Top 10 Security Tips for Securing your Church during the Holiday Season | Mr. Locksmith Blog

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• Rekey Your Church
• Upgrade to Restricted Keys
• Upgrade to High Security Locks
• Lock Your Door
• Protect Your Office
• Alarm System
• CCTV Camera Systems
• Fire & Burglar Resistant Safes
• Security Guard or Runner Service
• Engrave & ID Mark Everything

I’m Terry Whin-Yates Mr. LockSmith and I have the Top 10 security tips for securing your church during the holiday season. People laugh at me, they go, what do you mean I need security tips for securing my church? It is amazing how many churches are broken into during the Christmas season. It’s amazing, we’re getting call, church after church during the holidays, they’ve been broken into and things have been stolen. And when you think about it from all the bits and pieces, the besides the cash, also the audio visual equipment, the musical instruments, there’s a lot to steal in a church and they’re just highly attractive targets during the holiday season. So this is the following security tips for securing your church. Doesn’t matter what religion, they all get hit during the holiday season.

Rekey your church. Everybody seems to have a key to the front door and the office of the church. Go there, rekey all the locks, know exactly where your keys are and who has them. It’s amazing how many times the church is broken into by a key. Who knows who did it, cuz there’s like 100 keys out there or more. Rekey, know where your keys are, which takes me to the next point. If you’re going to give out keys, do not copy, do not duplicate stamped on the keys is a waste of time. You have a common Schlage, Schlage, Kwikset, Weiser Keyway that everybody can cut keys at the local little hardware store to the shoemaker can cut that key. Do not copy doesn’t help you at all.

Upgrade Your Locks to High Security Locks: You need a high security or restricted keyway. When you give out those keys to people you number them, give them the key, have them sign for it, you know they can’t go to the local hardware store and get a key cut. Only the licensed locksmith that sold you that key system can duplicate the keys. Local hardware store will not have the high security keys. It requires special keys and a lot of the, special keys, special key machines, and a lot of these keys are only sold to locksmith companies. So when you’re gonna rekey, go to the high security restricted key systems like Abloy, Medeco, Primus, those are my three favorite. There’s a few more.

Mr. Locksmith™ is an ABLOY® Protec Authorized Dealer

Lock Your Doors: Lock the office and have a secure lock on there. It’s amazing how many times the office, the church office, is unlocked. Put a lock on there, every time it closes, the door automatically locks, and put a good quality deadbolt on that door. People just walk into the office and there’s the offerings from today’s service or last night’s, and it’s just sitting there. I’m amazed at how many offices are unlocked and people just walked into the office and just helped themselves, an unlocked office. So again, secure it, put on a good deadbolt, lock it up. Also, if you’re gonna leave money onsite, have a good quality safe.

Fire and Burglar Safes: Have a burglar safe that is burglar-resistant and you’re gonna put the money in there. Really you shouldn’t leave any money in there but if you have to, put it into a burglar-resistant safe. A fire safe is a fire safe, it will not stop any form of attack, it’s to protect papers and valuable papers against fire. If you’ve seen any of my videos, you know all these electronic safes or these little fire safes you buy at your Home Depot or hardware store or Costco, you can open them in seconds, and if you have a screwdriver or a pry bar, there’s nothing you can’t open, so you have to have a proper burglary-resistant safe.

Terry Whin-Yates Opens locked safe

Alarms and camera systems. Yes, alarm your church. You have musical instruments, you have audio visual, you have a lot of expensive items, alarm the church and have it monitored.

Security Guard or Runner Service: When the alarm goes off, the police, it’s a low priority to go to a residential or even commercial or church break and enter. If the alarm goes off, it’s a low priority. Get yourself a security guard or runner service to show up. Don’t have one of your members of the church show up, they’re not prepared to deal with a break-in in progress. So have a professional security guard company, runner service, they’ll go there, it’s not expensive, the alarm goes off, the runner service shows up, they see a beanie in progress or whatever, they know who to call and when they call the police, the police will respond to your runner service immediately.

Engrave or ID Mark all Equipment: One of the simplest and least expensive and most overlooked is engrave information on everything you have in the church of value. Your speaker systems, your musical instruments, TVs, everything, engrave property of your church. Have your phone number on there. This helps on a couple things. Sometimes the burglars will see you’ve engraved everything and not steal it. Or if they do steal it and the police find it later, you can recover your valuable items. So engrave everything, especially the audio visual stuff, it doesn’t take much to put “Property Of” and the phone number. Put it on everything you have. It’s quick, easy, and very inexpensive. Go buy a Dremel or Buzz Bomb or stamp the information in. Engrave everything you have of value with your name of your church, your phone number, sometimes you can get a special number from the police will give you a number. Whatever identification number you can get it on everything going. It’s cheap, inexpensive and very very effective. I hope you enjoyed these Top 10 security tips for securing your church during the holiday seasons.

I want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

So I hope these top ten, I added a little bit more, security tips to securing your business during the holiday seasons has been good and lots of information for you. So I wanna wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

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