Rabun Sheriff Chad Nichols offers tips to combat burglaries

With the arrival of fall, many second homeowners are leaving their summer homes making them more susceptible to thieves and burglaries.

Rabun County Sheriff Chad Nichols said this is the time of the year when thefts begin to rise.

“Summer is kind of winding down and our second homeowners are not coming as frequently. For residents who live here year-round, this becomes the time of year when a burglary is more likely to occur at your residence,” Nichols said.

Nichols said there are ways to help prevent burglaries from ever occurring by using precaution and tools to make your home safer.

“We encourage everyone to use precaution. Tell family, friends or your neighbors that you’ll be out of town and that your car will be gone if you’re leaving for an extended amount of time,” he said. “There’s this app called ‘Next Door’ and that’s kinda for neighborhoods to keep up with each other. You can use it to alert your neighbors for a missing pet or if you’ll be out of town.”

Nichols said the biggest help to law enforcement if a robbery does occur, are pictures of the thieves that can be captured from a home surveillance system.

“Probably the biggest help to us, and we just recently had this case, the homeowners had cameras when they were robbed. That’s big if we can have a picture to go with a crime,” Nichols said. “You can get a game camera fairly cheap now or you can get a more sophisticated one. But I would encourage everyone to get a camera if they can because that is the best help to us as far as tying someone to a crime. That would be the biggest tip I would offer to the people. Whether you have a business or a residence, the camera is the biggest help you could offer to us here in law enforcement.”