The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Defense and Tactics => Topic started by: JC5123 on March 31, 2010, 12:07:54 PM
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I feel I live in a VERY safe neighborhood. All of the houses in my subdivision are 3-4 years old. So it's certainly not south central. Unfortunately our neighborhood, and particularly my house backs up to low income townhouses.
Last night about 11:45 I awoke to what sounded like a gunshot. I laid in bed and listened for another few seconds. 5 more pops. Then 6 in rapid succession this time from a different gun. (slight pitch change) I knew from the sound that it was indeed gunshots and not firecrackers, so I decided that I better do something.
I grabbed my carry gun out of the nightstand, a flashlight and my cell phone and raced across the house to my daughters room, the dog right behind me. I never turned on a light. I closed and locked my daughters bedroom door behind me, and looked out her window where I had heard the shots from. I was just in time to see two cars screaming away from the townhouses, and never heard anymore shots. My daughter never woke up.
There were lights coming on from the townhouses so I figured that some one was up and calling the police. So I never placed a call. I know I'm not a good witness because I never really SAW anything. I post this as basically a briefing, so that everyone can look at the situation and help me to review and improve upon my response.
I open the floor to discussion. Any critique, suggestions are most welcome.
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1) What was the approx distance from the town houses to your house?
2) What seperates the two (Woods, Parking lot, etc)?
3) Did the police ever show up at the town houses?
4) Did you just go right back to bed or did you stay up to see if anything further was going to develop?
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From what you posted, you seem to have taken the correct steps.
From your post I got the impression your daughters bed room was in the rear of the house and the townhouses are in the rear of the house.
This might not be a good arrangement, particularly if her bedroom is on the first floor.
The rear of a house is generally less well lit than the front and first floor windows in shadows would be the first entry point considered for a break in.
Don't know what security arrangements you have or if a re-ordering the sleeping rooms is feasible, but it would be worth evaluating this situation if you have not already done so.
Let us know if you find out what went down over there.
Take care.
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1) What was the approx distance from the town houses to your house?
2) What seperates the two (Woods, Parking lot, etc)?
3) Did the police ever show up at the town houses?
4) Did you just go right back to bed or did you stay up to see if anything further was going to develop?
Distance is my backyard, which for right now is unfenced. So no barrier of any kind exists between the back of the townhouses and my house. It's about 25-30 yds.
I don't know if the police ever did show up. I gave up and went back to bed after an hour of watching for anymore activity. There was a police car parked in front of the townhouses this morning. There was tape up, and several officers wandering around. Because of the way the neighborhoods are set up there is no street access to the front of the townhouses from my subdivision.
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Distance is my backyard, which for right now is unfenced. So no barrier of any kind exists between the back of the townhouses and my house. It's about 25-30 yds.
I don't know if the police ever did show up. I gave up and went back to bed after an hour of watching for anymore activity. There was a police car parked in front of the townhouses this morning. There was tape up, and several officers wandering around. Because of the way the neighborhoods are set up there is no street access to the front of the townhouses from my subdivision.
The potential is there for the BG to use your subdivision as foot access to the bad neighborhood, to beat any road obstructions, so keep an eye out on the ground. What's the deal with the townhouses? Drugs, neighbor feud, gangs? Get your carbine out for the next few nights, stupid people escalate stupid violence quickly. Good job on the lights, don't throw away your night vision and betray your awareness.
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A few points. 1st, and not to be condescending, but if you live 50 yards away from those town houses, they ARE your neighborhood. Don't think a sign and new houses changes that. I'd make sure my wife and kid got that too. Second, What's your house made of of? I mean you don't want to turn it into Ft. JC or make your child sleep in the basement, but if its a recurrent thing, it is an issue. I'd defer to TAB or someone on structural issues, but it is something to think about. One last point. If you don't already have them, I would make putting in some motion sensor lights, front, back and sides, my weekend project. Again I wouldn't go overboard, but a couple of these can be a good detterent. Likewise if the kid wants a noisy dog, it might be a good time to say yes. A loud, if friendly dog along with the outside lights will make your yard a lot less attractive a refuge than your neighbors if someone is fleeing the scene. In your case I'd have kicked Old Useless outside to bark its fool head off and light up the outside. To heck with neighbors trying to sleep. ;D Just my .02. Good luck and don't stress. I have had a couple of wake up calls this past year. Its useful to vent here. You tend to get some useful advice, or at least a sympathetic audience. Both are good things.
