Feeling secure
Nightly reminder to lock up catches on
Just a month after the Tampa Bay Times declared it a national and international “social media phenomenon,” the 9 p.m. routine has found an early adherent locally: Lighthouse Point.
Created by the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office, the routine urges a nightly 9 p.m. reminder to residents to make sure they’ve locked their cars and secured their homes before heading to bed.
The Sheriff’s Office included a social media aspect by inviting residents to check in and confirm the security check.
Then between January and July, the number of check-ins doubled from 5,000 to 10,000. Today, the nightly security prompt averages about 90,000 responses.
Law enforcement agencies from Idaho to Florida have embraced the idea, according to Lighthouse Point’s public information officer Jack Vaccaro.
Lighthouse Point enjoys such a low crime rate it relies on a city Police Department instead of the larger resources of the Broward Sheriff’s Office. But Lighthouse Point isn’t immune from crime, and this month, Chief Ross Licata embraced a groundbreaking method of curbing the most prevalent in South Florida: car burglaries.
Posts on the Lighthouse Point Police Department’s Facebook page reminds residents to “get into the habit of locking vehicles and removing valuables including key fobs.