computers, and portable game players.

·         Leave some lights on or put some lights on timers so that it looks like you are at home at night.

·         As you go out the door, LOCK YOUR HOUSE!!!

 

On the road: Make a habit of doing the following actions while you are on your trip,

·         If you are driving

o   Always lock your car doors and close the windows.

o   Park in well-lit areas and close to buildings.

o   Never pick up hitchhikers.

o   Fill the gas tank before dark.

·         At your hotel

o   Lock your room, even if you are in the room.

o   Store valuables in the room safe or in the hotel safe.

o   Don’t tell strangers the name of your hotel.

o   Guard your room keys when you are in restaurants, the pool, or clubs.

 

Cybersecurity

While you are away you will take your cellphone and you may take a laptop or tablet computer and possibly other electronic devices. Here are some tips to keep your electronic devices safe and their contents safe.

·         Bring only what you need, the fewer the better.

·         Be sure your devices have the latest software and security updates before you leave.

·         Backup any data on your device before you leave.

·         Continue using strong Multifactor Authentication (MFA) on your online accounts.

·         Turn on “Find My Device” features to help you find your device should you misplace it.

·         Check privacy and location settings. Turn off location tracking for apps that you do not need on your trip.

·         Only turn on location services when absolutely necessary.

·         Be careful using public wi-fi. Do not access sensitive accounts such as your checking or credit card account. If you need to access those accounts use a VPN.

·         Keep your devices secure and with you.

·         Turn off auto-connect to avoid connecting to shady networks.

 

For more about security while you travel check out,

 

Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office:

https://www.snohomishcountywa.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/7128

 

National Cybersecurity Alliance:

https://www.staysafeonline.org/articles/vacation-and-travel-security-tips?utm_content=376913179&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-71354375

 

SNOHOMISH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE- Pursuing Suspects Effectively and Safely

Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office deputies sometimes have to pursue suspects on foot and in their vehicles. The latest issue of the Sheriff’s Office’s crime prevention newsletter, “Partners in Crime Prevention,” covers some of the basics that deputies consider when initiating a pursuit and some of the latest techniques and tools that they use to end an in-progress pursuit. You can see the issue at this link,

 

Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office:

https://www.snohomishcountywa.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/7448

 

 

SNOHOMISH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE- Situational Crime Prevention

The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office's latest issue of the "Partners in Crime Prevention" newsletter notes that burglaries were the number one property crime in 2025. Learn how you can protect your property at home with Situational Crime Prevention.

 

Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office:

https://www.snohomishcountywa.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/7406

 

SNOHOMISH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE- Holiday Shopping Safety Tips

Christmas is coming and you will be out to find the perfect gifts for your loved ones. Here are some simple tips to follow while you do your holiday shopping.

In the Car

·         Don’t leave high-value items or shopping bags in plain sight. Even a few seconds is enough for a smash-and-grab.

·         Store bags in the trunk before you arrive at your next destination, not after you park.

·         Keep vehicles locked and windows fully closed, even if you’re stepping away for a moment.

·         Park in well-lit, high-traffic areas whenever possible.

·         Be aware of your surroundings. If something feels off, move to another spot or notify security.

Prevent Package & Porch Theft

·         With holiday shipping in full swing, porch pirates are more active too. A few preventative measures can help:

·         Track packages and set delivery alerts so you know when they arrive.

·         Bring deliveries inside as soon as possible.

·         Use secure delivery options like:

o   Lockers / pickup locations

o   Deliver to work (if allowed)

·         Ask a trusted neighbor to grab it

·         Install a doorbell or security camera, even visible cameras can deter thieves.

·         Avoid leaving boxes visible outdoors. Break them down and conceal high-value packaging.

 

 

 

Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office:

https://www.snohomishcountywa.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/7325

 

https://www.snohomishcountywa.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/7325

 

 

SNOHOMISH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE- Holiday Crime Prevention Tips

This holiday issue of the Sheriff’s Office’s crime prevention newsletter, “Partners in Crime Prevention, covers ways you can protect yourself from a charity scam and gives other tips to prevent crime during the holiday season.

 

 

Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office:

https://www.snohomishcountywa.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/7325

 

HOLIDAY SHOPPING – Staying Safe at the Mall

While much of our shopping has migrated online, sometimes we still need to go to a physical store to purchase those special Christmas gifts. Like online, there are safety and crime prevention measures that you should take to ensure that you have a successful and safe shopping experience.

