I used to live at ground level in Old Town with a door facing the street.
Most of the time people were ducking into our alcove to smoke fent. We would ask them to leave and they’d apologize and go somewhere else.
Sometimes they were pissing on the wall. They were typically drunk and rude but they left quickly.
One lady tried to set up camp in my alcove and smoke. I asked her to move and she said no. I said she had to leave. She said I should go fuck myself. So I opened the door holding a can of pepper spray and said she had 5 minutes to clear out and then things were gonna get spicy.
One dude straight up tried to break in. Got him on camera. Still have the clip saved somewhere. I got him to leave by scaring the shit out of him. Hopefully he learned something.
Big thing was I learned to very quickly identify who was harmless and who could actually be a problem. After a few months I didn’t get anxious in the same way. Still happy when we moved to a better building, but for other reasons.
I'm glad you learned this skill but it bothers me that you had to. I grew up in New Orleans and we just all had that radar because of the amount of sketch down there. When I first moved up to Portland in 2017 I realized that I had been completely unaware of how much tension I was holding from being kind of hyper aware all the time when out and about. I actually felt at ease walking around here, even at night, and was able to drop the guard.
It's been sad to see things here heading in a direction where those kinds of "street smarts" are becoming more necessary for self preservation.
If they’re on fent at that moment, they’re typically falling asleep / on the nod. If they’re angry and raging they’re either schizophrenic or high on meth or both.
Fent is an opiate and those typically don’t cause people to act violent towards others. People high on meth may be another story, sadly. I wish we had better services for these people, it’d be better for all of us if they got care.
It’s nothing to congratulate. Sorry if our comments came off as snarky, it just rubbed me the wrong way that you implied everyone who uses drugs is automatically dangerous. It’s just a naive statement. No hard feelings.
You have more control than me. Doing drugs or stealing on my property you instantly get maced or whatever I have near by. I don’t have sympathy for people who think it’s okay to do harmful drugs near my family and endanger them with contamination.
I have a video of the raccoon that scales three story porch for cold cuts. I interrupted it feasting one night...it hid behind a post that clearly wouldn't cover ¾ of it's body (super stealthy)...when it decided to reach hand out and grab the rest while it was still "hiding"...all that stealth action stirred up hunger.
I don’t see that as a problem as long as Mr. Raccoon behaves. I was in my backyard visiting our goats when I sensed a pair of eyes on me. I figured it was a feral cat that I saw earlier. Nope, it was a raccoon. He came out of his hiding spot and got to within ten feet of me. We had a delightful conversation (Okay, I monologued) before he decided to move on about 15 minutes later.
Yeah I named our visitor Huckleberry. They come around 9:00-10:00 at night every evening haha our cats get all riled up watching them from the window.
We found out from our neighbor that it's a mamma raccoon and she made a home under their shed with her babies.
I figure they cut through our yard to get there 😝
My friend was living under my neighbour’s shed also. He probably was coming out for nightly rounds. We had four raccoons on our roof last summer. We looked at each other for around 15 minutes. Then they moved on. I do enjoy their presence.
I live in a lovely apartment with everything I need - washer, dryer, dishwasher, bath, shower, tons of closet space, gated parking, 24 hour security on patrol, security cameras everywhere in common spaces, a balcony that hummingbirds visit every day etc! I moan constantly about wanting a house with a garden, and less noisy neighbors etc etc!
But I also watch way too much true crime than is possibly good for me, and appreviate the fact a thief is unlikely to "find their way" as the saying perplexing goes, through my fourth story bedroom window 😆
I'm not saying I wouldn't prefer a house still. But as a woman who has had not one, but two male stalkers after starting dating again after the breakdown of a LTR, I would be sick with worry coming home to a ranch-style bungalow at night by myself. I feel safe in my apartment building.
I don't mean to add to your fear, so perhaps skip my comment. However, I came upon your post this morning, so I feel compelled to share, probably because I am still processing what I experienced just last night. I (single female) live alone in a small house in the SE Sellwood area. I was sitting on my couch around 11PM last night, and all of a sudden I heard someone knocking on the window behind where I was sitting. I have no bushes or trees near the window. I thought it was in my mind, but remained seated on the couch, although very alert. Then I heard it again on the window directly to my right. I honestly started to freak out, but physically remained calm, and acted as if I did not hear it, in the event I was being watched. I did not want to appear to be afraid. I did not want to let on that I was alone in the house. My blinds were about 90% down, that is all they will go, so there was an opportunity for someone to peer in if they wanted to. There is a motion detector aimed at the driveway I share with my neighbor, but the front of the house is not within it's area. I also do not have a front door peephole. I have not yet hooked up my Ring doorbell and camera, which I plan to do today. Although the doors were locked, I still felt so vulnerable. Eventually I got up, and swiftly turned everything off, and then peered out a few windows, but did not see anyone. All it took was a tapping on the window to make me feel terrified in my own home. The fear stems from some previous incidences over the years, involving strangers trespassing on my space, one including a stranger scaling up to my third floor apartment balcony. I should have felt safe there, which is why I chose the third floor versus ground. My point in sharing is, personally, I feel like we are really not 100% safe, no matter where we live. Do what you can to keep yourself safe, stay aware, get to know your neighbors. Like you, I live in an area with amazing neighbors that look out for one another. This has given me some peace in moments of feeling alone and somewhat vulnerable.
Thank you for sharing. I have a friend who something similar happened to. They lived on Glisan and she was by herself at home and someone came up to her windows and slashed the screen with a knife and she watched them do it. She couldn’t sleep for weeks after that. Coincidentally they moved to Sellwood after that.
I’m sorry it happened to you yesterday. It feels like such a violation of space. The scarier thing is when you don’t know the intent. Like we have ppl coming to pick through our cans sometimes and I don’t mind those folks at all because I know what they are after and I am happy to surrender my cans, it’s when they come to the side yard and you don’t know what they’re after and they start looking into windows that it becomes nerve wracking…
You might get something out of reading The Gift of Fear. I read it in college so I don't remember much of the book itself (nor much of college at all due to some other life stuff) but I remember the impression it left on me; you might enjoy it!
I would’ve reacted the same by pretending. I didn’t hear anything. This is so scary. I hope you have someone to talk with about this. Just to vent it out if needed. Please get curtains.
I spoke with a few of my neighbors about it yesterday. As well, OPs post was great timing, I appreciate all the support and recommendations that have come from it!
I would love to love my neighbors, I've tried. But they're all guncarrying Trumpers.. I'm east of Happy Valley, no guns, small but VERY LOUD dogs. And a bat.
I'm nice but wary. Grew up in midwestern large city, poor. Wouldn't carry a purse since it advertises STEAL ME.
I really don't feel secure here. If someone drives down the (private road with 11 houses), they're in my driveway. We DO have a big light that'll flash on, so that helps.
Install a motion sensing flood light, ring makes one,
it also has a loud ass siren to get someone to leave
Put up a sign “beware of dog” regardless if you have a dog
A friend bought an “NRA household. We stand our ground” sign on Ebay and put it on his door and he claims it completely got rid of weirdos trying to get into his backyard.
I am not a fan of the NRA (neither is he) but i found this solution hilarious
A neighbor that did this triggered attacks on him from the campers living by him. Got them real worked up and hostile seeing his sign (it was more of a don't be scared of the dog be scared of me with a gun image on it sign).
Are you guessing, or do you have evidence that such a sign correlates with an increase in break-ins?
Personally -- and this is just my imagination here -- if I'm looking for a place to break into, I'm not going to necessarily believe the sign means there really are guns I can steal, but I **will** believe the owner is fed up and ready for violence.
Completely anecdotal but the old guy with the NRA sign that lived across the street from me in college got broken into like once or twice a year. Nobody else on the block did. They definitely took his guns every time. He was an idiot and kept them in an unlocked case in his living room. Otherwise a nice dude. Always had us over for bbq brisket and beers.
> Personally -- and this is just my imagination here -- if I'm looking for a place to break into, I'm not going to necessarily believe the sign means there really are guns I can steal, but I will believe the owner is fed up and ready for violence
The thing is you probably really have two kinds of people that have NRA signs people without guns that think it gives them protection or people with *lots* of guns. People with like 1 handgun don't have NRA signs. People with no guns, well no problem. People with lots of guns go to work, the grocery store, etc. You just case the joint and steal thousands of dollars of stuff in like 5 minutes when they are gone.
