A Webinar by Concealed Coalition
Austin Davis (00:04):
Hello Conceal Coalition. Austin Davis, your national director of training, and I am so glad you showed up for this webinar When we first got this topic. I got to be honest with you, I wasn't really into it. I'm like going, you know how to pick a new home and cry prevention, but then all of a sudden I started thinking going, oh my gosh, of all the crime prevention, discreet skill sets we should have, this should be at the top of it and no one ever thought of it. Another of many reasons why Casey's a genius. So I came to it with a great deal of enthusiasm and whether you rent, own or want to build, I think this topic will be very helpful to you. Even if you are, I mean glued to the foundation of your home going, I'm never leaving, they're bringing me out of your feet first.
Austin Davis (00:47):
All of our friends and families who want to move and either buy, build or rent another home, these same tips apply to them. So whether you're moving or you have a son, daughter, friend, brother, sister, cousin, aunt, uncle who's moving, I really think these topics we're talk about in this webinar is going to really hit home and give you a whole nother level of discrete skillset to protect what matters most. Now, to start this off, we have to introduce our co-host for this month's webinar and I'm going to allow you to meet Casey. Casey, take it away. Please tell them who you are, what you do, and what you're trying to protect.
Casey (01:23):
Awesome. Hi Austin. Thank you so much for meeting with me and advising me on this big change in my family's life. I'm a director of marketing here at Consult Coalition. Actually, I'm also a mother of three boys and so I have a nine-year-old five-year-old and one-year-old, so spaced every four years apart. I don't know how that happened, but it works for our family. So my husband and I are just really invested in moving to a school district that we want to have them kind of be at for in perpetuity really. We are currently renting, we're in the city, we want to get some land. We want to move into more of a rural area of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but I've only ever lived in Dallas on the Dallas side and so I've never lived on the Fort Worth side. And so as we go over there, obviously we're doing moving from one side to the other, we're trying to do our due diligence and look into all the safety and there's a reason why we chose a particular city that we're looking at for building or for buying. But I wanted to come to you. I know that you're the expert in all things safety and defensive living and protecting my family, especially in 2024 is top of mind for me. So that's why I'm hearing a little bit about me.
Austin Davis (02:42):
Well fantastic. First off, this whole topic was your suggestion and kudos to you two thumbs up. The thing that we need to think about when we talk about this before we get into the weeds and the details is to me when we talk about moving your home, this home is the one place you should not only be safe, you should also feel safe. So before we talk about where you might be moving, can we dig a little deeper where you are now, what do you like about where you are now and the neighborhood and the sort of big picture thing and what do you like about the structure you're at now that you want to take with you? Is there anything that you're not really quite comfortable with that you want to fix in the next place?
Casey (03:22):
Yeah, there are a few things mean. So we live in a pretty safe area of Dallas, in the suburbs north of Dallas actually currently we do live off of very, I know safe. It's all relative, right? So we do live off,
Austin Davis (03:36):
Sorry, but my line safe neighborhood, I was like, we live in a safe neighborhood. The criminals have some big Google map that we're working off of. Oh, can't go there. That's that safe neighborhood. Sorry, keep going. You live in a
Casey (03:47):
Very true, there's the occasional petty crime theft that happens, someone going into the back alley of our neighborhood and opening a truck door if it's unlocked and things like that. So we are mindful of things like that, but I mean one thing about our current place of residence, like I said, we're renting is that it's right up against a major street and so we're looking to get our kids back off the street a little bit. Anything could happen, not only easier access for people to come off of the street, but also accidents could happen with vehicles off of that street. So that's just one aspect of why we're looking to move. All the houses are very much right on top of each other and we'd love a little bit more space. We want our boys to be able to go out and run and play, but again, in the back of my mind how if we move into more of a rural area, how much do I let them run and play? So there's just kind of pros and cons to moving out of the city and into the country or vice versa.
Austin Davis (04:49):
But when you think about three young boys growing up in a big chunk of land, it makes my heart happy because we had a big chunk of land we could play with as kids and it was the ultimate playground. The only thing is you're going to need some sort of, when you start thinking we get to the part about the design of the house is some sort of outside hosing the boys off thing before they come in.
Casey (05:09):
That's a very good point.
Austin Davis (05:11):
Little special area, this little side above the hose off boys. That's
Casey (05:15):
True.
Austin Davis (05:16):
A scene on a pulp fiction,
Casey (05:18):
An outside shower system or something. For sure.