Parking and securing your car.

·         Park your car in a well-lit busy area, near the front of the mall/store if possible.

·         Be sure nothing is showing inside the car. Keep any purchases out of sight in the trunk.

·         LOCK YOUR CAR!!! If you have a remote key fob, take it with you. Do not leave keys or key fobs in your car.!!

·         Make a note of where you parked so that you can go to it without looking like you are lost.

·         On the way back have your car keys in your hand so that you do not have to fumble to get them out of your pocket or purse.

·         When you get back inside, lock your car.

Walking around the street or mall.

·         Shop with some friends. There is strength in numbers.

·         Be aware of your surroundings. Look out for unusual activity.

·         Walk in busy, well-lit areas. Stay away from isolated areas.

·         Don’t be distracted by your phone. Take out your earbuds or earphones. It is easier to hear what is going on around you without earbuds or earphones in your ears.

·         Keep your purse close to your body. Keep keys and wallets in a front pocket.

·         Be aware of exit locations in case of an emergency.

Shopping.

·         Don’t carry a lot of cash.

·         Avoid ATM’s. If you need to get cash, go to an ATM inside the mall, in a store, or in a bank. Shield the keypad from view by strangers. Keep the receipt, do not throw it away in a public trash can.

·         When paying for your purchases, try using your digital wallet, credit card, or debit card instead of cash.

·         Use just one credit/debit card. If your account has a data breach, then only one credit/debit card is affected.

·         If you are eating at the food court, keep your packages near you, under the table if possible.

·         Save your receipts. Check your bank/credit/debit card account regularly for unusual activity.

·         If you have purchased a large item, ask for help loading it into your car.

For more safe shopping tips, check out the following links:

 

 

 

KOMO News:

https://komonews.com/news/offbeat/shoppers-beware-how-to-protect-yourself-and-your-purchases-during-black-friday-madness-shopping-deals-palm-beach-outlets-gardens-mall-florida-november-29-2024?s=09

 

State Farm Insurance:

https://www.statefarm.com/simple-insights/family/black-friday-shopping-safety-list

 

The Hearty Soul:

https://theheartysoul.com/holiday-shopping-safety-tips/

 

Everett Police Department:

https://www.everettwa.gov/1095/Vehicle-Prowl-Prevention

https://www.everettwa.gov/1092/Personal-Safety

 

 

SNOHOMISH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE – Crime Prevention Newsletter Holiday Issue

This holiday issue of “Partners in Crime Prevention” talks about purchasing gift cards in retail stores and other handy prevention tips for the holidays.

To see the issue go to https://www.snohomishcountywa.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/7228.

Hope everyone has a great holiday season!

 

 

 

Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office:

https://www.snohomishcountywa.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/7228

SNOHOMISH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE- Protecting Your Home While You Are Away on Vacation

The latest issue of the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office’s crime prevention newsletter, “Partners in Crime Prevention,” is posted. This issue provides tips on how you can protect your home while you are away on vacation.

You can check it out at the following link,

Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office:

https://www.snohomishcountywa.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/7128

 

 

 

SNOHOMISH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE- Crime Prevention Outreach and How to Prevent a Burglary

The latest issue of the Sheriff’s Office’s crime prevention newsletter, Partners in Crime Prevention, is out. This time the newsletter talks about events that the Crime Prevention Officers will be hosting. Also, tips on how to prevent a burglary in your home.

Check it out at,

  

Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office:

https://www.snohomishcountywa.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/7033

 

TRAFFICKED WITH MARIANA VAN ZELLER – Understanding the World of Contraband

It can be hard to understand why people enter the world of crime. If you work for a living, have a family, and make a positive contribution to society, to think that someone would market illegal products like fentanyl or ghost guns probably makes you cringe in disgust.

Criminologists, sociologists, and other academics make attempts to try to explain why people commit crime.

A National Geographic program that tries to give insight into the criminal world of trafficking illegal products and services is Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller. van Zeller, a Peabody Award winning journalist, goes into the field to show how illegal products are moved to their markets. In the process, her episodes show interviews with people who do the trafficking as well as interviews with law enforcement officers who try to intercept the contraband. van Zeller has covered drug trafficking, including cocaine, fentanyl, steroids, meth, marijuana, LSD, MDMA, as well as gun trafficking, counterfeiting, stolen cars, oil, and black-market body organs. She also has covered a variety of scams and scammers.