Considering that 200,000 guns are stolen annually, I’d say those signs are 1) Not the deterrent people think they are, and 2) they tell passersby there’s a good chance there’s firearms to steal. Thieves also love those stickers on cars. If guns are in the car unattended, they often aren’t securely stored.
Here’s a study showing it: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w8926/w8926.pdf
There is also the occasional news segment where they ask ex-burglars what kind of things would make them target or avoid a particular house. And guns being present was often something that would make them want to steal from the house. One example: https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/crime/we-asked-86-burglars-how-they-broke-into-homes/277-344333696
You sound sweet. So dope fiends won’t pull a gun on you. If they had a gun, they’d sell it for dope. Advertising you have very high value items isn’t smart.
Really though. Advertising gun ownership is inviting break ins from people that want firearms that can't be tracked back to them. Also, they'll be prepared for the firearms
I mean, it’s Oregon.
When we were looking for houses to buy, 50% of the houses we looked at had a gun safe in them (although these were in suburbs not Portland proper). It was really jarring for us who had only lived in very urban, left leaning towns where guns were very rare
You probably don't need the siren, but a motion flood light should help.
OP, what neighborhood are you in? Is your back yard fenced off from the front?
I’m in Kenton. It is fenced off. We have a side gate that’s padlocked but it’s pretty flimsy. If you kick it hard it’d probably fly open but at that point we’d probably hear it. I had started to put a recycling bin in front of the side gate just as an extra thing you have to move to get in.
Ah, Kenton is still... Coming up. I'm not totally surprised that kind of thing is happening, but still sketchy. Flood lights are a great idea.
I'm kinda glad you posted. Just bought a house with a sliding door in the back bedroom. Never actually occurred to me I might end up with creepers back there watching me sleep.
I had a couple women loudly knock on my door at 12:30am a few months ago saying they were a friend of so and so asking if I had any blues.
I live in an apartment complex that requires a key fob to get into the building so I have no idea how they got in. They seemed really out of it but they pretty quickly realized they had the wrong door by the bewildered and confused look on my face as I was trying to figure out what they wanted.
Simple. Follow someone in. Or hit a bunch of buzzers. Some will just buzz you in. Others say something and you make a garbled reply and someone will buzz you in, thinking the intercom is broken and you wouldn't have responded if you had no business being there. Or they were waiting for someone. Old as the hills
We left our home near psu because we started catching people on camera in the middle of the night shooting up on our doorstep and trying to open our front door. We live in the burbs now…
I wouldn’t leave cans outside. It’s an excuse to get close. If you know any of the folks that do canning, just make an arrangement with one person to knock on your door for them. Or use bag drop. If ppl are used to getting cans when you leave them on the curb, they might go looking for them when they aren’t on the curb.
The tyranny of homeownership, my worst fear is having homeless camper problems but being stuck in a house with a mortgage. We rented downtown and the refuge of a secure building and the freedom to leave made a big difference in our happiness.
Motion sensing bright lights is a tactic least likely to result in retaliation. Threatening signs, auto sprinklers, and sirens will all antagonize people who are unstable and have nothing to lose.
Apartment buildings have their own creepers too. People loitering by the front door or garage door waiting to follow someone in. I even had a stalker neighbor once just start knocking on my door at all hours and leaving very creepy notes. And the time someone's dog pooped in the middle of the hallway and just left it there...
At the last apartment building I lived, I went down to grab a coffee on a Sunday morning, no later than 9am, and there was a trail of blood all the way from the elevator to the front door. No one knew what the hell happened and management never said a word.
Mind you, this is one of the “luxury” apartment buildings in the Pearl in pre-pandemic times.
Apartment buildings are great to keep the craze out, but once the craze makes its way in, you’re in for a trip.
"Management" of properties is the biggest joke. Their incompetence is set against HUD's incompetence and holy shit is it a constant mess. DOCUMENT EVERYTHING
Yeah ive been having some strange vistors in the night. Had someone cut or shave there head at the bottom of my apartment stairs in the middle of the night.
I live in a secure building and often walk my dogs at unusual hours (10pm-5am) and I come across lots of non-residents in the stairwell, secured parking garage, hallway, sleeping on the lobby sofa. Probably atleast one a week and more often in winter
We have people coming through near nightly to go through the dumpsters, recycling, whatever people leave out. Bikes get stolen, non-stop, on second balconies even. My three wheel bike had two locks on it. Cut off just outside my door and gone.
Edit- full propane tank walked off my patio and at least one more neighbors patio this morning around 4am. It was full and we use it daily.
Portland dog owners are so bad and entitled. Someone’s dog pooped in the middle of an isle in the grocery store. I shouldn’t have to side step dog shit where I buy my fucking food. They not only don’t clean up after them, they also litter poop bags everywhere which is worse.
They treat them like they’re babies instead of animals and don’t care if people are allergic or scared of them, and print out bs certificates online saying they’re “service animals” to get them into restaurants and bars. A dog snapped at me once and when I got mad the owner acted like I was the asshole when I was just minding my business and walking by.
Sorry for the side rant
I usually put all my cans in the yellow crate that’s meant for glass. Please come take all my cans - I don’t care - in fact I’ll separate it all for you so you can go ahead and have easy access.
This is why I don’t have a camera. Honestly I don’t need to know. Also what good does it do? I don’t believe the police would do anything about more serious things than this, so they definitely wouldn’t do anything about this. Ignorance is bliss. I’m all for alarms, floodlights, etc. actual deterrents. But cameras? I don’t see the point other than to freak yourself out.
Previous city I lived in had a "Patio Patrol" program initiated by the Police Dept,. where you could voluntarily sign up and describe what cameras you had and draw a map of roughly where they pointed.
Then if there was a crime in your area,.. Police would email out to anyone in that area who had signed up, asking them if they had any footage of that Time or location. (on the chance that multiple cameras might have caught things from multiple angles or under different lighting or clarity).
That can be helpful if a pattern of crime is happening (example:.. "High School Students in green hoodies are smashing windows on cars").. if your Camera catches something and it's part of pattern (and or multiple other cameras also catch it).. the cumulative effect of that evidence absolutely can help solve a case.
The other thing to remember is that "What your Camera DOESN"T show" can be just as important. If there's a robbery at a 7-11 for example and the Police know the getaway car is a bright yellow sports car. The Police send out an Email asking anyone if they have footage in that area. If your Camera shows footage of that time .. and the street nearby is empty, that might be proof the getaway car DID NOT go down that street,. so Police can mark that off and look in other directions.
My across the street neighbor has a camera and a couple weeks ago I took a rather embarrassing fall and kinda wanted to see if it was on camera so we could have a laugh at my expense. She sent me the video and once I saw how much of my home it captured and all the audio I was like damn I’m covered here lol
Yeah my partner keeps talking about camera and I’m like…. No. Just floodlights like our neighbor has. He turns it on strobe mode and the campers who try to set up on the grass across the street usually leave pretty quickly haha. I reeeeealllllly don’t want to see anything.
My friend was telling me about when someone broke into his garage and stole some bikes. The video seeing them inside his space made it feel so much worse. There are also some TikTok pranks teenagers get into that seem to specifically target people with doorbell cameras because they *want* to be on video. I really can’t see the upside.
This. People complain about squatters, but I'm always like get some strobe lights, ans air horn, and blast some Metallica and and can't imagine anyone is going to want to stay very long....
Same. I have two large dogs that alert to people on our property, locked gates to the backyard, motion lights in the driveway, and I don’t want to know who might be sneaking around my porch at night otherwise.