Austin Davis (05:21):
I'm seeing this. So one of the things I want to talk about is I would like to break this conversation down into the moving into sort of three big topics to kind of help you and everyone else who's making this decision and that is public, private and intimate. When I think of public, I think of sort of the big issues that you really can't change. When I think about private spaces, that is whether you're going to be in a gated community or an open community or where your sidewalk ends and your home begins, or in your case you want to do a little more rural where the fence line ends and where it is and suddenly you have to think, well, if I'm in a more rural area and I need some sort 9 1 1 call, I'm probably a little more on my own. If I'm in an urban area and I need a 9 1 1 call, it's probably because I'm in an urban area and I'm more likely to need to call 9 1 1.
Austin Davis (06:05):
People always tell me, I don't worry about crime, I live out the country and I always go, oh, there's crime the country, there's just no witnesses. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. It is a balancing act. The first thing I want to address though is before we move anywhere is it comes in another line. You may have heard me talk about a lot in conceal C University and that is there's safe places and dangerous places and dangerous places and safe places, and when we're protecting the thing that matters most, it's our job to know which which now one of the big things, and I'm going to use my own life for example, we went through this whole process four years ago and because I've been doing this for 32 years, I didn't really think about that. I went through a process, but actually I did.
Austin Davis (06:42):
We were living in a place in inner Houston and I mean inner Houston and I'm traveling a lot with the virtual tactical academy. So I'm on the road with my virtual simulator all over the country and leaving my wife behind. I did not feel comfortable leaving her there. So we started looking around. Now we still want to stay in the Houston area, but what we found out was if we moved outside of the Houston area, which is in something called Harris County, if I moved to the next county over, which in my case is Brazoria County, my world's a very different place, but really and truly if you came to visit me, you would go, oh, you live in Houston? No, I don't. I live in another community that's right up to the edge of the county that Houston's in and I'm literally 400 yards from the city line, but I have a completely different crime profile.
Austin Davis (07:25):
My police department that protects my family is a completely different situation. So one thing is when you start looking for your rural area, you might want to start thinking, where's that property line? Because when I talk about the property line, it's not so much the physical changes that are 400 yards away. It is a different sheriff and it's a different district attorney. Now sheriff is an interesting relationship because it's really the only public law enforcement officer that, and constables we get to vote on. Everyone else kind of gets assigned to the list, but the thing about the district attorney and where you're looking for a new home does two things. One, in that other county, they let people go. In my county, they lock them up. It's a completely different thing and your district attorney does two things. It keeps the bad guys in jail and off the streets and off your front porch.
Austin Davis (08:10):
But it also helps if you have to defend your family. If I had to defend my family, it'll be judged by the same state laws but very differently, 400 yards off to 400 yards here. So before you start moving, you might want to go ahead and look and think about what's my district attorney and you never need to know who your district attorney is and what their attitude is until you need them. And then it's like, holy cow, they will not put this person who just came in and attacked me and my family in jail. They released him on bond. To give you a classic example in Harris County where Houston is, we a few months ago had a police officer who was shot coming home in his own vehicle in uniform and killed. The two people who killed him were both in jail, let out for manslaughter, and they both had ankle monitors on him and they were separate charges for murder.
Austin Davis (08:55):
They both had tried to kill or did kill somebody else. They let out on signature bonds. They both had ankle monitors when they shot that other officer. That stuff just doesn't really fly in this county. So not to put a bummer on this new move, but that's the first thing. Next thing is when you find out where you want to move, I'd like you to figure out what police department that is. I'd like you to walk on down to local police department and say, hi, I don't think I'm moving here. Do you have somebody I can talk to? And the officer's going to look at you. You have a third eye.
Casey (09:25):
I was going to say that sounds like an awkward kind of question
Austin Davis (09:29):
And then all of a sudden you're going to see light bulb come over and go, oh yeah, because they're going to tell you, look, this is a great community. Earth's a crappy community, but the version of that police heart brain is going to say there's safe places, places, endang places and safe places. They're going to tell you, Hey, this town is great if you live in this community, this community or this community, now you may want to help 'em and kind of go, we're looking to buy here. How's that sound? Or we have two or three options picked out, but you're a local police officer. We become cops because we want to catch bad guys and make citizens safer, but almost everything we get to do is reactive, not proactive. So when someone comes to you and goes, Hey, I'd like to solve my problem, usually you're going to find that's pretty helpful.
