Join us for a compelling session on Fix-It Radio as we navigate the emotional waters of a family tragedy and its profound lessons on security and safety. Our candid conversation starts with a heartfelt recount of a double homicide that struck close to home. We explore the psychological impact of such events and delve into practical strategies to safeguard our homes—from advanced surveillance systems to basic precautionary measures that can deter unforeseen threats. This episode is a somber reminder of the reality we face and a call to action for all of us to rethink our security preparedness.
SPEAKER 04 :
Walter? Upstairs! Are you all right?
SPEAKER 03 :
In the floor behind the chair.
SPEAKER 11 :
This is America.
SPEAKER 02 :
Does everybody know what time it is? Fix It Radio.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right, and it is Fix-It Radio, KLZ 560. That’s a live program. I’m live today. I got back from vacation late last night. Appreciate Andy and everybody filling in while I was gone, and I appreciate that very much. Larry Unger with me this morning. Larry, good morning. Good morning, John. And it’s a beautiful day here in Colorado. It might not be this way on Tuesday, by the way, when you hear this show the second time or the encore edition on Tuesday. It might be a little bit of different weather then, so if it’s a little different outside, you’ll know why. Charlie Grimes, of course. our engineer and sensitive topic that I want to cover today in light of some things that have happened in our family. We’ve talked about security on this program before, and we’ve talked about it you know really kind of from a a maybe thousand foot level and we talk about different things that you should be looking at and doing and so on but some of you may have seen uh some of the news of late where there was a couple or up in the thornton area that there was a fire and a murder, and originally they didn’t quite know exactly what all had happened, and since then have learned that that was a double homicide, and yes, there was a fire, and the connection to me is those are my cousins. So that hits really close to home. As a family, we’re still trying to figure out what all happened. And we have really no idea. We’re all just really trying to figure out exactly what could have caused this. And you never know. And I don’t want to get into a lot of the details. What I will say, though, is if you go read that story, it’s on all the news stations. and you know anything about anything along those lines, you saw anything, you were in the area, you may have seen something that didn’t look quite right, please let the Thornton Police Department know. Get in contact with them. That would help us out as a family right now. They’re, to my knowledge, are no real… Suspects, they don’t know exactly what all happened and why. Well, they know what happened, but they don’t know why. I will tell you that this isn’t going to come out in the news, but I’ll just tell you this. It was not some sort of a botched robbery gone wrong, anything along those lines. That is not what happened, no matter what anybody else out there might say or what even some of the Facebook postings and things would say. I can tell you firsthand it was not a botched robbery. It was a… Definitely some sort of a, you know, let’s go murder these two individuals. We don’t know how many people were involved. My point with the security thing is, and this is not to point blame because I’m not doing that, but it’s a reminder. In fact, it’s a reminder to me I’m going to make some changes in my own sides of things with my own home. I think I will do the same thing. So I’m learning through this as well. So this is not to be critical to anybody at all. And if I have family members listening, this is not by any means to be critical. It’s more of let’s be safer, all of us, you guys, even as my listening audience, let’s be safer. And there are now so many tools available to help us be. And in this particular case, had some of the things that I’m going to mention today during this program been there, it might be a little bit different even for police trying to figure out what’s going on and so on. So number one, let’s just start with the outside of your home. and what does it i know we’ve talked about this in the past but what does it look like what’s the access look like if there’s somebody hiding trying to get in maybe you you know in this particular case they may have slipped out in the evening for just a few minutes somebody else may have slipped in which is most likely what happened unbeknownst to anybody in the home that that was going on so question is you know we talk a lot about cameras and things like that, and I’ll get into some of that, but let’s get down to some of the basics. When you know, when you leave, you have some sort of an automatic lock that you have to you know re-enter a code every time you want to get back in or is it a deadbolt situation that you have to use a key and because that’s kind of a pain you don’t use the key as often as you should so in a lot of cases you may leave that side door open thinking well you know no one’s going to come in this way anyway so why bother well We now have a severe example in my own family of things that happen when you don’t do these things. So it’s very important to analyze everything going on in your home security wise.
SPEAKER 13 :
We always pick and choose which areas of the house that we want to put a camera at. Most people have cameras at the front door. The front door is not necessarily the door that’s going to let people like this come in. So, yeah, what you’re talking about is putting a camera in access points to your house that are not visible from the street.
SPEAKER 05 :
yes because where a lot of times law enforcement will look at other ring and security cameras other people may have around your neighborhood and this is where by the way this is something to really think through in a lot of cases people get really uptight if a neighbor’s camera is looking at any part of their home and i get it depending upon the neighbor and what you may or may not want them to see i could see where that could be a little bit of an issue but there are times where that’s very beneficial
SPEAKER 13 :
Yes, it is.