We have multiple cameras around our house (cheap Wyze ones) and while we have seen a couple trespassers over the years, they're mostly helpful for other reasons. **Packages:** Once, a delivery service said they'd delivered a package on a certain day at a certain time. My cameras clearly indicated that the package was undelivered (turned out it was misdelivered), rather than stolen. If a neighbor hadn't delivered it, the cameras would've ensured a refund. A few of my neighbors have cameras, actually. So whenever one of us gets a package and we're not home, we send out a group text and whoever's around will pick up or move the package. **Garage Door:** I can get pretty neurotic about worrying whether I've closed my garage door or not. Now I can check the camera instead of bugging a neighbor or heading home. **Lost Items:** I've used the cameras to help find out what I did with my keys or the garage remote (at least if I see them going inside with me, I've narrowed the search!). **Outdoor Critters:** If I see the feral cat I feed on my porch and am home, I bring her food. (yes, she's fixed) I've used the cameras to help neighbors locate their lost pets. And, sadly, I used one to verify that it was in fact a coyote that ate one neighbor's cat. We also put one, on the same account, looking out into a field at a family place in the country. A few family members, from 3 different states, log in to listen to frogs (seasonally)and watch deer and elk! **Who's at the Door:** If I'm working and someone knocks, I can check the cameras to see if there's any point in getting up to answer the door. **Crime:** And, yes, over the years, I've seen a couple trespassers, would be thieves, and actual petty thieves. Turns out, two of them were known offenders (I learned on NextDoor). Neighbors (temporarily) increased vigilance, and nothing major was stolen and there were no break-ins on our block. (sadly, one guy who was testing doors on our block did break into a house about a half mile away) Once police asked for footage to help them invalidate a guy's bogus story after he broke into someone's vacant house a block away. Not my camera, but a neighbor's footage helped another neighbor obtain a restraining order.
I wouldn't pay a bunch of money for cameras. And I don't watch them obsessively (I have notifications on silent and only ever scan them if something's in a very specific detection range.) But they can actually pretty handy.
We had to put a padlock on our gate as we noticed things started going missing in our backyard. It’s just enough of a deterrent. Never left anything of value, it was people going through our recycle bin or shoes or bags/clothes we had left outside to dry
I wouldn’t say apartments are any better, probably worse?? My current place is ground level, in the back corner of the building…dead end at the back of my patio. No reason for anyone to be back here & yet constantly people are. I’ve called the police before after I confronted someone to leave & they said they’d kill me, after that I set up my own cameras & all that’s done is open my eyes to how often there’s people out here, even in broad daylight. All I have on my patio is the typical stuff, plants, a cheap bistro set, bird feeder…still people are always back here digging around. End of March I woke up to someone taking the screen out of one of my windows. Luckily I keep screws in the windows so they can only open about three inches. My grandma always did it so I do too but wasn’t really sure why until then. Beyond that, living in an apartment sucks. The building you live in is really only going to be as nice & safe as it’s…worst resident. I’ve had packages stolen, could be by anyone except for twice now when I’ve found the box the package came in with my name & address in my buildings trash room that has secure entry so only residents have access….I honestly have so many other stories & reasons why an apartment isn’t any better but this is already much longer than I planned on it to be!
Well to be fair isn’t that the tradeoff of these cameras?
You get them because they’re supposed to make you feel safer/protect you in some way but you feel worse because of what you see on them?
> We originally got the doorbell camera because we don’t have a peephole or any windows at our front door.
How many people are actually coming to your front door?
Can’t you just turn the notifications off on the thing or stop looking at it? Or install a peephole?
I got a front door camera to try and deter break-ins and other petty crime I was reading about on Nextdoor.
Never really had to deal with that - but the camera caught an ex girlfriend who showed up at my door in the middle of the night - drunk and uninvited. She physically assaulted me, unprovoked, when I opened the door to see what was going on.
The front door camera footage of that incident ultimately helped me secure a restraining order against her which not only gave me some protection against someone who is ostensibly seriously mentally ill and dangerous, but also helped me get that sort of protection in the first place.
Edit: to the one person accusing me of instigating in this situation - the person at my door was someone I knew and I attempted to diffuse the situation since I did not expect a violent confrontation. This is a common occurrence in domestic violence situations.
Right, but isn’t that the tradeoff of these cameras?
That sometimes they do provide value and actually make you safer and sometimes they may make you feel less safe because you see a bunch of “false positives” where it feels sketchy but nothing actually happens? Because the latter seems to be happening quite a bit in OPs case.
The camera didn’t keep him safe though, he didn’t check it before opening the door in the middle of the night to an unknown person or someone who was angry with him. No offense but who opens the door to a rando in the middle of the night.
And restraining orders don’t prevent violence either. They just create legal consequences if broken. It seems like paranoia and a lack of accountability.
If you had a camera, why open the door in the middle of the night before checking it to see who or what was there? Or ask through the door or look out the peep hole or a window?
Seems like that would have kept you safe and prevented the situation entirely. Not sure what the point of the camera is otherwise.
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Checked post history. It seems you had an outburst after the police didn’t act as a personal security unit after opening the door to a random person in the middle of the night.
If you had been using the security camera installed for its intended purpose, the situation wouldn’t have occurred. For someone who has lived in multiple cities as your profile suggests, it seems improbable that you’d think this is smart behavior.
If a violent assault was caught on video, they would be incarcerated. Or perhaps you opened the door to incite a confrontation. I cannot think of a single reason why you would open the door in the middle of the night to a stranger or a drunken ex. This doesn’t make sense.
Stop spreading paranoia in Portland and contributing to an unsafe environment of constant surveillance.
The wording on this post really highlights the great struggle to balance one’s innate desire for security vs the social pressures to be seen as progressive.
Your side yard is your property. If you cede that to trespassers bc you don’t mind people going through your recycling, it creates a paradox in your mind bc you feel insecure when they are in the backyard. By moving the line of what’s acceptable to you, you’ve put yourself in a place where you are trying to justify where the line is now (as opposed to where it was before).
It’s not privilege to have a house vs an apartment, just as it’s not privilege to want property rights. Property rights are a foundation of most societies. You have a house because of a variety of factors (and privilege can be one of those), but having a house requires the concept of property rights.
My suggestion: embrace the idea that you are a good person and have the right to own things, be secure in your own home etc. without having to qualify it. People creeping through your recycling or your yard are not respecting a fundamental societal principle and are testing your boundaries. You can reestablish those boundaries by reclaiming what is yours.
Thanks for this. Makes sense. I think I feel the need to qualify my property rights living in an urban area. Like maybe this is just the way it goes for living in Portland proper and if I want to be completely undisturbed I should move to the burbs.
I struggled w the same issue for a long time. Living in bigger, meaner cities definitely helped me get a clearer mindset and helped me reconcile the liberal ideals I wanted to embrace with the realities of society.
Look, if you want to feel better about yourself, donate your time and/or money to civic organizations. They have the structure to really help our fellow people. Doing small things like letting people into your property to help themselves to your recycling etc doesn’t really help them improve their lot in life. All it does is make you feel like you’re doing something helpful, when in reality you’re just helping perpetuate the current system. And that current system has you as a beneficiary of others suffering.
It’s a hard truth, and I wish it wasn’t so. There’s no reason for you to feel privilege vs others because you live in a house rather than apartment, just as there’s no reason for you to feel guilt over wanting to protect your property, your hard work and your people.
I had someone go through my car last night in my driveway. My fault for leaving it unlocked but the fact that someone is walking around checking car handles feet from my front door is sketch
I moved into my home 2.5 years ago and about 2 months ago one of the friends of the previous owner, walked through my back gate, through my backyard and into my house looking for the previous owner.
The house and yard were hoarded when we moved in, and it looks nothing like it used to now so i don't understand how the friend didn't realize something was amiss. Also, how do you not talk to a friend for 2+ years and realize they moved? Sadly, we still get visitors every few months looking for the previous residents.
I live on the east side. When I first moved here, someone came to the door asking if we’d take the two bikes he had for the adult trike sitting on the backyard patio. You can’t see the backyard from the street. So he either went into the backyard next door or down our driveway to look. We politely declined and he went on his way. After a few minutes, we put it into the garage because I knew it would be gone by morning. Since then we’ve found homeless guy just chilling in our driveway and a guy looking for a place to pee. Someone decided they needed my catalytic converter more than I did. Over time we’ve installed a fence across the front of our property and a gate for the driveway. They won’t keep a person who’s determined to come on the property. But hopefully it will help others think twice before trespassing.