Austin Davis (10:10):
The next thing is we have to decide if somebody is going to rent, buy or build. Now, right now you're renting and what I like about renting is if your neighbors turn out to be cartel members or just drunken idiots or people who really love the base in their stereo, it's very easy to move. The bad part about renting when we make these decisions though is it's very hard for you to make leasehold improvements to doors, windows, things to make you safer. If you buy, you walk into this with one fixed thing and you can look and say, okay, the back door needs to be changed and the windows and you kind of know if you build, you get to start from a blank slate and go, Hey guys, when you put the frame in, I want six inch screws around everything to secure it in. You can go there. Y'all made the decision on whether you want to buy or build in this process. Yet
Casey (11:02):
We have. So we originally, just to give you some history, a few weeks ago we put an offer on a house. So we were fully set on buying a house, so it was kind of the dream home scenario with a pool and a shed and the home and the two acre plus property. And so we put an offer on a house and unfortunately we didn't win the bid on that. There were a couple of other offers that had also come in. So we actually are talking with the homeowner right now who happens to be a builder. And so obviously we're vetting some other builders as well, but we're like, we really liked your house. How can you make this happen on a couple of the lots that we have in mind? So we actually are going up there tomorrow to talk with the builder, talk with another builder or two and vet the land. But we've identified two or three properties that we really just like. One is in a gated, they're all in, even though I say rural, they're all in communities, so they're all in a gated kind of subdivision and the other one is not gated. And so there are kind of some things that we're thinking about back and forth on that. But to answer your question, we're 90% certain at this point that we are going to be building.
Austin Davis (12:11):
Okay, great. When we get down to the intimate part, we'll discuss about what we're going to look for in Windows, window direction, construction of the doors and because when it comes time for those upgrades, they can be kind of expensive and we're going to kind of run through that. Let's talk about the gated and not gated community thing. The full disclosure. I live in a gated community even more. Full disclosure, I live in an over 55 community, so basically the reason I picked a gated over 55 community is anyone in my neighborhood under 55 walking down the street, not pushing a lawnmower, is going to get jacked up by our security people. Makes sense. And even better, all my neighbors are not very mobile, so if some bad guys chase us, all I got to do is outrun my neighbor. I don't have to worry about outrunning the bad guy. So there's some real to that.
Austin Davis (12:57):
The problem with the gated community though is it can be kind of intimidating sometimes for some of our guests if we throw a party, a rave, whatever, coming through the guard gate, sometimes they don't feel real comfortable and I've had some people kind of have issues about that, but what I really like though is I think the bad guys coming through have a real problem with it as well. They have to stop at a gate. Someone says hi, there's camera readers that read their license plate, takes a picture of everything in their, automatically sends 'em on through. This community has gone since the eighties. We have only had one death and that was in like 93 and that was a murder suicide with an elderly couple who was in hospice and it was kind of an unusual situation, but we don't have car break-ins here.
Austin Davis (13:39):
We don't have Catholic converter theft. The problem with the gated community though is before you make that commitment, a couple things. Number one, check to see what your fees are. I'm kind of shocked by pay every month just to have that guy do this, have the securities team protect us, but second off the homeowner's association can be a good thing or a bad thing for you. I'm a big fan of a strong homeowners association because I'm a big fan of the broken window theory that the minute you start letting somebody lift their lawn, go put a crappy beat up car down there, I think it sends a message to everybody that all things are there. The problem is you have a really strong homeowner association and you paint your door purple and they come down on you. You and your husband will be looking at each other evil over dinner going, I hate these people.
Austin Davis (14:19):
I want that purple door so bad. Yeah, before you move in though, one thing you might want to do though is go talk to somebody in the homeowner's association to ask them what the situation is and look for the trends on what's going on. What I'm finding right now is some of the people I'm talking to in different parts of the country, their neighborhoods are going through real transitions. So you may have an neighborhood that's going in ascension where things are getting better and the gated community you're in might be okay, but around it might be a transitional space where this is all going down, the home values are going down, down. We also have to be very careful because a lot of the place I patrol, the city I patrol had some real problems because they had a huge flood after Hurricane Harvey and it changed the whole dynamics of the city.
Austin Davis (15:01):
Some of the properties got wiped out, some of 'em got sort of marginally rebuilt and our tax base is down still from that and the city is in kind of one of these declines. The city that we moved into though is without a doubt on one of these inclines. So kind of take a big look there. Next thing is when we're looking at the big public area is start to kind of think, okay, when I live in my home, I have to go out to grocery store, I have to go to parks, I have to go these other places. I'm like you to kind do a tour of those. But if you go to the grocery store, you may go in the daytime and go, well, this is great, the parking lot's not too sketchy. Cruise by that bad boy at about 9 30, 10 o'clock at night and see what you got.
