heah falmey :)

You should get a driveway alarm. My Uncle has one, it chimes when people come down the driveway.
There's different kinds...

Here is a link that might be useful: alarms

Depends who is on duty! LOL For the most part, it wouldn't take more than 3 minutes for one of the guys to get here.

Is there anyway you can put up a fence on your drive? I would sure be trying to figure that one out if was living there.

I grew up on a farm, we had 2 drives...so it was really easy for people to come up one drive and drive through the yard to the other drive. I never worried too much about those tho....it had to be people that knew about the drive through.

Police response time to my house would probably be 15-30 minutes, depending on where in the county an available officer was. And that's really too long if you are in a bad position.

Flamey, have you considered putting a gate at your entrance? My DS and DIL have a gate that must be opened with a remote or enter the code in the keypad by the gate. When they plan to have people in and out they just leave the gate open.

Oh, I'd have to say-pending the 3 traffic lights between us..probably 3 to 5 minutes.

We're in the country here, too. When DH fell off the ladder during our build, it probably took about 5 minutes for rescue personnel and the sheriff to get here. That would be about 4.5 minutes too long if someone was trying to break in. Having a loaded weapon here "evens the playing field."

Once again, benefits of a small town and country living, only 5 minutes.

Patrol Cars come by once are twice a day even though we are 6 miles outside of town. I'm surprised, but I guess it is because of all the new homes being built out here. There is a lot of expensive equipment at these construction sites.

Gayle

Oh, forgot to mention, we have a driveway alert system, got it a few months ago. The first one has already died and been replaced by a better one, but due to the hills and curves in our own drive, it only gives us about a 40 seconds heads-up warning. Just enough time to pull on pants! lol And we have a gate at the highway, but unless we lock it, it's pointless. We only lock it during Blue's Fest, because there are so many peeps around then that apparently need a bathroom and aren't willing to wait. Our driveway really isn't their bathroom, contrary to what they might think. Ick.

Hiya, Nik-Nak. Long time, no see.

We get pretty fast medical response around here, there are a lot of EMT's and First Responders on the volunteer FD. I'm set if I get hurt, Woody's an EMT. Assuming he's home, of course. lol

Less than 5 minutes here...a TX State Trooper (Captain) who lives just down the road one way & a Deputy Sheriff the other way, but keep a double barrel shotgun by the door as well as a pistol on a nearby high shelf. Back in the 80's in Houston, I waited 45 minutes one night- had 4 teen boys spread eagle on a wall!
Suzi

I'm just a mile from the police station, and the response time is really fast...2-3 minutes, because they do have cars on patrol 2/7.
So...I'm confident about them.

I think the sheriff department could be here in about 5 to 7 minutes. Depending on what I needed them for though that could be 5 to 7 minutes too late.

Since we no longer live in the country I think response time would be very swift. I've called an ambulance twice for Bob and they were here almost by the time I hung up the phone, but the last time they passed right by us. I had to flag them down.
When we lived in a rural our conditions were a lot like yours. Twice we had late night visitors and both times Bob answered the door with a pistol in his hand. One was to report an automobile accident in front of our house and one was because of a broken down car. That young man asked if we had a cordless phone to use on the porch. He didn't want to come in. He told Bob he understood why he had a gun, but it made him nervous. We couldn't see the highway from our house so we didn't know if there was a car there or not. We also had two German Shepherds that discouraged strangers from visiting.

Linda

I've had to call them twice. Both times because someone was shooting in the woods and the bullets whizzed past my head.
One time it was an hour and a half to get them out here, and the other time it was an hour and forty five minutes, and yes, that definitely figures into me having guns.

I keep a pistol near my bed. I am here, alone, most of the time. I live at the end of a very long driveway, dead end road, no near neighbors, on a bayou in the woods, and about 15 miles from a small town, which wouldn't have jurisdiction out here anyway. I have to wait for a county sheriff, and only if there is one nearby, would one get here in any kind of a timely manner.

I have had problems with people in the bayou, coming up to my dock at night, no lights on their boat. You can bet your bottom dollar that when anyone comes around here...my pistol is nearby. I don't want to have to depend on running out there and hitting them over the head with a frying pan.

I have a dog that is trained to bark only when a dog or another human comes on the place....so he isn't barking all the time at wildlife...when he barks, I know to listen.

I love living here. But anyone who plans to come see me, knows they had better let me know in advance.

We are many miles from town, too, but on a State highway. Probably 20-30 minutes away from a sherrif's deputy. We have ready access to a shotgun and rifle but have never had to use them. In three years, we've had only three unknown callers. All were car breakdowns and easily helped. Two I drove to the nearby convenience store, and the other I gave our portable phone to call for help.