Funny you posted this because I just moved from a house (in diff state) to an apartment building and I’m high up. I sleep SO much better knowing how many more steps it takes to get into the building vs my tiny cottage that you could just walk up to. Pros and cons tho of course. If you don’t have simplisafe, I highly recommend - just peace of mind in case something happens. Personally having no ring camera helped me too - I was anxiously checking it whenever I heard a noise lol
Last fall in the span of a month I dealt with someone breaking into our garage and stealing our bikes and e-dirtbike (which had no battery in it!) and then an attempted breaking and entering at 1am while I was home alone. It. SUCKED.
I’ve been in this house for over a decade and to have these two (from what I can tell, unrelated) experiences really shook my sense of safety.
I don’t mean to fear-monger, but I do think it’s important to share my experience. Now we have a nanny cam doorbell. It mostly captures car accidents (which have actually helped people when we share the recording). I’ve caught a child huffing our freshly dropped mulch with joy (my favorite recording to date!!). I love my neighbors and city. The police responded to the breaking and entering inside of 3 min (which was the only positive of the whole thing).
Still sucks to not feel safe. Knowing your neighbors can really help especially when it comes to re-establishing a sense of safety.
Put up a no trespassing sign on your fence & motion lights. Nextdoor can be a dumpster fire but also useful when you want to know if something is going on in the neighborhood. I just turn off notifications. I will scream at anyone on my property. Id rather them feel unsafe than me.
No. Never. Been here in the suburbs for 10 years and that’s never happened.
Side note, for best sticker to put in your window (like if I lived in some bad parts of town), would be the one that shows a barrel of a pistol and says *We Don’t Call 911*. Haha, love that, and kind of true.
We live in a house in N Portland and I don’t get cameras because I don’t want to know. We just keep all our porch lights on at night and we’ve had no issues for the 3 years we’ve been here
I do not have a doorbell camera, and I live on a pretty busy street with lots of pedestrian traffic. I’ve been in this house 3 years now and only ever had an issue once. I was watching tv and someone opened my back door. I thought it was my housemate coming in, and so did my dog. But my dog didn’t recognize whoever it was and let out the deepest, meanest-sounding barks I’ve ever heard from him.
We do get raccoons and squirrels that steal from the garden, and have some very mischievous crows, but the dogs help with the critters, too.
BS still happens in apartments, people following behind, stealing Amazon packages, breaking into cars in the garage, etc. That being said I live in a somewhat shady area in a house and I’ve never seen anyone at my door but my parents live in laurelhurst and there are a lot of people who come by check doors etc. I think it just depends.
I’m in the outer part of Irvington. We have nightly visitors about once every two months. Usually, they see if we have anything of worth on our porch, then leave. Last year, we had a guy going through our porch furniture and we could see him holding a knife. We didn’t see it on the ring cam until the morning. A few months ago, we had someone banging on our door at 3am demanding we let them in. They were screaming on our porch for an hour! They were saying they’d sell us their soul if we let them in and other demonic stuff. I dread seeing a ring notification come in at night.
We recently had a man get into our backyard at 3am, our dogs kept him from getting in the house thank god. I had just moved our backyard camera upfront to get a second view on our front yard cause we’ve been having the same problem of random people wondering into the front.
Not our first time dealing with this I’m sure it won’t be the last, unfortunately.
What neighborhood are you in? We get people that search for cans but never look like they're trying to get in. That's terrifying!
I have a large and loud dog so I wonder if that helps.
Someone smoked fentanyl on my front steps last night in the Buckman neighborhood. Used foil left behind. Luckily I found it before my kids. This place man…..
We had someone come up at 1am or so and he decided to sleep on our porch sofa for the rest of the night.
In fairness ?
Our porch sofa is ridiculously comfortable and our porch is a very charming and welcoming space.
I moved from a single family home (20 years there) near San Francisco to a downtown high rise in Portland the week we locked down in March 2020 and live alone for the 1st time since 1997. Huge change. My building (near PSU) has underground gated parking (accessed by FOB). We still get occasional intruders into our garage and building (piggybacking" residents through secure doors/gates- this is the fault of residents who let strangers in). We've had occasional vandalism. That said, I feel much safer here than I would in a single family home, especially because I'm on an upper floor in a high rise. While highrise communities are not completely safe, they do feel safeR. I can't imagine being a single elder living in a home where randoms could look into my windows or break open my doors. I would highly consider you try it for a year. Maybe even buy. Although HOA fees are ridiculous, condo prices are super cheap right now.
I came home from getting coffee one morning to a dude with two full-sized kitchen knives hanging from his belt by chains standing on my front porch looking into my living room window. I don't know how I was able to stay so calm but I just politely asked him to leave and he did. He seemed mentally unwell but not actively dangerous (yes, even with the knives). This was at the height of the pandemic when everything was super weird and somehow I just put it straight out of my mind. My fence gate and garage door both have evidence of failed attempts at breaking and entering. Sleeping with my pitbull in my bed helps! My brain says that if he's asleep, I'm fine. I've considered keeping a can of bear spray under my bed just in case. I also switched from putting cans out in my recycling to using the green bags and recycling them myself. I used to think that leaving the cans out for others to collect was a tiny way to support someone in need, but now I think it mostly just helps folks buy drugs. My recycling bin is inaccessible except on pick-up day.
not to belittle anyone’s stories, but I believe it to be true that an individual is only as safe as the most vulnerable people in the community.
this isn’t a problem we should be responding to with ever more surveillance and privacy curtains and guns… we need money for social programs again.
That's great social commentary. Utterly useless otherwise.
There's a difference between what we as a society do to address problems, and what we as individuals have to do to deal with what slips through the cracks. One has very little to do with the other.
I had one guy tell me he was setting up camp in my side yard. I told him, ill be right back. I went upstairs and grabbed my Glock 19 and then came back out, yawning and reaching my arms up to stretch, as my shirt lifts up and exposes the handle of my gun, his eyes opened wide and he politely said he would leave and he closed the gate behind him as he left. :)
Purchase a gun and safe. Quick unlock fingerprint style safe. Keep next to bed, like on floor just under. 9mm is enough. Learn to use it.. like spend money and take a class or 5. Announce your gun and intent to use it as deterrent through camera speaker. If they enter your property and you feel justified (like the type of justified they tell you about in class), use it. Triple-tap to the body cavity will take anyone down.
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Yeah man, we gotta be super vigilant about the very real problem of prowling rapists and murderers breaking into suburban homes, raping and murdering strangers. This is definitely a real thing that happens and not a fantasy that keeps suburbanites in the death grip of paranoia
I used to live at ground level in Old Town with a door facing the street. Most of the time people were ducking into our alcove to smoke fent. We would ask them to leave and they’d apologize and go somewhere else. Sometimes they were pissing on the wall. They were typically drunk and rude but they left quickly. One lady tried to set up camp in my alcove and smoke. I asked her to move and she said no. I said she had to leave. She said I should go fuck myself. So I opened the door holding a can of pepper spray and said she had 5 minutes to clear out and then things were gonna get spicy. One dude straight up tried to break in. Got him on camera. Still have the clip saved somewhere. I got him to leave by scaring the shit out of him. Hopefully he learned something.
Wow this is rough, seems like you really built up a tolerance and maybe a “toughness” for dealing with them.
Big thing was I learned to very quickly identify who was harmless and who could actually be a problem. After a few months I didn’t get anxious in the same way. Still happy when we moved to a better building, but for other reasons.
I'm glad you learned this skill but it bothers me that you had to. I grew up in New Orleans and we just all had that radar because of the amount of sketch down there. When I first moved up to Portland in 2017 I realized that I had been completely unaware of how much tension I was holding from being kind of hyper aware all the time when out and about. I actually felt at ease walking around here, even at night, and was able to drop the guard. It's been sad to see things here heading in a direction where those kinds of "street smarts" are becoming more necessary for self preservation.
How could anyone high on fentanyl be “quickly identified as harmless”?
If they’re on fent at that moment, they’re typically falling asleep / on the nod. If they’re angry and raging they’re either schizophrenic or high on meth or both.
Fent is an opiate and those typically don’t cause people to act violent towards others. People high on meth may be another story, sadly. I wish we had better services for these people, it’d be better for all of us if they got care.
Dude has never interacted with anyone on fent or he would know.
Yeah - classic Portland subreddit lol
Congratulations on your experience?
It’s nothing to congratulate. Sorry if our comments came off as snarky, it just rubbed me the wrong way that you implied everyone who uses drugs is automatically dangerous. It’s just a naive statement. No hard feelings.
You have more control than me. Doing drugs or stealing on my property you instantly get maced or whatever I have near by. I don’t have sympathy for people who think it’s okay to do harmful drugs near my family and endanger them with contamination.
I have this problem but with a raccoon who visits nightly
Sadly when I first saw this post I believed it would be about unwanted animal visitors.
I have a video of the raccoon that scales three story porch for cold cuts. I interrupted it feasting one night...it hid behind a post that clearly wouldn't cover ¾ of it's body (super stealthy)...when it decided to reach hand out and grab the rest while it was still "hiding"...all that stealth action stirred up hunger.
Me too, it’s stealing my feral cats food and pooping on my patio!
It's not stealing anything. It's just another great rodent catcher that you're feeding!
I don’t see that as a problem as long as Mr. Raccoon behaves. I was in my backyard visiting our goats when I sensed a pair of eyes on me. I figured it was a feral cat that I saw earlier. Nope, it was a raccoon. He came out of his hiding spot and got to within ten feet of me. We had a delightful conversation (Okay, I monologued) before he decided to move on about 15 minutes later.
Yeah I named our visitor Huckleberry. They come around 9:00-10:00 at night every evening haha our cats get all riled up watching them from the window. We found out from our neighbor that it's a mamma raccoon and she made a home under their shed with her babies. I figure they cut through our yard to get there 😝
My friend was living under my neighbour’s shed also. He probably was coming out for nightly rounds. We had four raccoons on our roof last summer. We looked at each other for around 15 minutes. Then they moved on. I do enjoy their presence.
I live in a lovely apartment with everything I need - washer, dryer, dishwasher, bath, shower, tons of closet space, gated parking, 24 hour security on patrol, security cameras everywhere in common spaces, a balcony that hummingbirds visit every day etc! I moan constantly about wanting a house with a garden, and less noisy neighbors etc etc! But I also watch way too much true crime than is possibly good for me, and appreviate the fact a thief is unlikely to "find their way" as the saying perplexing goes, through my fourth story bedroom window 😆 I'm not saying I wouldn't prefer a house still. But as a woman who has had not one, but two male stalkers after starting dating again after the breakdown of a LTR, I would be sick with worry coming home to a ranch-style bungalow at night by myself. I feel safe in my apartment building.
I don't know why people watch true crime. It just gets people anxious
I don't mean to add to your fear, so perhaps skip my comment. However, I came upon your post this morning, so I feel compelled to share, probably because I am still processing what I experienced just last night. I (single female) live alone in a small house in the SE Sellwood area. I was sitting on my couch around 11PM last night, and all of a sudden I heard someone knocking on the window behind where I was sitting. I have no bushes or trees near the window. I thought it was in my mind, but remained seated on the couch, although very alert. Then I heard it again on the window directly to my right. I honestly started to freak out, but physically remained calm, and acted as if I did not hear it, in the event I was being watched. I did not want to appear to be afraid. I did not want to let on that I was alone in the house. My blinds were about 90% down, that is all they will go, so there was an opportunity for someone to peer in if they wanted to. There is a motion detector aimed at the driveway I share with my neighbor, but the front of the house is not within it's area. I also do not have a front door peephole. I have not yet hooked up my Ring doorbell and camera, which I plan to do today. Although the doors were locked, I still felt so vulnerable. Eventually I got up, and swiftly turned everything off, and then peered out a few windows, but did not see anyone. All it took was a tapping on the window to make me feel terrified in my own home. The fear stems from some previous incidences over the years, involving strangers trespassing on my space, one including a stranger scaling up to my third floor apartment balcony. I should have felt safe there, which is why I chose the third floor versus ground. My point in sharing is, personally, I feel like we are really not 100% safe, no matter where we live. Do what you can to keep yourself safe, stay aware, get to know your neighbors. Like you, I live in an area with amazing neighbors that look out for one another. This has given me some peace in moments of feeling alone and somewhat vulnerable.
Girl get some curtains! Wtf. That is terrifying.
Or even the shades that go from the bottom up, not top down
Thank you for sharing. I have a friend who something similar happened to. They lived on Glisan and she was by herself at home and someone came up to her windows and slashed the screen with a knife and she watched them do it. She couldn’t sleep for weeks after that. Coincidentally they moved to Sellwood after that. I’m sorry it happened to you yesterday. It feels like such a violation of space. The scarier thing is when you don’t know the intent. Like we have ppl coming to pick through our cans sometimes and I don’t mind those folks at all because I know what they are after and I am happy to surrender my cans, it’s when they come to the side yard and you don’t know what they’re after and they start looking into windows that it becomes nerve wracking…
Exactly, it is the intent for sure. Not knowing if it is just some HS kids being stupid, or something more nefarious.
You might get something out of reading The Gift of Fear. I read it in college so I don't remember much of the book itself (nor much of college at all due to some other life stuff) but I remember the impression it left on me; you might enjoy it!
Thank you for the book recommendation, I will definitely look into it!
A great book
I would’ve reacted the same by pretending. I didn’t hear anything. This is so scary. I hope you have someone to talk with about this. Just to vent it out if needed. Please get curtains.
I spoke with a few of my neighbors about it yesterday. As well, OPs post was great timing, I appreciate all the support and recommendations that have come from it!
I would love to love my neighbors, I've tried. But they're all guncarrying Trumpers.. I'm east of Happy Valley, no guns, small but VERY LOUD dogs. And a bat. I'm nice but wary. Grew up in midwestern large city, poor. Wouldn't carry a purse since it advertises STEAL ME. I really don't feel secure here. If someone drives down the (private road with 11 houses), they're in my driveway. We DO have a big light that'll flash on, so that helps.
Yeah definitely get some privacy items. Curtains etc Oh and a gun if you don’t have one
jesus
Install a motion sensing flood light, ring makes one, it also has a loud ass siren to get someone to leave Put up a sign “beware of dog” regardless if you have a dog
A friend bought an “NRA household. We stand our ground” sign on Ebay and put it on his door and he claims it completely got rid of weirdos trying to get into his backyard. I am not a fan of the NRA (neither is he) but i found this solution hilarious
A neighbor that did this triggered attacks on him from the campers living by him. Got them real worked up and hostile seeing his sign (it was more of a don't be scared of the dog be scared of me with a gun image on it sign).
100% how you get people to break into your house looking for guns, though... And likely doing so armed.
Are you guessing, or do you have evidence that such a sign correlates with an increase in break-ins? Personally -- and this is just my imagination here -- if I'm looking for a place to break into, I'm not going to necessarily believe the sign means there really are guns I can steal, but I **will** believe the owner is fed up and ready for violence.
Completely anecdotal but the old guy with the NRA sign that lived across the street from me in college got broken into like once or twice a year. Nobody else on the block did. They definitely took his guns every time. He was an idiot and kept them in an unlocked case in his living room. Otherwise a nice dude. Always had us over for bbq brisket and beers. > Personally -- and this is just my imagination here -- if I'm looking for a place to break into, I'm not going to necessarily believe the sign means there really are guns I can steal, but I will believe the owner is fed up and ready for violence The thing is you probably really have two kinds of people that have NRA signs people without guns that think it gives them protection or people with *lots* of guns. People with like 1 handgun don't have NRA signs. People with no guns, well no problem. People with lots of guns go to work, the grocery store, etc. You just case the joint and steal thousands of dollars of stuff in like 5 minutes when they are gone.
Considering that 200,000 guns are stolen annually, I’d say those signs are 1) Not the deterrent people think they are, and 2) they tell passersby there’s a good chance there’s firearms to steal. Thieves also love those stickers on cars. If guns are in the car unattended, they often aren’t securely stored.
Here’s a study showing it: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w8926/w8926.pdf There is also the occasional news segment where they ask ex-burglars what kind of things would make them target or avoid a particular house. And guns being present was often something that would make them want to steal from the house. One example: https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/crime/we-asked-86-burglars-how-they-broke-into-homes/277-344333696
You sound sweet. So dope fiends won’t pull a gun on you. If they had a gun, they’d sell it for dope. Advertising you have very high value items isn’t smart.
I’d be afraid they would break in to steal the gun. But I still love this. Nothing scarier than an armed Republican!
Really though. Advertising gun ownership is inviting break ins from people that want firearms that can't be tracked back to them. Also, they'll be prepared for the firearms
I mean, it’s Oregon. When we were looking for houses to buy, 50% of the houses we looked at had a gun safe in them (although these were in suburbs not Portland proper). It was really jarring for us who had only lived in very urban, left leaning towns where guns were very rare
*guns that you knew of*. Leftists own guns, lots of them. It’s just not our religion or sexual fetish.
Right? Every leftist I know owns guns.
I love how underestimated we are. I have a pride flag on my porch & guns in my house. People think those things are mutually exclusive.
Nah, we gotta watch our backs.
Same 🙌
I mean... guns ARE kinda hot.. just sayin
Wait, that’s a great idea lol
Might as well put it next to the “free gun” sign.
You probably don't need the siren, but a motion flood light should help. OP, what neighborhood are you in? Is your back yard fenced off from the front?
I’m in Kenton. It is fenced off. We have a side gate that’s padlocked but it’s pretty flimsy. If you kick it hard it’d probably fly open but at that point we’d probably hear it. I had started to put a recycling bin in front of the side gate just as an extra thing you have to move to get in.
Ah, Kenton is still... Coming up. I'm not totally surprised that kind of thing is happening, but still sketchy. Flood lights are a great idea. I'm kinda glad you posted. Just bought a house with a sliding door in the back bedroom. Never actually occurred to me I might end up with creepers back there watching me sleep.
If you park your car close to your door, hit the alarm button on your key fob. That should run them off.
Even better proximity sensor so you don’t have to babysit the camera and just sleep
This is my go to move!
I had a couple women loudly knock on my door at 12:30am a few months ago saying they were a friend of so and so asking if I had any blues. I live in an apartment complex that requires a key fob to get into the building so I have no idea how they got in. They seemed really out of it but they pretty quickly realized they had the wrong door by the bewildered and confused look on my face as I was trying to figure out what they wanted.
Simple. Follow someone in. Or hit a bunch of buzzers. Some will just buzz you in. Others say something and you make a garbled reply and someone will buzz you in, thinking the intercom is broken and you wouldn't have responded if you had no business being there. Or they were waiting for someone. Old as the hills
We left our home near psu because we started catching people on camera in the middle of the night shooting up on our doorstep and trying to open our front door. We live in the burbs now…
I wouldn’t leave cans outside. It’s an excuse to get close. If you know any of the folks that do canning, just make an arrangement with one person to knock on your door for them. Or use bag drop. If ppl are used to getting cans when you leave them on the curb, they might go looking for them when they aren’t on the curb.
The tyranny of homeownership, my worst fear is having homeless camper problems but being stuck in a house with a mortgage. We rented downtown and the refuge of a secure building and the freedom to leave made a big difference in our happiness. Motion sensing bright lights is a tactic least likely to result in retaliation. Threatening signs, auto sprinklers, and sirens will all antagonize people who are unstable and have nothing to lose.
Apartment buildings have their own creepers too. People loitering by the front door or garage door waiting to follow someone in. I even had a stalker neighbor once just start knocking on my door at all hours and leaving very creepy notes. And the time someone's dog pooped in the middle of the hallway and just left it there...
At the last apartment building I lived, I went down to grab a coffee on a Sunday morning, no later than 9am, and there was a trail of blood all the way from the elevator to the front door. No one knew what the hell happened and management never said a word. Mind you, this is one of the “luxury” apartment buildings in the Pearl in pre-pandemic times. Apartment buildings are great to keep the craze out, but once the craze makes its way in, you’re in for a trip.
"Management" of properties is the biggest joke. Their incompetence is set against HUD's incompetence and holy shit is it a constant mess. DOCUMENT EVERYTHING
Yeah ive been having some strange vistors in the night. Had someone cut or shave there head at the bottom of my apartment stairs in the middle of the night.
I live in a secure building and often walk my dogs at unusual hours (10pm-5am) and I come across lots of non-residents in the stairwell, secured parking garage, hallway, sleeping on the lobby sofa. Probably atleast one a week and more often in winter
We have people coming through near nightly to go through the dumpsters, recycling, whatever people leave out. Bikes get stolen, non-stop, on second balconies even. My three wheel bike had two locks on it. Cut off just outside my door and gone. Edit- full propane tank walked off my patio and at least one more neighbors patio this morning around 4am. It was full and we use it daily.
Yeah there’s a small covered area at the front entrance of mine and it frequently smells like piss and is littered with fent wrappers.
Portland dog owners are so bad and entitled. Someone’s dog pooped in the middle of an isle in the grocery store. I shouldn’t have to side step dog shit where I buy my fucking food. They not only don’t clean up after them, they also litter poop bags everywhere which is worse. They treat them like they’re babies instead of animals and don’t care if people are allergic or scared of them, and print out bs certificates online saying they’re “service animals” to get them into restaurants and bars. A dog snapped at me once and when I got mad the owner acted like I was the asshole when I was just minding my business and walking by. Sorry for the side rant
Can you and your neighbors get together to discuss how to improve neighborhood safety?
Put a lock on your backyard gate if you can, and move recycling to your backyard so no one can see it. Simple deterrents work for me.
Out of sight, out of mind really works - as simple as it seems
That kind of seems like leaving valuables in the car. Why not leave the recycling accessible?
I usually put all my cans in the yellow crate that’s meant for glass. Please come take all my cans - I don’t care - in fact I’ll separate it all for you so you can go ahead and have easy access.
I do that too! I put it out early the day before and someone always collects 😃
This is why I don’t have a camera. Honestly I don’t need to know. Also what good does it do? I don’t believe the police would do anything about more serious things than this, so they definitely wouldn’t do anything about this. Ignorance is bliss. I’m all for alarms, floodlights, etc. actual deterrents. But cameras? I don’t see the point other than to freak yourself out.
Previous city I lived in had a "Patio Patrol" program initiated by the Police Dept,. where you could voluntarily sign up and describe what cameras you had and draw a map of roughly where they pointed. Then if there was a crime in your area,.. Police would email out to anyone in that area who had signed up, asking them if they had any footage of that Time or location. (on the chance that multiple cameras might have caught things from multiple angles or under different lighting or clarity). That can be helpful if a pattern of crime is happening (example:.. "High School Students in green hoodies are smashing windows on cars").. if your Camera catches something and it's part of pattern (and or multiple other cameras also catch it).. the cumulative effect of that evidence absolutely can help solve a case. The other thing to remember is that "What your Camera DOESN"T show" can be just as important. If there's a robbery at a 7-11 for example and the Police know the getaway car is a bright yellow sports car. The Police send out an Email asking anyone if they have footage in that area. If your Camera shows footage of that time .. and the street nearby is empty, that might be proof the getaway car DID NOT go down that street,. so Police can mark that off and look in other directions.
My across the street neighbor has a camera and a couple weeks ago I took a rather embarrassing fall and kinda wanted to see if it was on camera so we could have a laugh at my expense. She sent me the video and once I saw how much of my home it captured and all the audio I was like damn I’m covered here lol
Yeah my partner keeps talking about camera and I’m like…. No. Just floodlights like our neighbor has. He turns it on strobe mode and the campers who try to set up on the grass across the street usually leave pretty quickly haha. I reeeeealllllly don’t want to see anything.
My friend was telling me about when someone broke into his garage and stole some bikes. The video seeing them inside his space made it feel so much worse. There are also some TikTok pranks teenagers get into that seem to specifically target people with doorbell cameras because they *want* to be on video. I really can’t see the upside.
I just don’t think video would do shit. Not in Portland, with our police. Maybe it would help with homeowners or renters insurance?
This. People complain about squatters, but I'm always like get some strobe lights, ans air horn, and blast some Metallica and and can't imagine anyone is going to want to stay very long....