Austin Davis (15:38):
Yeah, that's a really good point. Don't be afraid of things like dry cleaners, banks, all those other things. Also, when you check out that in the daytime and nighttime, don't just check out the front drive around the back of the building. Do you have graffiti? Do you have tagging all over the place? That tells me an awful, awful lot about what's going on in the community that may or may not be as obvious from the front. So it kind of goes back to my broken theories. If I owned a bank or a shopping center or whatever, if they're tagging the back, I'm spray painting over that every day letting 'em know you don't own this back property and on there and of course finally get online and do your due diligence on what the crime trends are there. Then what's not going on. Once you figure that out and you decide we're going to go to the gated community, not gated community, and you pick your property.
Austin Davis (16:22):
Now the big question is neighbors. Now, I dunno if you ever saw the family safety episode we did on Concealed Col University, but I did a whole section on neighbors. I think neighbors are either the greatest asset you can possibly have to improving the quality of your life or they will make you nuts. I noticed the police officer because I get these calls all the time and these are normal, rational, loving people who when I get there are literally insane because that neighbor, the crazy neighbor, has pushed their buttons so hard and I know that they're at their limits because the minute I get out of the patrol car, they're rushing up trying to explain to me the last two years and under two minutes and to kill him, go kill him. You got a gun, go do it. If you won't give me your gun, I'll kill it.
Austin Davis (17:06):
Oh no, it's nuts. We had somebody the other day, they were throwing chicken at each other. I don't mean live leftover, it was just when you get there it's just like, and what happens is you need to break your neighbors down to three things. Good neighbors, bad neighbors, unknown. Here's the problem, you move in, you meet your neighbor, one neighbor's, Mrs. Johnson, single widowed woman, just charming, loves your kids, loves you looking on the other side and it's like the perfect nuclear family and you go, oh, these are great people. I love them, they love me and it's great. Next thing you know, Mrs. Johnson moves into a home, new family shows up, you now have another set of neighbors. So you just might want to think when you're looking at your neighbor's situation, whether you have existing problems with neighbors, but also is there some way to separate them out from so that you could say, you know what, we have a good fence here.
Austin Davis (17:51):
So even if things go sour, we have a nice privacy fence between me and them, but sometimes you have to share a driveway or share a common area or some sort of property boundary line that could cause a problem. So something to kind of think about if you're having a two acre place on this, you can probably put some sort of fence. But then this goes back to before you get there, make sure you do your due diligence with your homeowner association, what kind of fence you can put, what kind of fence you can't put and what you have to do to maintain that fence line and where the public property is.
Casey (18:22):
Yep, makes sense. Understood.
Austin Davis (18:24):
Yeah, lemme see if anything else here. Graffiti hunt, I think I got pretty much that. Now let's talk about the good stuff, the intimate areas, the house, the part we all want to talk about. I'm going to give you an acronym. It's called sep ted Crime Prevention through Environmental Design. Now, I went through an 80 hour course, which made me a sted guy so I can do residential and commercial crime prevention surveys, but I'm going to give you the simple version. Home is the one place where you should be safer on your property and bad people and uninvited guests should feel less safe. So that's how we look at it. So when you are dealing with a piece of property that is two acres, which I think is a really cool size, that enough to get a horse,
Casey (19:11):
I don't know my husband would want a horse. I'm not a big fan of that idea, but
Austin Davis (19:17):
The difference to get a really tiny horse. So he gets
Casey (19:20):
This horse, I'm miniature pony, I want a goat. I think goats are so cute, but I don't know, don't put that horse bug in his ear. He'll be like, okay, that's our next purchase after we close on the home.
Austin Davis (19:34):
I'm working on the goat thing. I kind of like it, sage it from having a long crew, so I'm kind of there. The first thing is I want you to break your home down into public space, private space, intimate space, public places are those places you cannot control but that will affect you in your intimate space. And you had a really good example I think where you talked about I have an alley and I'm on a major street. So that public space you have no control over, but it controls a lot of your safety and a lot of your foot traffic. Before my mom moved into assisted living, she lived in kind of a standard suburbian Houston neighborhood. What's interesting is if you did your survey and you drove through her whole little niche of community, you would notice all the houses on the ends all have burglar bars all over everything because people would drive down that main street, see those houses visually break into 'em, but if you went into the street which are kind of dead ends, those houses back there didn't have burglar bars.
