Oct 18 2010
Neighborhood watch groups have found a new and inexpensive way to deter burglars from doing their job. A small device known as FakeTV makes it appear as though someone is at home watching television with the same kind of light produced by a real TV.
This creates an impression that the house is occupied and gives a thief the reason to move on to some other neighborhood. Lots of watch groups and crime prevention agencies have been buying this device in groups and recommending them to others.
As it is a Plug and Play device which starts working at a preset time around dusk, the thief on seeing the flickering glow assumes that there are people inside the house and rather than risk prison, prefers to move on to an unoccupied household for a break-in. Crime prevention methods such as Fake TV would be capable of assisting the whole neighborhood, as the thief, if he knows that one house is occupied, would not risk burglarizing the adjacent house. Thus law enforcement agencies have also begun advocating FakeTV as one of the measures. According to Chief Micheal Fields of Yuma CO police department, this device is of great benefit, especially to those homes, whose occupants are on vacation or out of town. He reiterated that FakeTV cannot act as a replacement for other tools such as dogs, deadbolts, crafty lighting devices and so on, but could support crime prevention with its proactive and simple technology.