Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Security isn’t about luck—it’s about strategy. In this podcast, we break down how to protect your home, family, and business from threats most people don’t even think about. We’re not here to fuel fear—we’re here to help you prepare.
Hosted by security professionals, Michael Johnson, a retired law enforcement captain with 29 years of experience and James Kerr an expert from Boss Security Screens, this podcast delivers real, no-nonsense advice. We know what truly stops burglars—not just locks and alarms, but layered security strategies that keep your home and business safe.
What you'll learn in this podcast:
✅ Why the concept of “layered security” is the only way to protect your property.
✅ Guns for self-defense: myths, reality, and what you really need to consider.
✅ How to build a safe space for yourself and your family while minimizing risk.
✅ Real-life stories of break-ins and assaults - and why some homes remain impregnable.
📢 Subscribe now and stay one step ahead of those who rely on luck.
🛡 Ready to take home security seriously?
Visit https://bosssecurityscreens.com/free-consultation for a free consultation.
these are just recommendations right smart recommendations smart recommendations based on years of study what works and what works best practices and that's worth a million
dollars we want to talk about the three things that every person should should think about doing when they start thinking about the security of their home you know the first thing you want to do is get an assessment of your home yeah um you know a lot of times we buy a home uh we move into it we feel safe until something happens uh we always talk about being preventative and what we do right so the first thing you can do is H get an assessment and um there is an assessment out there called seped that's cpte it stands for crime prevention through environmental design now just about every Police Department in the country offers free seped I don't know if you know that almost every Police Department in the country will you just call them and say I want yeah you just say hey I would love to have your community policing officer now of course they have to have a community policing officer who's trained but they'll come out and help you do an assessment on your home they'll look at your Landscaping your lighting um and they'll make recommendations great the great thing about it is it's purely a recommendation yeah the other great thing is is that uh I know you allow it um so uh for the customers that are interested in your screens um we offer that uh ability as well yeah MJ does it I'm I'm actually a certified design person so um seped what does it mean it's a fancy term right crime prevention through environmental design so there's really four elements to seped and that is natural surveillance now what is natural surveillance that's the ability to see out of your home and to have your home seen all right so we talked about neighbors right you want to build that Coalition of neighbors that are watching each other's houses yeah that's an old concept uh neighborhood watch but it still works you know back in the day we always knew our neighbor and they knew what cars were supposed to be there and what people were supposed to be our rythm of life so U that natural surveillance is the ability to see your neighbor's house the ability to see your house and then to recognize when somebody's approaching that doesn't belong it also um deters people from engaging in criminal activity because they have place to hide because you have that natural surveillance built into your program because someone driving by or walking by can see that person try to break in exactly there are good lines of sight there exactly now another uh component is a territorial reinforcement now territorial reinforcement is it can be done with Landscaping right so look at some of the beautifully landscaped uh properties that have these Hedges uh but it separates their property uh from the public side to the private side but it's all part of that territorial boundary fencing fencing yeah fencing is probably the number one thing that we do out here and you know out here in Vegas everything's made of concrete so you got all these concrete walls but that is a natural that's a territorial uh symbol that shows where the boundaries are okay like a do not cross yeah Welly I walk up to your house and you got dual Gates on each side but they're they're closed with iron gates yeah that's not for me to go back there that's you've already distinguished that it's demarcated it's pretty clear to everyone you marked it I just want to point out on that whole fencing thing you mentioned to me that the newer fencing is much smarter it has kind of like the horizontal piece a a open area and then another horizontal piece so you can actually see through the fencing whether you're on the inside of the home looking out or the outside looking in and that's part of that surveillance that we just talked about so you build in surveillance where you can see so you get some privacy but you can still also see through it if you have solid walls I can't see what's going on behind the wall once somebody jumps over that wall yeah so the bad guy actually is welcoming that as long as there aren't a couple Doberman on the other side right because no one can see what he or they are doing is there's no good line of sight exactly now you get into access control um that's going to be the Locking systems that's going to be uh how you prevent people from Gaining access to your property next layer that's your next layer of security and then probably the most important and often most missed is maintenance um it's very important that you maintain all the systems that you maintain your Landscaping right there's a there's a rule in landscaping for seped it's called the 2ot 6ot rule um and the theory is is that if you keep your Shrubbery two feet or less and the canopy of your