Austin Davis (20:28):
That's just sort of an example of how that flow can sometimes bite you. And I think you recognize that in your current home. So you just might want to think about what kind of streets you have, what kind of access you have, whether they're dead in streets or not, and decide that under your factor. Next thing is you want to start thinking when you build your house, how much of a buffer area or curtilage do you have between where the public ability to enter your property or should be on your property to your front door. Start thinking about that, especially with three boys because you want to get them all the room to run, go play and explore, but have some way to delineate that boundary so that not only they don't go past that boundary, but people hopefully don't come in that boundary and with that clear delineation, whether that's a fence, signage, some sort of foliage or whatever, that you can identify that boys, you don't go past here, but also if you look out, you go somebody's in that space.
Austin Davis (21:17):
Then the problem with the private space is it's not an intimate space. So people sort of have a reason to be there. Think of somebody coming up to knock on your door to try to solicit you something or what are your neighbors walking over and to figure out that buffer by design beforehand might help. But again, this goes back to also making sure you check the homeowner association so we know upfront what we can and cannot do. And the community I'm at fencing is some sort of religious thing apparently because there's certain kind of boards you can have, they can't be too hot, they can't be too far apart. God help you if one comes loose because you literally get a letter on 'em thinking who's looking for loose bores?
Austin Davis (21:53):
Next thing is think about windows. Windows are interesting because you need windows to look out to watch the young ones while they're there. But also a lot of times when we think about these designs, large open picture windows means people if there's visual access to the public space can look in. Therefore you live behind these sort of wall of curtains which sort of defeats the whole thing. So you might want to think about that from either a design standpoint or a landscaping standpoint and kind of think about that from visual aspect. Also, try to think about how you're going to receive normal visitors, in my case, a normal visitors, a UPS guy or an Amazon delivery person, or maybe in your case it's a DoorDash or whatever, how are those people going to come in because we can secure that little space we talked about for the kids to play.
Austin Davis (22:37):
But if you think about it, there's going to have to be some sort of public access for people to drop off packages and that's always going to be a compromise in your case with that much land, you may say, okay, the front part of my house with front facing access, that's a public space, but I'm going to fence off the backyard for the boys of playing. And that's an intimate space. No one comes in, no one delivers. Boys don't go past this. No one comes in. And if you do see some in that intimate space that you marked off, then you have a whole different pre decide decision making process which you can go right to and save yourself some grief. Now, when it comes time to start thinking about the layout of the house, think about doors, windows, and also about the layout of the home from how you want to protect them.
Austin Davis (23:18):
The really cool thing about doors is an unlocked doors and open invitation, all kinds of trouble, a really crummy door's, even worse, the problem with doors is they've become so expensive. If you're renting, you're not going to put a new door on it. If you already buy a house, it's got a great door, fantastic. The odds of that are pretty low. If you're building, please budget into this good steel door with a solid foam core or a solid wood door. But also I would say, guys, I want my door that remember how we talked about that area where we sort of have to have people come in, whether it's DoorDash, whether it's Amazon or whatnot. Let's make that thing a steel door with a steel door frame and there's ways we can make it more aesthetically pleasing, but when you close that thing and hear that clunk and you throw the lock that's got the big throw into that bolt and you know that steel frame is mounted in there, you are going to sleep better than if you took a fist full of melatonin.
Austin Davis (24:10):
It is an absolute wonderful thing. Next thing is decide whether you want some sort of glass for a visual looking out or pee polls, but spend a lot of time, Hey, you want the front door, the back door is a different creature. A lot of people don't spend time thinking about their back door. And if I go to a lot of homes you go, wow, you have really great front door, but you know the back of the house, it's a French door or the door's a series of panes of glass. But if somebody hops that privacy into the intimate layer, they have all day long to smash into that. So think about front door, back door, think about attached or detached garage. I personally love an attached garage because to me when I drive in, that's still a transitional space. Remember, a transitional space is someplace between a safe place and another safe place until I get the garage door down and if I have attached garage, I'm now in a secure place on our transitional space.
Austin Davis (24:59):
But when you have three kids, you're trying to load 'em, you're trying to unload, you try to have groceries, all this in a place you have to get on through. It doesn't take long on the internet to find all kinds of people who follow you at home and then come in and that is a real weakness. And somebody who raised a young lady, I understand what it's like when the kid's screaming and you're trying to do the groceries and there's a million things going on. So think about how to control that chaos with another door, not the front, the back, but the garage door. And then also remember, even if it's attached garage, we want to have a really substantial door between the garage door and the outside because your kids are going to be coming and going all day long and we have the cheesy lock on most of those homes and beef up on that.