SPEAKER 05 :
When you’re trying to figure out who may have hopped the fence and got in your backyard, for example, or having some of that footage available from nearby residents may not be such a bad thing after all. And again, I get it. Everybody’s different. Every home is a little different. And what I’m getting at here is, you know, number one, first things first, this is how I would do it. And this is, I’ve already done this to an extent with my own home, but I’m going to get more detailed on this after all of this has happened. Number one, draw out your house. You can go on Google Maps if you want and get a satellite image and hit print if you’d like. I mean, it’s as simple as that. And then start saying, okay, where are the areas around my home? If I were going to surveil my home and I was going to try to find a way to sneak in, where would that be? So, in other words, act like a nefarious individual. Act like a burglar. Act like somebody that would be out to do harm. Where would you be hiding around your property? And then let’s go into this and say, okay, how am I going to eliminate those areas, those blind spots? I mean, some of this, you know, it sounds like the movies, you know, where you see these bank robbers and others trying to talk about where the spots, you know, in the building that the camera can’t see and this, that, and the other, and we watch those with intrigue. well that’s real life because in a lot of cases unless you’ve got a really sophisticated security system you’re probably not going to have coverage everywhere but you need to do the best you can to at least cover in my opinion where are those access points to your home and how are you going to protect yourself against those
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, I know years back they used to tell us that you planted, like, rose bushes and things like that around your windows so people wouldn’t have access into the windows. It doesn’t cover the doors.
SPEAKER 05 :
True.
SPEAKER 13 :
So then you’ve got to find an alternative means to protect yourself. And like you were talking about, you know, deadbolts and things like that, yeah, they’re nice and fancy. Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
If you use them.
SPEAKER 13 :
If you use them, and they are cumbersome to use.
SPEAKER 05 :
Now, there are, though, and this is something where I’ve got these. We’ve got them in some of our businesses and so on. Some of you listening could very well have these as well. They make doors, by the way, door locks, I should say, keypad-type door locks where every time you close the door, unless you manually disengage the lock, which they all have that ability to do so you’re not putting the code in every time you go in and out, But they make a lot of locks to where after one second, you shut the door and about one second later, you can hear it lock. And it will do that automatically every single time you go through that door, meaning you’re putting the code in every time you want to go back in. So for some of you that have side garage doors, things like that, you may slip in and out of thinking, oh, nobody’s ever going to come in there. Those are those types of locks you may want to go ahead and put on to where, you know, just that double coverage, making sure that you’ve got things dialed in would be a good thing to do now some of you are probably thinking also well you know this is isolated you know you know why would this happen to me um you know what as a family right now we’re looking at it the exact same way i mean i’m telling you right now that that the two individuals my cousins I mean, I can’t think of a single reason why somebody would want to go do these things. I mean, these are, you know, church going, you know, average community, you know, better than average community members and so on. Both have jobs. I mean, you start rattling things through your brain trying to figure out what exactly happened. And believe me, we’re all doing the same thing you are thinking. Why us? Why them? Just like a lot of people out there think, oh, that’ll never happen to me. Will it?
SPEAKER 13 :
It does.
SPEAKER 05 :
Can you guarantee that?
SPEAKER 13 :
It does more commonly than we think, unfortunately.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, so point being, and I know we’ve talked about things like this in the past, and I don’t want to dwell on this just because of my own situation, but we as talk show hosts, we bring a lot of life experience in on a regular basis. Charlie always asks me when I come back from vacation, you know, what’s one of the things you learn from vacation i’ll talk about some of that on monday after i uh think about a few things i’ve got a couple of ideas i’m going to share monday on our regular show anyway so you know charlie’s always asking me those things but we as talk show hosts bring a lot of personal experience into what we do because it’s what we do i mean they’re first-hand experiences and we can use them this one’s a little different than that because this one you’re looking at you know you you would never think for all of you listening you would never think in a million years this stuff would happen And by the way, it shouldn’t. But to Larry’s point a moment ago, unfortunately, it does. And we live in a day and age where you I hate to say this. You just can’t trust people. You don’t know what people are going to do. I mean, folks, we live in a day and age to where it could be something as simple as. you didn’t use your turn signal like somebody else thought you should have. And they are now going to follow where you live, and they can do that fairly easily. And now, depending upon what type of rage this particular individual has, I mean, you could do something so nonchalant that you don’t even think twice about it because to you it was no big deal. But to somebody else, it’s a major deal, major enough to where they will do something like this. And I’m just giving examples of things that could happen. I have no idea in this particular situation what did happen. Hopefully Thornton Police will do enough investigation to find some things out. But I will tell you that this one is like finding a needle in a haystack.
SPEAKER 13 :
It’s going to be difficult, yes, from just what I know.
SPEAKER 05 :
Because, again, when you talk about people that don’t run in those types of circles and there’s not a lot of people to go point fingers at, it becomes a lot more difficult for law enforcement. And this goes back to my whole, on the mechanical side, how do we protect ourselves better? How do you even, if something were to happen, how do you help? you know, loved ones or those that you would even leave behind, unfortunately, but how would you handle things along those lines and help authorities even determine exactly what happened and video footage, you know, literally video footage is one of the best ways to do so.
SPEAKER 13 :
You know, I did years ago when my wife was ill, I put a system in my house so I could watch inside the house. Okay. So when I had to go to work, Great idea. I could see what she was doing.
SPEAKER 05 :
Great idea.
SPEAKER 13 :
If she fell or if she hurt herself, I would know that. Well, I let it lapse because she’s gone, but I think I’ll renew it.
