Gainesville Police is urging students and residents to secure their belongings and take precautions before leaving town for the holidays.
Those who are traveling should lock all doors and close blinds and curtains so potential thieves can’t see inside homes, GPD spokesman Officer Ben Tobias wrote in an email.
Students should also avoid posting when they’re leaving Gainesville on social media, he said, and mail should be halted or delivered to a different address for anyone leaving home for extended periods of time.
“Trust your neighbors,” Tobias said. “Sometimes your neighbors are going to be people that you can reach out to to keep an eye on your house.”
If you return home to a burglary, Tobias said to call 911 immediately and refrain from searching your home until officers respond.
Students should set their thermostat heat setting to 60 degrees or less, wrote Amy Campus, efficiency program coordinator at Gainesville Regional Utilities, in an email. She also suggested turning off the electricity and water that electric water heaters utilize.
Students should also unplug appliances like cable boxes, TVs, microwaves and chargers, Campus said.
“It takes a lot less energy to reset all the clocks and settings than to allow them to run for 2-3 weeks when you are gone,” she said.
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 12/10/2014]