FQ13
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I agree that they are my neighbors. I am however wary of them. It is low income housing and there have been problems in the past. Granted few and very far between. But they do exist. As far as making my house safer, those projects are starting to happen now. I just purchased the house at the end of October, and winter here is not exactly user friendly. Finishing my back fence is priority on my list, however after last night I am considering decorative block for the back side. As opposed to the white vinyl that is already existing on the sides.
However I guess I should have posed the question differently. I am well aware of the vulnerabilities of my location. I am working to compensate for them. My question was whether or not my tactics were sound, considering the situation. What others might have done differently, should I have called the police? My only concern was the protection of my daughter and myself should the violence spill over into my backyard. Everything ended well on my end, but all things considered, did I provide my "best defense?"
+1 on the motion lights, however there is a drawback to them where I live. We consistently have strong winds that blow everything around. The trouble with motion lights is that they will pick up motion from blown objects and be on constantly. If you turn the sensitivity down low enough to compensate for this, they don't always pick up the motion that you want to catch.
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I agree that they are my neighbors. I am however wary of them. It is low income housing and there have been problems in the past. Granted few and very far between. But they do exist. As far as making my house safer, those projects are starting to happen now. I just purchased the house at the end of October, and winter here is not exactly user friendly. Finishing my back fence is priority on my list, however after last night I am considering decorative block for the back side. As opposed to the white vinyl that is already existing on the sides.
However I guess I should have posed the question differently. I am well aware of the vulnerabilities of my location. I am working to compensate for them. My question was whether or not my tactics were sound, considering the situation. What others might have done differently, should I have called the police? My only concern was the protection of my daughter and myself should the violence spill over into my backyard. Everything ended well on my end, but all things considered, did I provide my "best defense?"
+1 on the motion lights, however there is a drawback to them where I live. We consistently have strong winds that blow everything around. The trouble with motion lights is that they will pick up motion from blown objects and be on constantly. If you turn the sensitivity down low enough to compensate for this, they don't always pick up the motion that you want to catch.
Bummer about the motion lights and plus 1 on the block back fence. It will help with your two biggest problems, stray shots and someone making a getaway through your yard. You could always take a page out the Palm Beach playbook and slap a litlle mortar on top to nstall some "decorative glass" eg broken multi-colored beer bottles. ;D I would think about the big sounding dog (mine weighs 45 and barks like she weighs twice that). As far as the night in question, yeah you could have called 911, but would have had little useful to say except "shots fired that'away", so that seems ok. As far as your own tactics, other than maybe turning on outside lights (and there are cons to that) they seem great.
FQ13
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Perhaps an annunciator (sp?) for the backyard would be good also.
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Perhaps an annunciator (sp?) for the backyard would be good also.
Forgive my ignorance.....A What?
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JC I would have called the law, never assume someone else did, and multiple calls might bring them sooner. Next I think I would have gotten the child on the floor or told her to go to mommy with her head down, crawl maybe. She would be my 1st priority. Nice of you to look out the window, but stray bullets do weird things, again reducing exposure seems most reasonable.
All suggestions here are valid IMHO.
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I'm going to agree with M25. Call the law ASAP, assume no one else will.
I had an incident twenty some years ago where a drunken neighbor started shooting up the night in the parking lot of the complex where I lived. I put the wife and daughter into the bathtub (cast iron) and told them to stay there while I loaded the 12 ga and called the law. It turns out the nearly everyone of the twenty or so condos in my section had as well but the town cop was a co-workers son and they got there lickety split.
Hauled his drunken ass off to the slam and we moved before he got out. We found out later he'd been raping his 15 year old step daughter while mom was away at work. Maybe he got his just rewards from "Bubba" while he was serving his time!
Be safe.....
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Forgive my ignorance.....A What?
Its a monitoring device that would have a receiver inside the house and would go "bing" if someone came into the backyard. A big loud dog would also do the trick.
My first thoughts when I read your original post were along the lines of what M25 said. I think you should have gotten you and your daughter face down on the floor for about 10 minutes or so just incase of any stray rounds - especially given the extremely close proximity
Going forward, you need to make the back entrances to your house as hard of a target as possible. If there is this kind of activity in your backyard, then it is safe to say a desperate druggie might look your way as a possible crime of opportunity.
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Thanks for the thoughts guys. I agree about making my house a hard target. Hopefully this will never happen again. Although a few years ago my next door neighbor decided to try to shoot and kill his wife when she filed for divorce. That took place in their driveway 20 feet from my home. So this is not my first encounter with deranged gunmen. I am thankful that everything in both cases ended well for me and mine, and I just try to learn as much as I can for future reference.
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Forget about using your defense weapon and intervening in the fray. Although there was danger, there was no "clear and present danger to life and limb" of you or anyone in your family. If you intervened, there is a good chance you would get yourself locked up. Hearing pops will not convince a jury that it was necessary for you to go out and start shooting at the "bad guys" yourself. Maybe the "bad guy" was actually undercover police. I have lived to the ripe old age of 56 and have lived in "bad neighborhoods" for significant portions of my life. Having said this and getting it off my chest, what you should now do is the following:
1. Evaluate the perimeter security of your home. Use a published guideline such as "Rate Your Risk" http://www.rateyourrisk.org/
If you find deficiencies, make a list, put them on a schedule and then make sure you do them!!
2. Get a big dog. The dog is infinitely more of a deterrent that an automatic yard light or an alarm.
3. Go beyond the evaluation in item 1. above. Is your house masonry, brick, wood frame with siding or one of the newer systems such as styrofoam on light gauge framing with a spray on stucco finish? Some of the newer wall systems will not stop a bb gun, let alone a bullet. Look at where your family members sleep. Does your daughter sleep in a bunk bed in full exposure to potential gunfire down the street? Maybe you need to move her.
4. Write and practice an emergency drill, similar to a family fire drill. Make sure everyone knows what to do (get down low, and behind something substantial) when they hear shots.
5. Keep the firearm handy but safe from unauthorized use, especially little hands.
6. Keep a cell phone handy in your bedroom. Make sure all the children know how to call the police.
7. Get proper firearm training for yourself and your wife.
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+1 on not grabbing your gun and jumping in. That falls into the "brave but dead" catagory.
You did good going into your daughter's room. In my opinion, you also did good by letting her sleep. The shooting had stopped and the "active shooters" were now making their exit. If you had woken her up and had her crawl over to mom in a panic, she would've never felt safe in that room alone again. Now if the shooting was still going on when you got to the room, then it would be good to wake her, let her know everything's going to be ok, and then play "inch worm" on the rug.
I would've also called the police. If anything, it would give you a good baseline of their responce time.
The block wall sounds good. As an added "soft defense" put in a nice four foot wide row of roses or something else that grows up there that has nice thorns on it.
Some suggested spotlights, I'd recommend against it. My personal experience is that some people like to shoot them out for target practice. (Happened durring a sleep-over when I was 12.)
Dogs are good.
When I read your statement, you said that you were able to see the area where the shooting happened at the townhouses from your daughters room and that the distance between is roughly 25-30 yards. At what angle was the target house at from your house? Also what direction did the shooters come from and leave to in reference to your house? I ask this to see at what angle the bullets were flying.
Also, are the intended victims still at that house/apartment right now or have they left till things cool down? (I lived in a ver rough area of detroit and the drive by shootings lasted three days and ended with half the townhouse being burned down at the townhouse I lived in.) (Age 17)
It might also be a good time to form a neighborhood watch to put pressure on the bad elements of the are. I'm thinking about having all the neighbors out walking their dogs, or some other big group item, for a week followed by patrols at non-regular intervals. If this is not possible, at least get to know your neighbors a little better. A strong community will intimidate the bad guys before they dig in.
My final suggestion is a bit pricey. You could have Hurricane windows installed in your house. They are made to withstand a 2x4 hitting them at 75 mph so a bad guy would have a really hard time breaking into them while trying to escape pursuit. In fact, a few companies down here went to Chicago to sell these windows as "security windows". They aren't cheap. To do our house it cost $9,000.
Hope this helps.
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Forgive my ignorance.....A What?