trees 6 feet or higher it can't conceal a person twoot right because I mean if I hunker down behind this imagine this is solid I can get down here and you can't see me anymore but if it was 2 feet tall I can't get hunker down falling I mean I'd have to really get down and and so Landscaping becomes like it becomes one of our biggest enemies people let their yards get overgrown they let trees overgrow or they plant things in front of Windows well how is somebody going to see right the natural surveillance how am I going to know somebody's breaking into your home if you got this giant bush in front of your window so it's all about making sure that you evaluate the Potential Threat locations within your home yeah and then we also have to talk about lighting right because that's part of the surveillance side so uh seped is a very very critical tool to help you assess your home yeah so that's really the first part of what you want to do now the neat thing about seped is it's a take it or leave it you don't have to do it right these are just recommendations right smart recommendation smart recommendations based on years of study what works and what works best practices and so I think it's important for everyone to educate themselves there's plenty of information out there on the internet uh regarding seped so again if you want to look at it it's CP te stands for crime prevention through environmental design and there's a lot of great information there's checklists that you can download and uh you can do it assment yeah you can do it yourself or you can have somebody who's professionally certified come out and help you okay sep Ted's good first start what's the great first start so now you want to talk about hardening the Target and that's what seped does yeah uh when you start looking at your home you put a door handle in right you you do that all the time how big are the screws that come with they're normally pretty short yeah they're you know they're about that about that long cheap yeah they're cheap right because a longer screw is going to cost more money money more money so part of seped is looking at the Locking systems and uh how you mount those things um the style of door that you have is it Hollow core is it solid core um do you have only an inch and a half screw going into the frame or do you have a 3 and 1/2 in screw that's going not only through the framing but are are through the door jam but all the way into the wood framing of the home so you want to build those things up you want to make those things more robust yeah and then in terms of locking systems you know there are dead bolts of course and a whole variety of latching systems and again uh we wrote A Blog about this we did yeah we wrote A Blog about the different latching systems that are out there and uh I had always encourage people um the great thing about your website is that there's just a ton of content on there cont that my content well it's our content that uh helps homeowners take a look at what they can do to make their place safer yeah and that's relatively inexpensive and relatively easy to do and you get a really big return from it right you really do yeah a lot of breaches are just someone kicking down a door yeah right well and and that's there's really two entry points that people they love the sliders right because they're made of glass no good line of sight there right I don't need a special tool I just need that big rock you have in the landscape Works throw it through the window and it's designed to just it just collapses and then they're in in and out or a door kick you know usually it's a it's usually a back door but it could be a front door or side garage doors or side side garage doors and it doesn't really take a lot of strength to do that we should probably do a couple videos of us kicking down doors the the message is for those of us who have production homes a manufacturer of a home the building developments they're not spending money on tough doors correct they're not spending money on more secure installs of those doors they're really looking at how can I get this home up as quickly as I can and get it sold right so a lot of these production homes are already pretty vulnerable because no thought no Energy's been put into hardening them exactly so now if you want to talk about Security in in terms of layers right Cu uh very seldom and I'm going to use very seldom do you run across something that works every time and I'm going to use it as caveat because that's the funny story of how I came to be here with you at boss security screens is that uh this is the only security measure that I've ever seen work 100% of the time yeah and uh so for that that's uh kudos to you and your company for developing something uh so technologically advanced that it uh can handle and withstand those kind of penetrations but uh when you layer security uh a lot of people feel comfortable uh having an alarm system now I am not a big fan of having an alarm system that is wired and dependent upon some company that is going to be over on the east coast and then you've got to have a call go to the east coast so that they can dispatch a security guard in your in your town right who has to drive across town to get to your home not going to get there by the time they get there it's been 2 hours and uh you know that burglary's already occurred they're in and out all they're doing is showing up to tell tell you that your house got burglarized I saw one alarm system work and it was a standalone alarm system with internal and external audibles and it had a strobe light oh so they could signal anyone who looked outside could see which home was being it was it was strobing and it and the the volume was so loud the Debs were deafening and everyone in the neighborhood knew that house was getting broke into as soon as the bad guy kicked the front door yeah that interior exterior audible went off with the lights and the siren and he ran you know but under most