We're about 1/2 mile from a fire station, so that would be fast. We're inside the loop in Tyler and very close to the hospitals and Jr. College, so I think police response would be fast since those are high traffic areas. Thank goodness we've never had to call the cops! DD#1 next door has had her burgular alarm go off and they were fast on that.

We live about 5 minutes from the county sheriff's office. We have called them 2 times in the 2 years we have lived out here. Don't think we will ever feel safe living out here. Both of us have always lived in a neighborhood. We came home one night to find a strange car in our driveway. The car drove in the yard to get around our car. We called the sheriff, he sent a deputy who checked every inch of the house. Several months later we were on the deck in the back yard when 4 young males walked up. They said they wanted to test our water. We had to call the sheriff before they would leave. We now have a remote gate and haven't had any unwanted visitors.

We are in the county and also have to wait on the sheriff. We love the rural area so much, but lately have been thinking we need to move into town, I just get too scared out here by myself when DH is gone. Kathy

I live in a major metro area.

Depending on the situation, response times can range from less than 5 minuts to over an hour.

My Mother lives in a rural area.

Most nights there is one officer for over 400 square miles.

Some nights police coverage is provided by the state police, normally a single patrol officer, who is responsible for covering nearly 1,000 square miles over three counties.

If the officer is on the other end of the county, at least the 911 operator can listen to your screams...

I would say about 3 minutes, maybe less. A patrol car drives by here at least once a day. I am just 4 blocks from the hospital and there usually is a police car there. When I worked at the hospital and we called the police, they were there before we hung up the phone. It takes me about 3 minutes to drive to the police station.

Probably pretty good. I even have two cops who live on my street, not that they would respond, but I feel pretty safe here. Not so when we lived down south, up on a mountain. The ex used to be gone all day working, before the crack of dawn and then would go over to his family's house before coming home, late at night sometimes. I was home alone alot and we used to have people drive out our dirt road all the way up to the house. Once some guy pulled up and stopped in my driveway and sat there for probably 15 minutes. It was scary with two small kids at home.

Sometimes at night I would hear noises outside and the ex had a step brother who gave me the creeps. I always wondered if it was him.

When I lived in Germany in a little town about 20-40 minutes away from the base(can't remember how far it was now), some guy woke me up at 2 am by tapping on my rollatins that cover the windows. He was talking and tapping and whistling. Scared the crap out of me. I had no idea who he was. I walked, in the dark through the house to the front door and I could see him through the glass door. Like he was following me. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and locked myself in my livingroom, pushed the furniture in front of both doors and called the base police. It seemed like it took them forever to get there. It was scary, especially after the operator asked me if he was in the house yet!!!! I guess up until that time I really didn't believe he could get in. I had rollatins on all the windows...glass door but it was heavy and would take quite a bit to break it down. The cops found him in a car on the street, drunk. Have no idea who he was or why he was there.

The last time I had to call thecops was about 5 years ago. We're only 3-1/2 miles outside of town, and this is a small housing area altho we all have a little bit of acreage (1 - 3 acre lots).

Anyway, it took close to 20 minutes for the sheriff's deputy to get here, he got turned around. It didn't give me a warm fuzzy, the guy across the street was screaming drunk and trying to bash another guy with a wooden pole. They'd work their fight out to the street and then get distracted by our barking dogs, and one was talking about jumping the fence to "shut the d@mned dogs up". DH was waiting with the shotgun if they had tried that, but they were actually more intent on bashing each other.

This is a huge county which includes a large metropolitan area - our police department and sheriff's department are combined which means I don't trust that help would get here quickly enough to do us any good.

Is that the reason we have guns in the house? No.

But am I glad we do? Yep.

Motto for 911...

"Responding in minutes when seconds count."

We live only a block from the neighborhood business district so a foot or bike patrol officer can be here in 2-3 minutes. If they're not on duty it could take 10 minutes, or an hour, or never, depending on the situation.

I am in a burb outside of Fort Worth, which is a big city. I have never waited more than 10 minutes for the police to show up. I think I have only called 3-4 times in the 24 years I have lived here.
One time, I had one of the neighborhood girls living here for the summer prior to going to college. She had a boyfriend that was not happy she was leaving to go to school. He was smashed, and started ringing our doorbell insisting on talking to her. We told him no. She was asleep for the night. He continued ringing every half hour or so for a couple of hours, and I was getting mad. I called the police, and the dispatch was kind enough to let me know that the police in the area were working a bad car accident on the highway, and would be over as soon as it was cleared up. I told them my problem could wait for sure.
They came about 30 minutes later, and asked me to continue answering the door, prolong his stay on my porch and call them back. We tried to do this two different times and he would always hide before they showed up. The police, bless their hearts, hid out on the porch of a vacant house across the street for quite some time before he rang the bell again. They tackled him, and hauled him off.
I really feel safe in this neighborhood, always have.

Trin