If you didn’t make it up to the cottage for Family Day weekend, you might want to consider checking in on your home-away-from-home, or at least having a neighbour do so.
Cottage break-ins are common during the winter months, and according to Norfolk County OPP, there was a string of them in Turkey Point earlier this month.
Const. Ed Sanchuk told CBC News that there were four break-and-enters in the popular cottaging region in one week. He said that thieves were taking “anything they [could] get their hands on,” including alcohol, TVs, and other electronics.
Sanchuk offered additional advice for cottage owners, which included marking valuable items that can’t be removed in the winter. If you mark the item with a licence plate number, the police can use it to trace your property back to you. It will also make the criminals less likely to steal the item, since it will be more difficult for them to sell.
Sanchuk says surveillance cameras can also be very effective.
“If we can’t identify that suspicious person through our officers, then we reach out to our media partners…so far we’ve been 100 percent successful,” he said.
For more ideas on how to protect your home or cottage from intruders, you can sign up for the OPP’s free SafeGaurd Ontario Property Security Program, in which an auxiliary officer will perform a property security review on your residence and provide an information package with additional tips.