circumstances a silent alarm system they're going to be in and out in 3 to 5 minutes and by the time police get notified or U or a burglary alarm system U notifies a company uh they're they're long gone so those Standalone systems I'm a big fan right and my system is Standalone you know the only thing you got to do is make sure that the battery gets changed uh you know the main battery panel for backup because uh if a bad guy decides they want to try to break into my house by cutting my power right uh they're not going to cut my power cuz I have a backup battery system so it's still going to operate you know you want to keep a little lock on there make absolutely anything we can do to make it harder for anyone to do what they're trying to do is good security and I think what James is referring to is on the power box on the side of your house it has a tab on your uh breaker box so that you can put a padlock through there you definitely want to padlock that so nobody goes over to your panel and just shuts down your power uh that way you uh you know you've got lights inside the house and access to everything everything so it's good you have the battery back up I like the Simply Safe you know I'm not affiliated with them but it is really simple to set up Simply Safe security system so it used to be you know not too long ago where you really had to hire someone to do all this stuff and you still can but from the cameras to the alarms it really doesn't take a lot of you know technical knowhow to set it up you get it done in an hour yeah most of your camera systems nowadays are all Plug and Play there's not a lot of there's not a lot of install great great for us consumers yeah peel and stick everything on there and these batteries that these cameras come with you know they last three four years now you know as we set up these systems uh I just want to be sure that people are testing them so it's one thing to set it up and and think that everything's okay but it's another thing to actually test it am I getting the recording am I getting the alerts am I getting the signal of the alarm in this case we set up the the strobing light is all that stuff working right and test it not only after it's been installed but periodically how many times have you gone to someone there's been a break in and they have the cameras and you go okay show me the footage and they're like well it wasn't recording it wasn't recording yeah that happens more times like half the time it happens right everyone's got the equipment everyone's got the system but it ain't working it ising no one tested it or when was the last time you cleaned your camera yeah yeah if you don't clean the lenses all you're doing is looking at the grime and dirt on the outside of the lens cover all these things just take a couple minutes to be sure it's working perfectly and you you know we we talk about investing in your safety yeah it takes maintenance and remember that's the fourth element of seped is maintenance if you don't maintain yeah all of the systems that you put in place right uh they really do set it up for failure yeah yeah so what do we have right here in front of us well this is a security screen you can probably see this one too we make them for doors we make them for Windows we make them for sliders we make them for patio enclosures French doors even doggy doors and the secret sauce is this mesh and the mesh is stainless steel and if you were to touch it you'd realize oh there's no easy breach here and that's why we have everything from a hatchet got to put the glasses on you know this thing this thing there's really uh no easy way to get in and I tell everyone the bad guys are dumb but they're not stupid right they're not looking for the toughest place to break into they're looking for the easiest one and I feel in a blink they can discern this stuff pretty easily like that home's more vulnerable than that one so why are we going to fuss with this one unless there's a Picasso in there right if there's a Picasso in there it's going to attract a different type of exactly but they're all looking for a soft target they're not looking for the hardened Target and the thing I love about your system is that uh it one projects that hardened Target look while still being being elegant on your home in my career I very rarely do I see something that works every time yeah and the thing that has impressed me about being affiliated with your company and with this product is that it hasn't failed no 15,000 installs over seven years zero break-ins zero break-ins you know and you have a no break-in guarantee we guarantee it yeah guarantee so um you know when you talk about layering your security you can't go wrong putting these solar or these screens cuz they also have a solar effect but uh these security screens here uh are the best in the business and it is part now of all of my recommendations when I go out to do seped is to talk to homeowners about the quality and the preventative uh protection that these things give uh over just hardening the target like screws and and locks if you have this on every penetration of your home yeah you can sleep at night and know that you're safe and that's worth that's worth a million bucks that's worth a million dollars um let's go through quick summary number one SE sep and seped has four components right so we have the natural surveillance you've got territorial reinforcement you have access control and then most importantly you got your maintenance talk to those neighbors neighbor talk to your neighbors get to know who your neighbors are right and um and then you want to go after you do your initial assessment with your home you want to go through and follow with some of the recommendations Harden the target upgrade your equipment maintain your equipment and then if you want to do the ultimate right if you want to be ultimately safe put a screen on every penetration every door every window and uh you'll be covered snug as a bug love it