Here's the motion sensor I got when vandals started hitting my neighborhood. It comes w/ one sensor, expandable to 4. Works well, you can adjust the sensors for both sensitivity and range (up to 30 ft). I placed 4 to cover the most likely approaches to the house.
http://www.amazon.com/Chamberlain-CWA2000-Wireless-Motion-Alert/dp/B002ISVJL6/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1272758455&sr=8-3 (http://www.amazon.com/Chamberlain-CWA2000-Wireless-Motion-Alert/dp/B002ISVJL6/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1272758455&sr=8-3)
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JC I would have called the law, never assume someone else did, and multiple calls might bring them sooner. ...........
I agree with Benny that calling the law should have happened. I probably would not have like you....but if you can document these occurrences time and again then if someone should come your way you will have a history of concern for your safety. This is especially good if others call at the same time and there is agreement something bad was going on or about to go on.
A fence is good. You are really close...I'd think about moving if I could. Failing that, I would put up a fence and plant thorn bushes in it...I don't know if the "Rose of Sharon" grows well where you are, but it takes over here in Oklahoma whereas it barely putted along in Louisiana.....something like that is good. Some vine that is evergreen with thorns and stickers will be a good deterrent not to be underestimated. The local guy who lives where you live who is a opportunistic threat (as opposed to the transient who will nearly always scope the easiest visible target) will know there are thorns there...and anything he can't see behind bushes or hidden or whatever out-of-sight that would put doubt in his mind will also have some deterrent effect.
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I agree with Benny that calling the law should have happened. I probably would not have like you....but if you can document these occurrences time and again then if someone should come your way you will have a history of concern for your safety. This is especially good if others call at the same time and there is agreement something bad was going on or about to go on.
A fence is good. You are really close...I'd think about moving if I could. Failing that, I would put up a fence and plant thorn bushes in it...I don't know if the "Rose of Sharon" grows well where you are, but it takes over here in Oklahoma whereas it barely putted along in Louisiana.....something like that is good. Some vine that is evergreen with thorns and stickers will be a good deterrent not to be underestimated. The local guy who lives where you live who is a opportunistic threat (as opposed to the transient who will nearly always scope the easiest visible target) will know there are thorns there...and anything he can't see behind bushes or hidden or whatever out-of-sight that would put doubt in his mind will also have some deterrent effect.
One would think so but I wonder. All I can think of is the RR cop for the old C&NW who told us about the guy they found in the dead zone. The dead zone is the space between 2 walls that circled one of their yards in a very bad part of town. The walls were made of highway safety rails (the ones that look like extended S's) stuck into the ground vertically to a height of 25' on the outside, and 20' on the inside wall, maybe 30' apart. In between was broken concrete, maybe 3-5' on a side tossed into a jumble.
Did I mention the whole thing was topped - both walls mind you - with concertina wire? The stuff where not only are there razor sharp sickle-type cutters but the wire itself is a long-azz razor blade? And yet not a week went by that they didn't find someone - very bloody - wandering aimlessly in between the walls.
Some people just won't get the point.
But thorny bushes are not a bad cog in your defensive wheel, as long as you have layers of defense.
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Despite Path's post, well, concertina razor wire...hmmmmmmmm. A bit hard on the kids' balls if they hit them out of bounds (and the kids if they chase them, but still, hmmmm. ;D
FQ13
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Despite Path's post, well, concertina razor wire...hmmmmmmmm. A bit hard on the kids' balls if they hit them out of bounds (and the kids if they chase them, but still, hmmmm. ;D
FQ13
It's a bit hard on anybody's balls if they get tangled up while trying to climb over the stuff........ ;) ;D
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We have shots fired all the time in every hunting season. But the first time a pellet or any round hits my house , its on.
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Distance is my backyard, which for right now is unfenced. So no barrier of any kind exists between the back of the townhouses and my house. It's about 25-30 yds.
I hate to break it to you, but without a fence, your neighborhood and the Townhomes ARE the same neighborhood. Isn't there an old saying about good fences make good neighbors?
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I now have an 8' block wall that separates me from the townhouses behind me. Went through hell to get an exception on the covenance, but made it happen. Back porch light is on a motion sensor, and I have tall junipers that line the fence on 2 sides. (1st purpose is a wind break) But I wouldn't want to try to crawl through them as tore up as I got planting them. Last but not least From the back of the yard I have 3/4 crushed gravel for 15' as an RV pad. (Try walking quietly on that!) So I feel like my backyard security is pretty good at this point. Still looking at any vulnerabilities, but I don't want to bunker myself in either. So everything is a trade off.