What happens when something goes wrong at your house while you’re hundreds – or thousands – of miles away? One night, a subscriber’s burglary alarm went off while they were out of the country. I was less than two minutes away. What happened next is exactly why vacation notifications are one of the most valuable benefits of the Patrol Service.
It was around 8 p.m. The patrol phone rang, and it was an alarm company notifying us about a residential burglary alarm only a few blocks from where I was parked. I drove straight there. When I arrived, the house was quiet, and there were no cars parked outside. I checked the front and then headed through the gate into the backyard. When I rounded the corner, I observed the back door had been kicked in. I notified on-duty officers who then also responded and we cleared the house.
It was imperative that I got in touch with the homeowner. Not only because the home had been burglarized, but there was also an open door leading directly into their house that I couldn’t secure.
The homeowner was a Southampton Patrol Service paying subscriber and had notified us they were going out of town. I checked our log and called them directly. After several minutes of calling both numbers in our log, I spoke to the homeowner. They were not only out of town, but out of the country. It was like 3 in the morning where they were receiving the phone call. They were upset about the news I had to share, but delighted that I was there at their house and was not leaving until matters were taken care of. And, since no other emergencies occurred during my shift, I waited parked outside their house until a man they hired showed up to fix the back door, securing their residence and resetting their alarm.
Situations like this happen more often than you might think. Not necessarily burglaries, but alarms and other problems occurring while homeowners are hundreds or thousands of miles away. Countless times I’ve delivered good news that the alarm was false.
What happens when you’re out of town and your alarm goes to HPD? Eventually, an officer will check on your house, and if they can’t get in touch with you, they leave. Not because they don’t care, but because they must respond to the next priority police call dropping in the district.
On top of calling you when there’s something wrong, we can check on your house while you’re gone. When you notify the Southampton / Boulevard Oaks Patrol Service that you’re going out of town (which you can do by calling the patrol phone or texting the patrol phone), your information is entered into our spreadsheet, which is accessible only by myself and the single phone carried by our patrol officer working their shift. It looks like this:
