Tuesday Tip: Stash Your Cash Safely, Make Sure Your Home is Secure

By Yehudit Garmaise

When a burglar climbed into our unfortunately unlocked bedroom window one afternoon 14 years ago when no one was home, he tore everything apart.

Everything had been rifled through and taken out of every drawer and our closet. Mattresses were turned over, and papers, books, and clothing were strewn around our room.

Looking around the mess: I saw that new laptop and a jewelry box that had been filled with every piece of jewelry I had ever received had been taken in a tote bag I regularly used for work.

Our thief had walked down our street carrying my [pink] work bag full of valuable things I had left in our room.

Even our kitchen cabinet doors were wide left open, as the thief had clearly looked among our cans and boxes of food for hidden valuables. 

We hadn’t left cash lying around or hidden, but if we had, surely it would have been pocketed as well. 

Not only is cash one of the items most often stolen from homes, but it is the item that has the lowest chance of getting back.

Many burglaries, say a home security system, are “crimes of opportunity,” that occur when perpetrators see they have the chance to pocket things easily that do not belong to them.

Whenever workers, cleaning help, and any non-family members enter a home, the home’s residents should be aware that any items in their home could potentially be stolen.

While our bedrooms seem like safe places in which to hide things, the room in which the adults sleep is well-known among burglars as the most common room in which potential victims stash their cash, pointed out NYPD Inspector Taylor.

After flipping over mattresses in master bedrooms and emptying drawers and even looking under them, burglars usually then look in closets, cupboards, cabinets, drawers, and in some places one might think no one would look: such as shoe boxes and vases.

The truth is: cash apps and credit and debit cards mean that we don’t need much cash nowadays in case of an emergency.

While many articles suggest ideas for hiding cash in places, such as: hollowed-out books, fake electrical boxes, emptied soup cans, and emptied-out bags of broccoli looking for cold, hard cash, Inspector Taylor said that a safe bolted to a floor or to a wall is likely the only safe place for cash and other valuables. 

“We don’t want thieves to now start looking in New Yorkers’ freezers for treasures,” said Inspector Taylor. “People should decide for themselves how much cash to keep at home.

“The real answer here is: Make your home as hard as possible to break into by making sure to close and lock all doors and windows, installing bars on windows, and using an alarm system.

“Residents should have real ‘security perimeters’ around their homes so criminals can’t just walk or climb right in.

“The bottom line is: Homes should be really theft-proof. We have to do whatever we can to prevent perpetrators from coming into our homes.”

Readers can email Police Officer Priscilla Singh at [email protected] or call the Community Affairs Office at (718) 851-5601 for a free crime prevention survey, Inspector Taylor told BoroPark24.

Once officers point out any security weak spots, residents can do what they can to best secure their homes.

Other crime prevention safety tips can be found at: 

https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/services/law-enforcement/crime-prevention-and-safety-tips.page and https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/bureaus/administrative/crime-prevention.page.