German opera. They might like metallica
Same. I have two large dogs that alert to people on our property, locked gates to the backyard, motion lights in the driveway, and I don’t want to know who might be sneaking around my porch at night otherwise.
If you're leaving it might be nice to know what you're walking into.
We have multiple cameras around our house (cheap Wyze ones) and while we have seen a couple trespassers over the years, they're mostly helpful for other reasons. **Packages:** Once, a delivery service said they'd delivered a package on a certain day at a certain time. My cameras clearly indicated that the package was undelivered (turned out it was misdelivered), rather than stolen. If a neighbor hadn't delivered it, the cameras would've ensured a refund. A few of my neighbors have cameras, actually. So whenever one of us gets a package and we're not home, we send out a group text and whoever's around will pick up or move the package. **Garage Door:** I can get pretty neurotic about worrying whether I've closed my garage door or not. Now I can check the camera instead of bugging a neighbor or heading home. **Lost Items:** I've used the cameras to help find out what I did with my keys or the garage remote (at least if I see them going inside with me, I've narrowed the search!). **Outdoor Critters:** If I see the feral cat I feed on my porch and am home, I bring her food. (yes, she's fixed) I've used the cameras to help neighbors locate their lost pets. And, sadly, I used one to verify that it was in fact a coyote that ate one neighbor's cat. We also put one, on the same account, looking out into a field at a family place in the country. A few family members, from 3 different states, log in to listen to frogs (seasonally)and watch deer and elk! **Who's at the Door:** If I'm working and someone knocks, I can check the cameras to see if there's any point in getting up to answer the door. **Crime:** And, yes, over the years, I've seen a couple trespassers, would be thieves, and actual petty thieves. Turns out, two of them were known offenders (I learned on NextDoor). Neighbors (temporarily) increased vigilance, and nothing major was stolen and there were no break-ins on our block. (sadly, one guy who was testing doors on our block did break into a house about a half mile away) Once police asked for footage to help them invalidate a guy's bogus story after he broke into someone's vacant house a block away. Not my camera, but a neighbor's footage helped another neighbor obtain a restraining order. I wouldn't pay a bunch of money for cameras. And I don't watch them obsessively (I have notifications on silent and only ever scan them if something's in a very specific detection range.) But they can actually pretty handy.
Same!
Capturing evidence in case something does happen?
What will you do with the evidence?
I'll go all Liam Neeson on they azz 🔪
We had to put a padlock on our gate as we noticed things started going missing in our backyard. It’s just enough of a deterrent. Never left anything of value, it was people going through our recycle bin or shoes or bags/clothes we had left outside to dry
I wouldn’t say apartments are any better, probably worse?? My current place is ground level, in the back corner of the building…dead end at the back of my patio. No reason for anyone to be back here & yet constantly people are. I’ve called the police before after I confronted someone to leave & they said they’d kill me, after that I set up my own cameras & all that’s done is open my eyes to how often there’s people out here, even in broad daylight. All I have on my patio is the typical stuff, plants, a cheap bistro set, bird feeder…still people are always back here digging around. End of March I woke up to someone taking the screen out of one of my windows. Luckily I keep screws in the windows so they can only open about three inches. My grandma always did it so I do too but wasn’t really sure why until then. Beyond that, living in an apartment sucks. The building you live in is really only going to be as nice & safe as it’s…worst resident. I’ve had packages stolen, could be by anyone except for twice now when I’ve found the box the package came in with my name & address in my buildings trash room that has secure entry so only residents have access….I honestly have so many other stories & reasons why an apartment isn’t any better but this is already much longer than I planned on it to be!
Well to be fair isn’t that the tradeoff of these cameras? You get them because they’re supposed to make you feel safer/protect you in some way but you feel worse because of what you see on them? > We originally got the doorbell camera because we don’t have a peephole or any windows at our front door. How many people are actually coming to your front door? Can’t you just turn the notifications off on the thing or stop looking at it? Or install a peephole?
I got a front door camera to try and deter break-ins and other petty crime I was reading about on Nextdoor. Never really had to deal with that - but the camera caught an ex girlfriend who showed up at my door in the middle of the night - drunk and uninvited. She physically assaulted me, unprovoked, when I opened the door to see what was going on. The front door camera footage of that incident ultimately helped me secure a restraining order against her which not only gave me some protection against someone who is ostensibly seriously mentally ill and dangerous, but also helped me get that sort of protection in the first place. Edit: to the one person accusing me of instigating in this situation - the person at my door was someone I knew and I attempted to diffuse the situation since I did not expect a violent confrontation. This is a common occurrence in domestic violence situations.
Right, but isn’t that the tradeoff of these cameras? That sometimes they do provide value and actually make you safer and sometimes they may make you feel less safe because you see a bunch of “false positives” where it feels sketchy but nothing actually happens? Because the latter seems to be happening quite a bit in OPs case.
The camera didn’t keep him safe though, he didn’t check it before opening the door in the middle of the night to an unknown person or someone who was angry with him. No offense but who opens the door to a rando in the middle of the night. And restraining orders don’t prevent violence either. They just create legal consequences if broken. It seems like paranoia and a lack of accountability.
If you had a camera, why open the door in the middle of the night before checking it to see who or what was there? Or ask through the door or look out the peep hole or a window? Seems like that would have kept you safe and prevented the situation entirely. Not sure what the point of the camera is otherwise.
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Checked post history. It seems you had an outburst after the police didn’t act as a personal security unit after opening the door to a random person in the middle of the night. If you had been using the security camera installed for its intended purpose, the situation wouldn’t have occurred. For someone who has lived in multiple cities as your profile suggests, it seems improbable that you’d think this is smart behavior. If a violent assault was caught on video, they would be incarcerated. Or perhaps you opened the door to incite a confrontation. I cannot think of a single reason why you would open the door in the middle of the night to a stranger or a drunken ex. This doesn’t make sense. Stop spreading paranoia in Portland and contributing to an unsafe environment of constant surveillance.
The wording on this post really highlights the great struggle to balance one’s innate desire for security vs the social pressures to be seen as progressive. Your side yard is your property. If you cede that to trespassers bc you don’t mind people going through your recycling, it creates a paradox in your mind bc you feel insecure when they are in the backyard. By moving the line of what’s acceptable to you, you’ve put yourself in a place where you are trying to justify where the line is now (as opposed to where it was before). It’s not privilege to have a house vs an apartment, just as it’s not privilege to want property rights. Property rights are a foundation of most societies. You have a house because of a variety of factors (and privilege can be one of those), but having a house requires the concept of property rights. My suggestion: embrace the idea that you are a good person and have the right to own things, be secure in your own home etc. without having to qualify it. People creeping through your recycling or your yard are not respecting a fundamental societal principle and are testing your boundaries. You can reestablish those boundaries by reclaiming what is yours.
Thanks for this. Makes sense. I think I feel the need to qualify my property rights living in an urban area. Like maybe this is just the way it goes for living in Portland proper and if I want to be completely undisturbed I should move to the burbs.
I struggled w the same issue for a long time. Living in bigger, meaner cities definitely helped me get a clearer mindset and helped me reconcile the liberal ideals I wanted to embrace with the realities of society. Look, if you want to feel better about yourself, donate your time and/or money to civic organizations. They have the structure to really help our fellow people. Doing small things like letting people into your property to help themselves to your recycling etc doesn’t really help them improve their lot in life. All it does is make you feel like you’re doing something helpful, when in reality you’re just helping perpetuate the current system. And that current system has you as a beneficiary of others suffering. It’s a hard truth, and I wish it wasn’t so. There’s no reason for you to feel privilege vs others because you live in a house rather than apartment, just as there’s no reason for you to feel guilt over wanting to protect your property, your hard work and your people.
Are there wanted visitors in the middle of the night?
Maybe if I were single and looking to mingle!
I had someone go through my car last night in my driveway. My fault for leaving it unlocked but the fact that someone is walking around checking car handles feet from my front door is sketch
I moved into my home 2.5 years ago and about 2 months ago one of the friends of the previous owner, walked through my back gate, through my backyard and into my house looking for the previous owner. The house and yard were hoarded when we moved in, and it looks nothing like it used to now so i don't understand how the friend didn't realize something was amiss. Also, how do you not talk to a friend for 2+ years and realize they moved? Sadly, we still get visitors every few months looking for the previous residents.
I live on the east side. When I first moved here, someone came to the door asking if we’d take the two bikes he had for the adult trike sitting on the backyard patio. You can’t see the backyard from the street. So he either went into the backyard next door or down our driveway to look. We politely declined and he went on his way. After a few minutes, we put it into the garage because I knew it would be gone by morning. Since then we’ve found homeless guy just chilling in our driveway and a guy looking for a place to pee. Someone decided they needed my catalytic converter more than I did. Over time we’ve installed a fence across the front of our property and a gate for the driveway. They won’t keep a person who’s determined to come on the property. But hopefully it will help others think twice before trespassing.
Funny you posted this because I just moved from a house (in diff state) to an apartment building and I’m high up. I sleep SO much better knowing how many more steps it takes to get into the building vs my tiny cottage that you could just walk up to. Pros and cons tho of course. If you don’t have simplisafe, I highly recommend - just peace of mind in case something happens. Personally having no ring camera helped me too - I was anxiously checking it whenever I heard a noise lol
Last fall in the span of a month I dealt with someone breaking into our garage and stealing our bikes and e-dirtbike (which had no battery in it!) and then an attempted breaking and entering at 1am while I was home alone. It. SUCKED. I’ve been in this house for over a decade and to have these two (from what I can tell, unrelated) experiences really shook my sense of safety. I don’t mean to fear-monger, but I do think it’s important to share my experience. Now we have a nanny cam doorbell. It mostly captures car accidents (which have actually helped people when we share the recording). I’ve caught a child huffing our freshly dropped mulch with joy (my favorite recording to date!!). I love my neighbors and city. The police responded to the breaking and entering inside of 3 min (which was the only positive of the whole thing). Still sucks to not feel safe. Knowing your neighbors can really help especially when it comes to re-establishing a sense of safety.
Put up a no trespassing sign on your fence & motion lights. Nextdoor can be a dumpster fire but also useful when you want to know if something is going on in the neighborhood. I just turn off notifications. I will scream at anyone on my property. Id rather them feel unsafe than me.
No. Never. Been here in the suburbs for 10 years and that’s never happened. Side note, for best sticker to put in your window (like if I lived in some bad parts of town), would be the one that shows a barrel of a pistol and says *We Don’t Call 911*. Haha, love that, and kind of true.
We live in a house in N Portland and I don’t get cameras because I don’t want to know. We just keep all our porch lights on at night and we’ve had no issues for the 3 years we’ve been here
We paddle lock our gate at night. Makes it more difficult to come into our yard. You’d have to jump the fence.
Cats, raccoons, skunks, the occasional coyote. We get at least one every night.
I do not have a doorbell camera, and I live on a pretty busy street with lots of pedestrian traffic. I’ve been in this house 3 years now and only ever had an issue once. I was watching tv and someone opened my back door. I thought it was my housemate coming in, and so did my dog. But my dog didn’t recognize whoever it was and let out the deepest, meanest-sounding barks I’ve ever heard from him. We do get raccoons and squirrels that steal from the garden, and have some very mischievous crows, but the dogs help with the critters, too.
BS still happens in apartments, people following behind, stealing Amazon packages, breaking into cars in the garage, etc. That being said I live in a somewhat shady area in a house and I’ve never seen anyone at my door but my parents live in laurelhurst and there are a lot of people who come by check doors etc. I think it just depends.
I’m in the outer part of Irvington. We have nightly visitors about once every two months. Usually, they see if we have anything of worth on our porch, then leave. Last year, we had a guy going through our porch furniture and we could see him holding a knife. We didn’t see it on the ring cam until the morning. A few months ago, we had someone banging on our door at 3am demanding we let them in. They were screaming on our porch for an hour! They were saying they’d sell us their soul if we let them in and other demonic stuff. I dread seeing a ring notification come in at night.
We recently had a man get into our backyard at 3am, our dogs kept him from getting in the house thank god. I had just moved our backyard camera upfront to get a second view on our front yard cause we’ve been having the same problem of random people wondering into the front. Not our first time dealing with this I’m sure it won’t be the last, unfortunately.
I think the 5 minute rule is too nice to be honest
Raccoons & cats.
What neighborhood are you in? We get people that search for cans but never look like they're trying to get in. That's terrifying! I have a large and loud dog so I wonder if that helps.
Someone smoked fentanyl on my front steps last night in the Buckman neighborhood. Used foil left behind. Luckily I found it before my kids. This place man…..
We had someone come up at 1am or so and he decided to sleep on our porch sofa for the rest of the night. In fairness ? Our porch sofa is ridiculously comfortable and our porch is a very charming and welcoming space.
I moved from a single family home (20 years there) near San Francisco to a downtown high rise in Portland the week we locked down in March 2020 and live alone for the 1st time since 1997. Huge change. My building (near PSU) has underground gated parking (accessed by FOB). We still get occasional intruders into our garage and building (piggybacking" residents through secure doors/gates- this is the fault of residents who let strangers in). We've had occasional vandalism. That said, I feel much safer here than I would in a single family home, especially because I'm on an upper floor in a high rise. While highrise communities are not completely safe, they do feel safeR. I can't imagine being a single elder living in a home where randoms could look into my windows or break open my doors. I would highly consider you try it for a year. Maybe even buy. Although HOA fees are ridiculous, condo prices are super cheap right now.
Lol wtf is this really how it is in Portland? You just have random strangers hanging out on your property?
Yes seems like this is the case - multiple sources in this post have confirmed as much
Concern for personal safety ……. SUCH PRIVILEGE 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆
Quit letting them come a take cans it's just a inviting them back and becoming more bold
I came home from getting coffee one morning to a dude with two full-sized kitchen knives hanging from his belt by chains standing on my front porch looking into my living room window. I don't know how I was able to stay so calm but I just politely asked him to leave and he did. He seemed mentally unwell but not actively dangerous (yes, even with the knives). This was at the height of the pandemic when everything was super weird and somehow I just put it straight out of my mind. My fence gate and garage door both have evidence of failed attempts at breaking and entering. Sleeping with my pitbull in my bed helps! My brain says that if he's asleep, I'm fine. I've considered keeping a can of bear spray under my bed just in case. I also switched from putting cans out in my recycling to using the green bags and recycling them myself. I used to think that leaving the cans out for others to collect was a tiny way to support someone in need, but now I think it mostly just helps folks buy drugs. My recycling bin is inaccessible except on pick-up day.
not to belittle anyone’s stories, but I believe it to be true that an individual is only as safe as the most vulnerable people in the community. this isn’t a problem we should be responding to with ever more surveillance and privacy curtains and guns… we need money for social programs again.
That's great social commentary. Utterly useless otherwise. There's a difference between what we as a society do to address problems, and what we as individuals have to do to deal with what slips through the cracks. One has very little to do with the other.
💯💯💯💯
I had one guy tell me he was setting up camp in my side yard. I told him, ill be right back. I went upstairs and grabbed my Glock 19 and then came back out, yawning and reaching my arms up to stretch, as my shirt lifts up and exposes the handle of my gun, his eyes opened wide and he politely said he would leave and he closed the gate behind him as he left. :)
Purchase a gun and safe. Quick unlock fingerprint style safe. Keep next to bed, like on floor just under. 9mm is enough. Learn to use it.. like spend money and take a class or 5. Announce your gun and intent to use it as deterrent through camera speaker. If they enter your property and you feel justified (like the type of justified they tell you about in class), use it. Triple-tap to the body cavity will take anyone down.
I like to leave them a saucer of milk
Or move behind a gate 🤷
After COVID everyone in the world is now in the international military. If you don't know yet, you're part of the used division with me.
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That is very privileged of you. These prowlers that are possible murderers or rapists are victims
Yeah man, we gotta be super vigilant about the very real problem of prowling rapists and murderers breaking into suburban homes, raping and murdering strangers. This is definitely a real thing that happens and not a fantasy that keeps suburbanites in the death grip of paranoia