Casey (25:39):
So in a perfect world, what you're saying is you would recommend that still frame door for every door that faces outside. Yes.
Austin Davis (25:46):
Let me tell you, nobody after home invasion says, wow, I paid too much money to keep that person from kicking in my door. And it's just one of those things that it's going to add some upfront cost to put it in, but it's one of those things that you ever drive a car with a really high safety rating and it's like say you're in a Volvo and you think, man, I paid a lot of money for this Volvo, but one day you and the kids are on a really rainy, icy road and you go, thank God I paid the extra money for my Volvo. The door is the exact same thing. Also, when it comes to doors, we want a good front door, we want a good back door. Do we want a good garage door? I mean the big garage door that goes up and comes down, Hey, garage door, attach, let's talk about the windows.
Austin Davis (26:28):
Now the problem with windows is if you pin 'em shut, screw 'em shut, burglar bar, storm windows, all that stuff is great, keeping the bad guys out, but also it becomes a real issue keeping you in case of a fire, the odds of you having home invasion are somewhat, but the odds of you being in a fire emergency are pretty darn high. So when you think about how you're going to secure those windows in our home, we use storm windows that have very positive latches on both sides, but no keys, no locks, no anything. So if we have to, it's easy enough to get out and I say easy enough to get out. I'm 60 years old, I'm going to have to hold the hands for my wife to get her out. I'm going to have to get my walker out so I'm just die in my office.
Austin Davis (27:07):
Think about that from a safety because fire is a real issue. Shout out to all my fire first responder buddies. So think about the windows when you do that. If you buy an existing home, a set of building we did and we had single pane glasses which were security risk and just an efficiency nightmare, and the cost of adding that thing up was shocking. I had no idea what it cost to put in serious windows. So if you're building, you have to budget for it or whatnot. If you're buying into an existing home and you have to replace and that's going to be tough, but I'm telling you, good door, good windows makes you sleep a whole lot better. Next thing, think about the layout of the house. The house you lived in before here was a three story kind of one of those sort of narrow city sort of shotgun things.
Austin Davis (27:53):
And there was two bedrooms on the top living room in the middle and the bottom one had a bedroom, which would be great. If you have kids that are rambunctious, put 'em on the bottom. The problem you have is the alarm goes off in the middle of the night, we hear glass breaking. You've got to come down three flights of stairs to go grab the kids. Also, if you're thinking about two story, you get more house for the money. I got that, but I have to raise a small child once in a two story house. And the latter thing was really, really tough. Two story though is beneficial if you can find a design where everybody's on the top floor because now defending the home is a beautiful thing. You hear glass breaking, whatever, you just go to the head of the stairwell, you get off in a nice, you can see this in our concealed coalition university Safer Angles episode. You get yourself in a nice secure place where you can watch the kids and anybody comes up the stairwell, they're entering what's called a fatal funnel and you can really protect 'em. So if you do go two stories, there's some downside if you have a floor separating you from the kids, but if all the kids on the same floor, it makes you just a whole lot easier. How to raise small children with stairwells though, especially small boys.
Casey (28:58):
Yeah, we currently live in a two story home, so we are looking forward to one story. I will say,
Austin Davis (29:06):
I think you get more home in a two story, but boy, it's a ooh, I can't imagine. And again, you have to understand the reason I keep referring even though one of yours is an infant, the boys is because my brother and I, my parents called us the boys even though we're now in our sixties, my mother who's still alive, still
Casey (29:20):
The boys, still boys.
Austin Davis (29:21):
And I just find it a heartwarming thing, but also it explains everything in the first, I'd like to say 12 years of our life, but it's really closer to the first 35 years of our life that hey, we got a piece of cardboard, let's go to the top of the stairs and make it toboggan out of it. And of course the older brothers telling the younger brother, you ought to go first. You can see how this works. So when you think about the layout, think about the glass breaking in the middle of the night, kind of how we're going to handle that. So basically let's just kind of put a big bow in this thing and see if have any questions. One is a public thing. We have to look at the big sort of meta picture with the community day and night where you're going to go to normally whether or not you want people traveling to and from you, how far you are away from that responder if you're in a rural area when you go 9 1 1, how defensible can you make your property with good barriers that don't offend the Homeowner Association?