Her gutsy interviews have included teenagers moving drugs through the jungles of South America and local gang leaders who direct the production, movement, and marketing of drugs, cars, guns, and other contraband. The interviewed, often wearing a mask, reveal their humanity, and sometimes their inhumanity.

Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller gives a good insight into criminal organizations that produce and move illegal products for sale to people who want to buy them. You can find the program on the National Geographic Channel. If your cable provider does not carry the channel, you can see past episodes at:

 

 

National Geographic Channel:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/shows/trafficked-with-mariana-van-zeller

 

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_van_Zeller

 

SNOHOMISH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE – New Crime Prevention Unit

The Sheriff’s Office’s new Crime Prevention Unit has begun operations. For more information on the unit’s activities and how you can help prevent crime check out the latest issue of the Sheriff’s Office’s crime prevention newsletter, “Partners in Crime Prevention.”

 

Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office:

https://www.snohomishcountywa.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/6940

 

PREVENTING CRIME – Walk Your Dog

Crime Prevention Officers frequently encourage people to walk around in their neighborhoods. The idea is to have eyes and ears out in the neighborhood to detect crime or suspicious activity.

Some citizens take this seriously, “patrolling” regularly, maybe even setting up a patrol schedule with some neighbors. While neighbors might start out with a good faith effort, patrols can fall off after things die down and there is nothing more to report.

A better strategy is to go for a walk, not just to patrol, but to get some exercise. This is an activity that anyone in the neighborhood can participate in when they want, in the morning, afternoon, or evening. Go for the exercise. But be aware of your surroundings. If you see any suspicious activity or a crime in progress call 911 on your cell phone.

And walking your dog helps lower crime in neighborhoods according to one study. A study out of Ohio State University showed that neighborhoods with more dogs had lower rates of homicide, robbery and, aggravated assaults compared to neighborhoods with fewer dogs. So, walking your dog can help make a safe neighborhood.

The study also ties neighbors who trust each other to lower crime rates. With dog walking and high trust comes lower crime.

This makes sense. If people are out walking, with or without their dogs, there is more opportunity to say hi and from time to time to chat on the sidewalk. Dogs often create attention and opportunities to chat and for neighbors to get to know one another. Building trust.

With high trust comes a higher likelihood that neighbors will help each other when a threat is present.

The study also found that with more dogs, fewer property crimes, such as burglaries, occurred in the neighborhood. The physical presence of dogs and the attention that barking provides act as a deterrent to the property crimes.

The lesson is to get some exercise. Get to know your neighbors. Give your dog some exercise. While you are out be aware of your surroundings. Don’t keep your eyes buried on the screen of your cell phone. Enjoy your neighborhood while you keep it safe.

 

 

 

Phys.org:

https://phys.org/news/2022-07-dogs-neighborhood-crime.html

SNOHOMISH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE – Crime Prevention Newsletter, Holiday Crime Prevention Issue

With COVID-19 growing again just before the holidays, making purchases for Christmas gifts will no doubt migrate online, continuing a trend that has been going on for several years.

The latest issue of the Sheriff Office’s crime prevention newsletter highlights a few tips on how you can protect yourself from being victimized online and on ways that you can protect your package deliveries.

Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office:

https://www.snohomishcountywa.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/6573

 

 

SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS- Part 3: Concluding Thoughts

The death of George Floyd by Minneapolis police has put School Resource Officers in the cross hairs of activists who see no need for police on school campuses or who see their presence as a detriment to student safety and welfare.

The Edmonds School District ended its ties with local police departments to provide SRO’s in its schools, citing inequitable discipline for minorities. The Seattle School District has taken a similar step.

Lt. Rebecca Lewis of the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office was an SRO for two school districts. She maintains that sending minorities to jail is not a goal for SRO’s. In an email interview she said, “Their (SRO’s) ultimate goal is to keep juveniles out of the criminal justice system through mentoring and positive interactions with law enforcement who truly care about their future and well-being.”

She says that SRO’s use the precepts of “procedural justice” in their contacts with students.

Procedural justice promotes fairness in resolving disputes, positive organizational change, good relations with the community and enhances officer safety. Procedural justice is based on 4 precepts:

 

·         Fairness and consistency in applying rules

·         Voice and representation in a process

·         Transparency and openness

·         Impartiality and unbiased decision making

 

The videos that we have been seeing in the news of police beating, shooting, and killing blacks undermines any sense of fairness, impartiality, or transparency. No matter the facts, the perception of discrimination has become overwhelming. And there have been videos and stories in the past of police roughly handling teens in class, or of even handcuffing grade schoolers.