SPEAKER 05 :
that would be my next question and we’re going to get into this here take a break and come back to this in a moment but the question i would have for a lot of you listening is do you have inside cameras do you have any ability where if something were to actually happen and and this is a whole nother conversation we can have with kevin flesh our attorney on you know did somebody force an entry did somebody you know let’s say for example you’re being uh questioned by some authoritative figure at the front door and somehow they end up inside the house you never ask them to come in do you have protection against those things you know think of it that way there’s all sorts of things that we can look at along those lines it’s not just for worrying about what’s happened in this particular case there’s all sorts of other things that you could be throwing into this as well so let’s do this we got calls coming in let’s take a quick break we’ll come right back we’ll take these calls don’t go anywhere this is fix it radio klz 560.
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SPEAKER 05 :
All right, and we had a great caller, by the way, not on air. I’ll just mention what she had said, though, that especially some of you that are ladies and single ladies and so on, really pay attention to those folks in your neighborhood that may not look like they should be there. They look out of place. In this particular case, somebody… look like a police officer but most likely wasn’t a police officer larry just mentioned off air a moment ago where we see constantly uh individuals that are mimicking you’re trying to impersonate police officers trying to pull you over even uh things along those lines i’ll get into some of that maybe in drive radio today on what you should do and how that should be handled but yeah if you ever think that something is out of place call 9-1-1 Report it. That includes, you know, somebody’s trying to pull you over that you don’t think is a real police officer. You can call 911. And what you do there is put your hazards on. Call 911. Keep driving. Do not pull over. Do not let that person get near you. Ask the 911 operator what you need to do. A lot of times they will direct you right to a police station nearby. And if it is, in fact, somebody that is… is a real police officer they’re they’re okay with that they will follow you to the police station and so on to make sure that you feel safe and all of that uh now you know if you’re going 85 miles an hour down the highway and state patrols behind you and wants to pull you over um yeah that one’s probably you know pretty cut and dry but you know there’s been some situations of late even over in the arvada area where you can be just driving down a regular city street and there can be somebody come up alongside of you even that looks like they are a police officer. They’ve got some of the markings of a police car, but it’s not, and they’re trying to get you to pull over. Yeah, you’re not pulling over for that. You will know when it’s a real police officer and when it’s not. Here’s, I think, that rule of thumb. If it seems fishy, it probably is. Call 911, and they will tell you how to proceed. Better to be safe than sorry in that particular situation. Mark and Wiggins, go ahead, sir. Hey, good morning.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m trying to choke back tears from this story. You know, years ago, I watched a movie called The Enemy of the State. And this movie hit home because when I joined the Marine Corps, they told me we will forever be a target. And that never goes away, regardless of status, health, finances, religion. anything. And so when we bought our new home, I said, I will have the most advanced system on my property. And it is by a company called GetSCW. It is what the Department of Defense uses for their stuff. On top of that, I keep a separate power backup to power the system in case somebody comes and cuts my power.
SPEAKER 06 :
Good idea.
SPEAKER 03 :
So if they come over and say, hey, let’s kill the power so the cameras don’t work, well, guess what? I have a backup for that. Well, guess what? I have a backup for my backup. I also have generators to be able to power the backup batteries. But one thing that I just realized was my weakest point. If my house were to burn down, all that data is gone and lost.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned that, Mark. You need to have some sort of off-site cloud storage where it’s backing up literally, as you know, it has to be some sort of a seamless backup because otherwise, to your point, in this case, there was, I mean, this is where you got to wonder was, you know, why was somebody starting the fire other than to probably cover tracks and things like that, Mark? So the reality is, yeah, if it all burns up, you’ve got nothing.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, there was years ago, An unfortunate murder that happened, I believe it was like in the Mead, Broomfield area, where a gentleman, was it Chris Watts, had decided to kill his wife and two kids and dump their bodies in oil tanks. And my fire department had to go and pull the bodies out of the tanks.
SPEAKER 05 :
I can’t imagine, Mark. Those are jobs, Mark, I can’t do. I’m sorry, I can’t do those jobs.
SPEAKER 03 :
So it can happen to anyone.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, it can. And I think, Mark, at times, this was, you know, didn’t want to shake everybody up this morning. I know you folks will be listening again on Tuesday. My intent was not to shake everybody up. In that way, Mark, but really just to bring awareness to your point just now, this can happen to anyone. And sometimes, Mark, I think we get sort of this calloused approach of, oh, that’s not going to happen to me. Oh, that’ll never happen to our family. Oh, in a way, you almost feel like you’re immune from these things. Well, the reality, Mark, as you just said, we’re not.
SPEAKER 03 :
We’re not. We’re not. And years ago, a few years ago, and I’ve even shared this story with you personally, that a gentleman came flying down my road, almost hit my kids. went speeding down the road, did a U-turn, and then came back after me and was in attack mode, screaming and cussing at me. And he reeked of alcohol, so I secured him to the ground. And then I was charged with a felony crime of assault.
SPEAKER 05 :
Unreal. Unreal, Mark.
SPEAKER 03 :
Unreal. My attorney said in 20 years he had never, ever heard of such a thing.
SPEAKER 05 :
Unbelievable. Well, and again, Mark, that is the… And this is where, by the way, for all of you listening, going back, Mark, to the whole camera system and the ability to show things even to authorities in these particular… So let’s take even the self-protection thing out of it. Let’s just talk about some of the scenarios that… Even you just mentioned or as I mentioned earlier, you’ve got some hopefully inside cameras and some authority type figure shows up at your front door. Let’s just say all of a sudden, you know, I think things are going to change under the Trump administration. But let’s just say the ATF shows up at your front door and they don’t have a warrant, but somehow they end up inside the house against your, you know, against what you said to not do. You need all of that. You need footage of all of that, Mark.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, and what I did was the law enforcement, when they showed up, did their investigation, they let him go. Even though he admitted, I have body camera footage that he admitted in the back of the police car, that he admitted to drinking and speeding. And they let him go, didn’t charge him, didn’t do a DUI test or anything. And then two weeks later, they did a search warrant, came and tried to take my wife’s phone, my phone, our laptops, and my entire security system. Because they said I was not willing to share the footage with them. And what I did was I uploaded all the information to my Google Drive before they showed up, knowing well before they showed up that that was going to happen. And when they confiscated it, I said, good luck, because I’m not giving you my password.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m not sharing your password. I don’t care who you are.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, good point.
SPEAKER 03 :
Even though I was on the board of the trustees and they worked for me, I still didn’t trust them anyway.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
And when the whole case came down, they dropped the charges and made me plead guilty to harassment because I had security footage that proved that my neighbor, two doors down, was not giving a true testament who was law enforcement at the time.
SPEAKER 05 :
mark as we keep saying all of these things and what i want people to think about is get out of your mind this will never happen to me and be preparing for if this were to happen to me how do i handle it that’s what i want people to think about mark well you know there’s a article just this week or last week where a swat team went in and raided raided a wrong apartment that was the ideal situation if you had cameras inside to see this
SPEAKER 13 :
Otherwise, it’s your word against the SWAT team. That’s right.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, my wife will not allow me to have cameras inside the house, and I have to respect her wishes. And I haven’t quite figured out how to get around that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, okay, so here’s a quick, maybe there’s a compromise with her. What if you did something to where it’s only looking at the front door or a back door access, and it’s not looking at anything else inside the home? Because I get it, and everybody wants their privacy and so on, and even on down the road you know with somebody that would make you know may have access to that and so on but mark when it comes to the front door you know and or what’s you know i guess here’s a question do you have a really close front door camera that if the door is open records everything whether they’re outside or inside i have three at the front door i have one in the back door i used to have them on the side doors but i built such gates
SPEAKER 03 :
So that you’d have to basically come over a double gate to get to my backyard. Got it. And then you’re having two dogs and a Marine come after you. You better well be ready to get your ass whooped. Sorry.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. No. No, I hear you. By the way, Mark, fully agree. Same situation. Now, all the things we have to be thinking about, though, as well is what if you’re not there? Right.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now what? And that’s what just hit me when you when you started sharing that story. Like, what if I’m not here?
SPEAKER 05 :
What if you’re not there?
SPEAKER 03 :
What if something happened? That’s right. And, you know, like Gene Hackman and his wife. Right. What happened? Right. You know, like great family, regardless if they’re blood or not.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 03 :
But something something’s fishy.
SPEAKER 05 :
i mark i cannot disagree with you on that at all either and again my point today is and i appreciate your sensitivity mark i do and my point today wasn’t to upset you know my entire audience but these things are upsetting and i think our point is it can happen to anyone i mean mark i will tell you right now uh you know if you would have interviewed our family even a week ago and asked is this something that is a potential i mean I think in our family, most people would look at me as being more of a prime target, given what I do on a daily basis here on air and so on. My own family would say that, not the way this turned out.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and I was thinking about that, and the one thing that instantly popped up in my mind was what that individual who had spoken against me about, and I think in my heart I know the answer is jealousy. I believe he was jealous about something, and I’m not going to say what it is on air because it’s personal, but I think there was some jealousy there, and unfortunately he killed himself last year. I don’t know why.
SPEAKER 05 :
Wow. Wow. Wow. Unbelievable. Mark, I got to roll. Appreciate you, man, as much. You keep the faith. God bless you, too, Mark, and thank you for that. Somebody else just texted, by the way, and said, I’m a 6’4 cowboy from Casey, Wyoming. Had a guy follow me into Buc-ee’s in Colorado to the pump. Flashed a badge, told me he was a cop from Cheyenne, and I was driving aggressively in my Ford Dually. Mind you, I was in Colorado. I had to remind him what state he was in, got a picture of his badge, and filed a complaint with the Cheyenne Police Department, of course, so even if they are cops, they can go rogue. Yeah, and thank you, by the way, for that, because you’re 100% correct as well. That particular situation, they don’t have any jurisdiction over what you’re doing. In fact, this is another one where I can get Kevin Flesch on here at some point in the future. Most… outside of i believe sheriff and state patrol sheriff of course has to be in their county state patrol can be statewide that’s why they’re called the state patrol but you know for example a aurora cop cannot cite you for something that you’ve done traffic violation wise in denver unless somebody out there has a different idea and how that works than i do last i checked you’ve got to stay within your own jurisdiction unless they follow you from your jurisdiction to another jurisdiction is the only way that they can Yeah, thank you, Larry. Yeah, if they happen to be, for example, they went to court in Denver for something, I don’t know, had to go testify or something, and they’re leaving on their way back to Aurora and they see you driving aggressively, there’s nothing they can do about that.
SPEAKER 13 :
Right.
SPEAKER 05 :
It is what it is. Now, once you cross the line into Aurora, they can do whatever they want to at that point in time, pull you over and so on. Yeah, to Larry’s point, unless you’re in Aurora driving aggressively, then you head into Denver. Yeah, of course, they can follow you in that case because what you did was already committed in their particular area. But they can’t just be roaming around. Occasionally you’ll see inmates, by the way, being transferred from one jail to another. And you’ll see a sheriff department that might be way out of their jurisdiction. I look at those guys. I’m nice. I’m cordial and all of that. But they have no authority over that. over me in that particular area and what they’re doing. If I’m in their area, of course they do, but once you leave that area, there’s nothing they can do at that point.
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, and typically those people are more concerned with the inmates that they’re transporting.
SPEAKER 05 :
Correct, not you. They’re not paying attention to you. So point being, A, be careful. B, be looking at your entire home. Going back to what Mark said a moment ago, and, yes, I know there could be some debate on this as far as the inside cameras go in regards to probably even some of your own kids and so on, but I would be one, and I do have cameras that point at some of the entry doors in homes. my home um i’ve got them even in my garage i’m i’m a big one on that i if the garage door you know comes open i want to see you know what’s going on did somebody break in you know what’s the situation along those lines and yes i have cameras along those lines as well so my point is is be thinking out loud something even as a family you should discuss where are you know where are our weak points maybe we have a ring camera okay you know ring camera is great what if somebody comes in the back door What if somebody comes down the side? What if you’ve got a side window they can break out and enter in? In other words, what other areas are you vulnerable in? And having a ring camera is great, and they’ve saved probably a lot of lives over the years and have set the record straight in a lot of cases over the years. But at the end of the day, they can only see what they can see. If you’re not looking at the other areas of your home, you should be. And as I’ve said many times, it’s gotten so inexpensive now to do these things that, yes, the higher, like Mark, his example, the more money you spend, the better the system gets, no doubt. On the same token, there are some really good, solid, efficient systems, Blink being one of them that sold through Amazon, that is very inexpensive. The monitoring to the cloud is very inexpensive. The picture quality is actually phenomenal. Believe it or not, it’s actually phenomenal. And you could literally cover your entire house in and out for anywhere, depending upon how big your house is, I don’t know, $200 to $500. So think about that, two to 500. The monitoring you can typically do for about $9 a month, so it’s gonna cost you 120 a year for your monitoring, which is actually still pretty inexpensive when it’s all said and done. Don’t go to Starbucks a couple of times and you’ll have that covered each month. I mean, the reality is there’s ways to make sacrifices along these lines. Where I’m going with this is what’s more important? knowing what’s going on around your home, whether you’re there, whether you’re not, making sure you’re alerted if something’s not going well, so on and so forth, making sure that you’re paying attention to all those things, having some backup, some security, and that’s on the outside. Again, you can do things on the inside as well. Blink for example, I did this for my folks in their home You can do a Actual camera you can control and even turn up down side to side through blink for the inside of the home So if there’s a particular area you really want to monitor while you’re not home you can literally get on your app and just go take a peek at it and Figure that out. It’s that simple
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, I was just sitting here thinking while you were talking, John, that because of the Bluetooth situations and things of those natures, if you leave your house to go do something and somebody breaks in, with the Bluetooth abilities, it will let you know that your door is open.
SPEAKER 05 :
Gotcha. So some of you have joined late in asking, you know, why are we talking about what we’re talking about? There was a – it made the news early Wednesday morning. In fact, I got woken up super early Wednesday morning because of this, but there was a – A news story about a Thornton couple. There was a fire, and at that point, two people that were killed inside of the home, not because of the fire, but they were shot to death inside of the home, and it has since been determined that it’s a double homicide, so those two individuals were murdered, and those two individuals are my cousins. So that’s where all of this started from and why I got an early phone call Wednesday morning and so on. So for those of you that have joined late, that’s the connection. And what I want folks to really think about is, you know, for us as a family, you would never think of these things happening to you or any of your family members. And as I said a few minutes ago, most of the folks in my family, if you were to go ask them You know, who’s the prime target in the family? It wouldn’t have been my cousins. It would be me in this particular situation. So at the end of the day, we just want to make sure that everybody is safe. Make sure that you’re dialed in. Make sure you’re watching things closely. Some of you that have more high profile type jobs, business owners, things along those lines, you can actually be more of a target because of that as well. Some of you that may work in some different industry, depending upon what that industry is. Maybe you work for the court system. Maybe you work for the DA. I met a gal not long ago that is a secretary in the DA’s office for a particular county that I won’t mention. But anyways, you meet people all the time that do different things, and it’s like, okay, those types of jobs, you definitely can become more of a target, but in the case of My cousins were trying to figure out what kind of a target they would have even been because I’m not joking. They’re about as an average couple as you’d probably ever meet and run into. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that. So why did these things happen? Folks, I don’t know. What I’m trying to get at is… Be safe in all the things that you’re doing. Be aware. I’ll talk about some of that stuff in a moment. We’re talking because it’s Fix-It Radio, things you can do around the house, defense mechanisms, cameras, things along those lines. These are things you need to be thinking about on a regular basis because you just don’t know what could happen and you don’t want to be the next victim. And even if you are, at least help those you leave behind with what actually happened and catch the person that might have done it, because otherwise it makes it really difficult for the police to determine exactly what happened. So that’s the story. We’ll be back and talk more about this if you’re joining us late. This is Fix It Radio, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 11 :
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SPEAKER 05 :
All right, we are back. Fix It Radio, KLZ 560. Josh Goff joining us now from Legacy Automotive, Ridgeline Auto Brokers. We’ll talk more about all of that during Drive Radio as well. But Josh is also, again, as a business owner, and these are things that we talk about, I do anyways with our owners on a routine basis when I consult and coach and so on, is the whole security aspect of things, Josh, because it’s not just at the shop, it’s everywhere. Because especially as an owner, you guys are more of a target. Oh, get his mic up. There we go. Now you’re good.