Austin Davis (30:14):
Strong Homeowner Association can help you, but it also hurts you if you decide you want certain things when it comes time to whether you're going to buy or build the strongest stores, the strongest windows, and we could spend a whole two hours on just electronic protection. The electronic protection though for you is the kids are coming in and out of the house all day. If you put a door chime on, you'll be losing your mind in about 30 minutes.
Casey (30:38):
I grew up with the door chime constantly. We just kind of lost track of it after a while. It was just kind of like we're so used to it, we're immune to it at that point.
Austin Davis (30:47):
And then the intimate spaces think about the best way to harden this that people can't get in. And if you do have the proverbial bump in the night or glass break where the layout is of the house, that makes it beneficial for you to get to the kids, to get between the kids and whatever the thread is, and gosh, help the person who tries to come between you and where you're standing your ground in the sort of Alamo position. Any other questions or thoughts that you have that I didn't cover or that we need to discuss in greater detail about New Casa?
Casey (31:16):
This is a lot to take in. I am so grateful for this conversation because I cannot wait to share with my husband everything I just learned. I didn't think, for instance, about going to speak with the people at the police station. That just never crossed my mind. And so just kind of wrapping my head around all of this, the one thing that I have a question about, and I feel like a lot of homeowners do look into this, but what's our next step is if we look at a sex offender registry, for instance, online, how do we interpret the data? Obviously if you're moving into a neighborhood where there's a few markers, you may want to look for another neighborhood, but how much do you buy into what you're seeing on the national or state sex offender registry? What is your experience with that?
Austin Davis (32:03):
Oh, this is a question that this is a question because SEAL Coalition family might not like for me. I'm glad you brought it up. I wouldn't have,
Casey (32:12):
Sorry if it's
Austin Davis (32:13):
No, no, no. This is an important question and it's something that I would normally have a hard time addressing. I do think that it is proper due diligence to see who's a race sex offender in your community. And I think it's also due diligence to say kids when we're going trick or treat and we're not going to that house there or that house there. What concerns me is people seem to think that all sex offenders are registered sex offenders and the ones who are registered are the most dangerous problems we have. My guess is those registered sex offenders that was not their first victim that they got popped forward and put on a registry. And I think there's a larger number of potential predators in your neighborhood than on that registry. And just because they're not on the registry doesn't mean they are vetted. Now, having said that, crime happens in motive meets opportunity, so the chance of them getting access to your kid, especially if we really define our private, our intimate spaces are probably limited.
Austin Davis (33:11):
I'm really concerned about sexual predators when we talk about people who teach my kids music, people are my kids' coaches, people are my kids', Scoutmasters relatives who've seen, let's just go down that path and you know where I'm going. So I'm protective of that issue far past that. So does checking for racial sex offenders, is that due diligence? Yes. Does that mean that we've vetted those people in the rest of people in our neighborhood? No. They are still suspect to me and usually I'm the guy who's telling you, look, 99.9% of people are all wonderful. That stuff all ends where we talk about small children cannot protect themselves because this is my one job in my life is to get this kid on this planet and get this kid to an age of confidence and out of my house, wonderful life. I can jack up on candy and caffeine and send 'em back to you.
Austin Davis (33:59):
But this is a good question, but do your due diligence and find out, I don't know that I'd want to live next to a registered sex offender, but by the same token, I'm not sure that's any guarantee that the person I'm living next to is not possibly sex offender if they had the access and the privacy time to hurt one of the boys. So very true, very true. That is probably not the answer that makes people feel happy, but it is what my heart tells me, which really interesting. Appreciate that in I'm a lieutenant in a small police department and in this small town that we're responsible for, it is amazing proportionately the number of inappropriate child contacts by adult we have here, and I'm sort of like a big city cop who has a certain beat and if in that certain small part, the numbers of this are incredible and we only have one registered sex offender in my community, but we have people who are right now under charges for this, for their kids and neighbor's, kids, sleepovers, kids. It is horrifying.
Austin Davis (35:02):
It is hard to even put a proper adjective onto it. So yeah, so my whole deal with that is we have to limit custody of that. And again, if you haven't seen or you haven't seen in a while, the Concealed Coalition family safety episode, we dive really deep into that about how to vet the people we leave our kids behind with how to have a plan to make sure that we have enough people in our lives so that when you do have that situation where your mother or your husband's father is sick and you've got to run off and the kids, you need to have a backup plan to who you can leave these kids with safely. The kids also need to know that if something happens in the house, which neighbors have been vetted, they can go and go, look, if something ever happens and I'm not here, Mrs. Johnson is good, go to Mrs. Johnson.