Part of what may be uneven treatment may be the fact that implementing SRO programs is a local matter. There are no national, or in many cases, state standards. The National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) offers training nationwide, but it does not train all SRO’s.

The growth of SRO’s in schools has been due to fear of juvenile crime and the epidemic of school shootings starting in the 1990’s. Many local police agencies and school districts may have viewed a police officer as limited to patrolling school grounds and responding to a low percentage active shooter incident. 

The high-minded goal of an SRO is, and should be, more than patrolling school hallways. Modern crime prevention thinking places police officers as part of the community, not separate from it. For success in preventing crime, police need to work with the community as part of a team. Different team players contribute different talents that can lead to success.

The disconnect between critics of SRO’s and local police needs to be alleviated if we are to continue to have a secure society and secure schools. Police departments and Sheriff’s Offices need to reach out to the community more now than at any time in recent history. They need to listen to the community, even if what they hear is difficult. Then they need to work with the community to find new ways to prevent crime.

 

 SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS- Part 1: The Argument For

https://ssnoccrimewatch.blogspot.com/2020/09/school-resource-officers-part-1.html

SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS- Part 2: The Argument Against

https://ssnoccrimewatch.blogspot.com/2020/09/school-resource-officers-part-2.html

 

Lynnwood Times:

https://lynnwoodtimes.com/2020/08/12/esd-board-dissolves-school-resource-officer-program-in-contrast-with-student-support/

The Herald:

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/edmonds-school-board-cuts-school-resource-officer-contracts/

The Seattle Times:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/seattle-schools-chief-announces-one-year-suspension-of-partnership-with-seattle-police-department/

 https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/fight-for-police-free-schools-has-been-years-in-the-making/

National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice:

https://trustandjustice.org/resources/intervention/procedural-justice

National Public Safety Partnership:

https://www.nationalpublicsafetypartnership.org/clearinghouse/Content/ResourceDocuments/Procedural%20Justice%20for%20Law%20Enforcement%20-%20An%20Overview.pdf

US News and World Report:

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/01/30/are-school-resource-officers-part-of-the-school-to-prison-pipeline-problem

 

 

SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS- Part 2: The Argument Against

The presence of armed police on school campuses provokes some to protest. They claim that police are not suited to working with students and that they facilitate a “school to prison pipeline” that along with “Zero Tolerance” policies “pushes students out of school and into the criminal justice environment.

One organization that advocates removing police from schools is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that published a report on the subject in 2017 called “Bullies In Blue, The Origins and Consequences of School Policing.”

The report says that Black and Latino students are disproportionately affected by the presence of SRO’s on campus. It claims that "As of 2013, 51 percent of high schools with majority Black and Latino enrollment had law enforcement officers on campus, and across the country, Black students were more than twice as likely as their white classmates to be referred to law enforcement or arrested at school." (Page 11)

It rebuts the four functions of SRO’s as set out by the COPS program,

 

·         Law Enforcer- Police in school’s primary function is to enforce the law. “Yet the “criminal” disorder addressed by police in schools is the type of adolescent conduct that otherwise would be handled through school discipline.” (page 13)

·         Informal Counselor- They are not qualified as counselors. They are not trained as counselors. Counselors are required to keep student information confidential; an SRO has no confidentiality requirement.

·         Educator- As educators, their role serves police interests not educational objectives. And in some cases, they may indoctrinate children that police are always right.

·         Emergency Manager- Having police on campus to respond to emergencies does not necessarily help the school develop a comprehensive emergency plan.

 

Inevitably, even if not intended, SRO’s become involved in school discipline with bad results.

 The report claims that SRO’s endanger student rights in three ways,

 

·         Privacy rights- SRO's can share private information among other police agencies where schools would protect that information

·         Criminalize adolescent conduct- Minor infractions are escalated to crimes

·         Discrimination- Black students are more than twice as likely as white students to be referred to law enforcement

And it claims that "Police are more likely to use force in interactions with young people than with adults…" (page 22)

Next- Part 3: Concluding Thoughts

 

American Civil Liberties Union:

https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/school-prison-pipeline/bullies-blue

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-prison_pipeline

The Seattle Times:

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/fight-for-police-free-schools-has-been-years-in-the-making/

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/some-educators-of-color-resist-push-for-police-free-schools/