SPEAKER 12 :
We are, and we’ve been at Target, especially this summer, as you know. Yeah, people will literally drive through your garage door to steal stuff from you.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, as we’ve learned this past summer, yes. They will do all sorts, or this past winter. I mean, they will do, again, for all of you listening, I’m not trying to alarm everybody and try to scare everybody and think that you can’t have any fun in life and so on, but what we’re trying to get you to realize is just be aware of what’s going on around you. Mm-hmm. Is there such a thing as never being a target? I’m going to tell you, especially after what happened to our family this past week, no. Like I was telling Larry earlier, guys, you could just cut somebody off the wrong way. And all of a sudden now they’ve got your license number or maybe they’ve got somebody on the end that can run that number and get your address. And or they can just follow you to where you live and they can watch from a distance and watch you pull into your driveway and so on and so forth. And now you’re on their radar. And, you know, by the way, some of these nut jobs could take several weeks or months to even put something together to where they’re going to get back at you for what you did to them. I mean, folks, it could be something as simple as. You cut in front of them at the supermarket. I mean, people are crazy. You just don’t know what they’re going to do. So my point with Fix It Radio now is to just be as proactive and protect yourself as much as you can. No, none of us can live in a bubble. I’m not going to live in a bubble. I mean, I refuse to, and I’m probably as exposed as anybody out there. I’m not going to live in a bubble. Now, on the same token, and you all know this because I talk about it publicly, yeah, I carry. So you’re coming after me. You’re going to have a little more to deal with than just the average person you may be running into because I’m not dinking around. And I think a lot of folks know that. now in this particular situation um i don’t know that my cousins had any reason to have anything out you know they’re walking the dogs you’re you’re not thinking about anything at that point in time it’s a nice you know just this last week pretty nice evenings wasn’t super cold you’re out walking the dogs you know you’re kind of enjoying life if you would you just had dinner with your son um i mean no offense you’re not thinking about any of this kind of stuff So what I’m trying to get all of you to realize and think through is, could it happen to you? Yes, it could. So do everything you possibly can to not have that happen. And if in fact it did, let’s say something did happen. God forbid something does happen. How does everybody behind you piece it together? Do you have enough footage and things around your place of business, around your home to piece things together if something were to actually happen? Do you have the ability to let everybody know exactly what happened?
SPEAKER 12 :
And that was a good thing with what happened in November. We had footage of a certain vehicle going through, and they were able to kind of use that to find some more information on what went down.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yep, and in this particular case, by the way, there was a fire actually started in the home as well, and I’m sure my thought there, my first thought was somebody started that fire intentionally to cover any kind of tracks that would be there from them being there. I mean, if you watch, by the way, if you watch a lot of the movies, CSI, things like that, I’ll just tell you straight up, it doesn’t work like that in the movies. Can they take a burned-down house and find a hair in the bottom of the debris pile? Yeah, no, that ain’t happening. Sorry, folks. I mean, that’s the movies, and it looks really good there. But, no, it ain’t CSI, and that ain’t happening. While we’ve got a lot of technology that works in our favor, it’s not like that. nefarious individuals know how to cover their tracks and in this particular case that’s exactly what they were trying to do and so um it wasn’t because of the fire that this happened the fire happened because of this is probably the best way to say that so to go into light what you’re talking about look at your outside landscaping i had a bunch of evergreen bushes in the front of my shop and
SPEAKER 13 :
Never thought anything about it. They look great. Kind of spruced up the area. Not realizing that those were a good hiding place for somebody that wanted to break into my business. So look at your house. Look at the same thing. If you’ve got shrubs and things around the house that somebody could hide in, wait for you to leave and break into your house or even break in while you’re there.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and again, it’s a reminder, all of you, and all of you do different things in life. Some of you that are listening are retired and maybe have a different type of a life. I mean, are you still at risk? I hate to say this in today’s world. Yeah, we all are. Some of you, though, may be very, very active. Some of you may do all sorts of different jobs where Things may come out of that job. Some of you may be business owners, and all of a sudden somebody’s disgruntled. They didn’t like the way something went, even though nothing you did was wrong or was anything on your end. Because, by the way, sometimes it’s as much their fault when something goes awry as it is yours. But it doesn’t matter. Their perception is you’re the bad guy. Again, I mentioned you’re just cutting somebody off. I mean, you can come up with any kind of scenario that you can imagine, and at the end of the day, could you still be a target? And the reality is yes, because you cannot put a bubble around yourself.
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, what about the lady that was just arrested for having explosive devices attacking a Tesla dealer?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, yeah, I forgot about that one. Yeah. So, again, that’s where, even in that case, the dealership needs to be more vigilant. There was also – I didn’t talk about this. I was going to do this, and I never got time before I went on vacation. But there was also a Cybertruck, I believe it was up in Fort Collins or Loveland, one of the two. They’re almost one city now. That was severely damaged because the knuckleheads up there just don’t like the fact that somebody’s driving a Cybertruck, so they’re going to now vandalize it just because it’s a Cybertruck. Thank you, people. I’ve lost your ever-loving mind. But remember, folks, this is the world that we live in, unfortunately. So my point is, be vigilant. Look around at all of your access areas. And to Larry’s point that this can be mechanical, it can be electronic as well. And I will tell you, and this is one where I think for a lot of people, a little bit of money spent on some very simple things. As I was saying earlier, you’ve got a side garage door. Maybe you go in and out of it quite a bit, and because of that, you don’t really ever think about locking it much. Okay, get one of the locks that automatically locks. I have one of those on my shop. Every time I leave, it locks. Is it a pain to put the code back in? Yeah. Can I disable that? Yeah. Do I? No, typically, because, you know, for the two seconds… that it takes to put a code in and flip it and walk in, it’s not that inconvenient, but in my case, I just know it’s always locked. I never have to worry about is it locked or not, because it always is, because I have to put the code in every time. And some of you have outside doors and things along those lines that would behoove you to have that type of a system on, and no, they’re not that expensive. They work extremely well. Again, it’s one of those mechanical type systems you can install to help with some of these things. And my point is, when you take it out of thought process to where it just happens automatically, you’re more protected when it’s all said and done. Jeff, go ahead.
SPEAKER 14 :
Hey, good morning, Jeff. Good morning, Jeff. Yeah, I have not heard anything about this, obviously, up here in western Montana until… So you mentioned it. So my condolences to you and your family. I mean, that’s just got to be, uh,
SPEAKER 05 :
so hard to deal with sexually and unexpectedly very um i think the best way i’ve described very disheartening i mean yes not only are we all devastated and sad and so on but i think you know in our case we’re just shaking our head as to the why i mean i think that’s what everybody asks in a situation like this jeff is is why and the reason why i wanted to bring it up today on air is because everybody else needs to be looking at that the same way and making sure you’re protected because too many nut jobs running around jeff
SPEAKER 14 :
Yes, there are. I mean, your family got sucker punched. It’s a good way of saying it. And you’ve encouraged me to, I mean, up here, even though we had a meth house across the road from us for a while, before we moved into that little subdivision, there was a single house down there. They built it for a vet. He was addicted, and nobody knew he was running a meth… metering out of his house, and they would do things like look at obituaries and find out where funerals are, and then when people were going to funerals, they would go into the house and rob them.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, my word.
SPEAKER 14 :
You’re right. Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Unbelievable. I see, and Jeff, and I guess it’s because of the three of us, Charlie as well, so the four of us plus you, I can say this about all five of us, our brains don’t work that way. We don’t think that way.
SPEAKER 14 :
Actually, I… I have to confess that as a former intel professional in the Air Force, my job was to be the enemy for the commander, so… No, no, what I meant is… Sorry, let me make sure I’m explaining myself.
SPEAKER 05 :
What I meant is, we don’t think about doing nefarious things along those lines because that’s not how our brains work.
SPEAKER 14 :
Right, yeah, exactly. Right. I would never contemplate doing it myself. Absolutely not.
SPEAKER 05 :
There you go. That’s the route I was looking for. That’s right.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yep. One question, though, and you said maybe we’ll get a security system. We also have a custody lawsuit going on with a granddad that we have custody of. It’s gotten ugly.
SPEAKER 05 :
All the more reason to have one.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah. But my… The best way to say it is the security is in security systems. We talked before about web-enabled devices and how you’ve really got to lock down things. And Amazon is notorious for turning things on and off and having a recorded conversation that people didn’t know were recorded for training purposes or other things. And so you have a professional out there that you might be able to have on to talk about How to secure your security system so that… Absolutely, I do.