Casey (35:43):
Go to Mrs. Johnson. Makes sense.
Austin Davis (35:44):
Mrs. Jones, no bueno, but Ms. Johnson, it kind of run that drill.
Casey (35:49):
Yeah, makes sense. Thank you so much for answering that. That was really the only other question that I had. I just thought this was, and I'm sorry you originally were not too excited about this, but it is very relevant to my family and I feel like with interest rates maybe coming down, who knows what's going to happen, but if that's a potential, there might be people, especially with it being spring, moving into summer as well, I feel like more people are going to be in my situation where we're looking to either buy or build or even rent, but essentially moving to a new space. And so I think this is going to be really relevant to a lot of people. So thank you so much for this.
Austin Davis (36:24):
Thanks for thinking of the topic. And the problem is it's not that it's not a great topic. When I first heard about it, I thought, sure, I'll do that and no problem. But the problem is I've been doing this for 32 years. I've given over 5,000 crime prevention speeches, and if y'all have never seen my laughing at danger of my standup comedy meets street proven survival, come see it. And it's just all this processes automatically in my head. And I started thinking, oh my gosh. I went through every one of these steps when I bought my house and put my family in this house, I went, oh my gosh, she's a genius. This is one of those discreet skill sets. Remember, we are as safe or as less safe as we are with as many of these old discrete skill sets as we have mastered.
Austin Davis (37:01):
And it's like gunshot wound safety. If there's ever some sort of defensive gun use than some of the house gets shot, you're not going to get an EMT there in time. Knowing how to patch a bullet wound, that's discrete skillset that can be very helpful. Just knowing how to look at a doorway is an open invitation, all kinds of trouble. And especially if it's weak, an open invitation, all kinds of trouble. Now you have an appreciation that, hey man, we need a solid door on here. That's its own little discreet skillset. So hopefully you picked up some of these things. I hope you start sharing more pictures. I hope we can put some pictures of the boys here and I am so envious because you have no quiet moments in your home and that is such an incredible blessing. Just the whole rightness of it.
Austin Davis (37:41):
And it's so funny, I dunno if we have time for this real quick story. I'm like, I don't know, 45, 50 years old. My dad calls me and he says, we got to have lunch. I'm like, okay. So we have lunch, we sit down at the table and he reaches pocket, pulls a piece of paper, he hands it to me. I said, what's this? It says, mom's birthday, dad's birthday. Austin's birthday, Don's birthday. Thanksgiving, Christmas. Father's Day. Mother's Day. So all these holidays, I go, what's the list? He goes, that's the only time we get to see you and your brother. I'm thinking about going Big Brothers Big Sister gave me a kid. I'm like going, you need to take this list to other adults and go, man, that's the only time I see my kids. That's a lot. I need to renegotiate this. I need less time. But the whole point was he misses the days where you had a pack of boys in the house and there was chaos and calamity and he's told me I didn't know how good it was. The other days when we make so much noise to drive me crazy,
Casey (38:30):
Don't make me emotional on this webinar, I might start, it's true. I might shut its tear.
Austin Davis (38:36):
It is so amazing and I hope you soak up and enjoy every moment with the boys and I hope they push your buttons all the time. Not only push your buttons, learn to play you like a piano. It is just
Casey (38:45):
A horrible, what is that saying? The days are long, but the years are short. So I know before too long in the blink of an eye, they'll be grown up. So the number one priority for me and my husband right now is just making sure that we protect them and raise them right and keep them safe and keep them well.
Austin Davis (39:00):
And I think you're on a great thing. You have my contact number. Please feel free to call me if you have any questions through this. Also conceal Coalition family. We can put the number up that you can text me if you're going through the same issue and you have some sort of question, please. I love answering these questions. Go ahead and text us and I'm sure Casey, we can find some way to put the number on here for them to contact us. Fantastic guys. In closing, I'll put kind of a bow on it. Thank you for your time. I hope this was kind of helpful to you. Again, if you have any additional questions for this, text me. We'll put the number on the screen. If you are a Concealed Coalition University member, please go to our home safety episode and our family safety episode. Probably situational awareness will also come in kind handy for those three episodes especially. We kind of work on this. If you'd ever like to see me live, do my standup comedy routine, which teaches street safety called Laughing at Danger, please text us and let us know and we'll come out to your business group. Or if there's enough requests from someplace, we'll send me on out there. But as always, no matter how the world changes and it gets crazy, just don't forget, be a guardian always and a warrior when needed.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsTSokcalcI
Credit: Concealed Coalition
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