SPEAKER 05 :
In fact, we’ve got a brand new sponsor. We’ve got commercials that will start rolling, and this is more on the business side, but consult even on the individual side. It’s called Ease My Pain IT Services. For all of you listening, especially small business owners, great guy, Brian Weary is the owner. I’ve consulted Brian from the day one. He started his business, and… uh very big on the tech side jeff has to stay safe not only on the cyber security side but the camera side what system do you use what works best what are your circumstances and so on so yeah i will in fact i will do my best to get him on here in the next couple of weeks here yeah okay and maybe even not necessarily what to buy because we actually have a statewide uh talk show here
SPEAKER 14 :
with a host on there who has, I think, a security system sponsor. He used to do it anyway. I’m going to get in touch with him. Is there anybody to stay away from? And I’m thinking, you know, when you talk about Ring and Amazon and all those other things, the hair on the back of my neck goes up because it’s kind of the Benjamin Franklin saying of, you know, those who will trade a little essential liberty for security will get neither. And so I’m kind of, you know, that’s my dilemma. How much do I let an invasive state or an invasive company into my house, I’m like, how far do I trust them? to not betray me by doing dumb things with the data that I’ve given them.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I think, Jeff, that’s one where each person has to look at that on an individual basis and budgetarily, I hate to say this, but even budgetarily speaking, Ring, as you know, and Blink, which Amazon is on the Blink side, and I guess the way I’ve looked at that, when my folks went into their home and I put their system in, I did the the ring system or sorry the blink system just because it’s inexpensive and the way I looked at it Jeff was if there’s anything Amazon wants on two 85 year old individuals let them have it because at the end of the day I think they’ve got bigger fish to fry so that one for me was pretty much a no-brainer because there’s nothing going on there that’s really going to be a big issue anyways yeah I can understand that I just um and in the simple expense of it i mean you can do that system realistically for a couple hundred bucks and 10 bucks a month monitoring and pretty much have everything you need now to your point what are you giving up in some of the other things that might be out there and that’s one where each person has to to weigh that out but i will tell you right now that if it’s an elderly uh, individual, they’re looking to do something fairly inexpensively. Uh, those are people, frankly, Jeff, that I think hate to say this, but you know, Amazon’s more worried about me than they are them. Uh, I wouldn’t worry about it if that were the situation.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, I just, uh, I guess the best summary or a way to summarize it is, uh, how much control do I have over the data that’s getting collected? And I, their point to point and, uh, Does it go into the cloud encrypted and I’m the only one who can get it out? Those kinds of things.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and my gut on that, Jeff, as you know, I mean, I guarantee you all of that is on the websites of those particular providers. And, I mean, anything that’s cloud-based, you need to go and read the fine print as to what it says. No different information. Then, you know, Liberty safes, you know, back when we had the big thing that happened a couple of summers ago where, you know, the ATF FBI wanted the backdoor code to get into the combo lock on the safe. And, you know, Liberty actually gave that out. And then they took huge hits in the conservative end of things for giving that out, even though when it was all said and done, they could have gotten in without it anyways. But at the end of the day, people weren’t happy with Liberty for doing that. And again, though, all of that was on Liberty’s side as to what they would or wouldn’t do in those particular cases. Problem is nobody ever reads the fine print.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, I had not heard that actually.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, that was a couple of years ago I talked about it. Yeah, wow.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay. Anyway, I don’t want to take you off.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, you’re right in line with what we’re talking about. I think each person has to, you know, on that end of things as well. I mean, yes, we want to be able to have the right footage and protection and so on. On the same token, we don’t want to give up like what happened during COVID. We don’t want to give up freedom for safety. either Jeff so somewhere there’s a balance there as to you know what do you have and I’m also still one where uh and we’ve talked about this even with Mark from Wiggins earlier the mechanical sides of things don’t forget that I mean automatic locks automatic door closers I mean things that just happen by themselves no matter what it’s another deterrent for that particular individual to get into the house cameras are great and you’ll see who’s coming and going but the reality is I don’t want to come in in the first place right exactly and
SPEAKER 14 :
And then just to kind of close it off, we have one of the wonderful things of living in a small state is that you get to know your service department, the county attorney, and various folks pretty intimately. I mean, our granddaughter played basketball with the county attorney’s daughter, and so when this whole thing with her parents started, she was watching out for them. Those kinds of relationships, It’s harder to do in a metropolitan area like Denver, but if you have an opportunity to build those relationships with law enforcement and the officials in your county, you know, the judge who just got appointed was a lawyer here in town, and so people know him and know how he operates himself. So we just were blessed with a certain amount of inherent security just based on the way that the local folks operate.
SPEAKER 05 :
Nice, nice. Well, Jeff, keep things going, man. We appreciate you. Thanks for your input, as always.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 05 :
You’re very welcome. And by the way, this just popped up. I don’t know where these stories even come from. This was just put out yesterday, February 28th. One woman dead in shooting at Monument King Soopers parking lot Friday afternoon. Authorities are investigating a fatal shooting in front of a King Soopers store in Monument shortly before 12.30 p.m. Investigators say a man walked up to a vehicle in the grocery store parking lot and opened fire. Upon their arrival, officers say they discovered the body of the woman inside of the vehicle. They went on to say they are still investigating. They have no idea what the motive is, anything else. Again, folks, backing up. What I’ve talked about through this entire episode here of Fix It Radio on this particular day, this is March the 1st, and the reality is you just have to be careful, have your head on a swivel, be watching at all times. Yes, I will get some folks on when it comes to this whole security end of things, possibly even next Saturday. I’ll do my best maybe even next Saturday morning to get somebody on that can talk about some of these systems, wired, wireless, cloud-based. not, you know, how does all of that work? What are some of your better options when it comes to these things? These are all things, by the way, that I think we need to be very vigilant in. But on top of that, even when you’re out driving around like this particular situation where you’re just going to get groceries, you need to be vigilant. So guys, with that, this has been Fix It Radio. Go to the website, fixitradio.com.
SPEAKER 08 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
