Portola Valley: Home invasions rattle some, galvanize others

Ok, first of all, Portola Valley is hardly rural, being as it is right next to Hwy 280 and the center of town is nowhere near "uninhabited slopes." I also find that median home price to be high---perhaps influenced by the occasional very expensive home. The vast majority of us don't live in 4 million dollar houses. We are simply a town. Nothing more, nothing less.

One thing potential robbers should be aware of is a grassroots, town-wide effort to install private security cameras in a wide variety of places---most not visible unless you are looking for them. If you come to PV expecting trouble, you'd better smile for Candid Camera.

We are taking this seriously, and we are looking at every driver in every car that we pass. When in doubt, we are taking down your license plate and calling the sheriff.

Let's continue to push for the license readers. We have no privacy anyway - so one can not use that as an excuse for not anting them. Think how much privacy you would lose if your house were robbed or invaded ?? News stories, neighbors. chatting at Roberts - We need to step up & take charge

Neighborhood watch is now a must, given the lack of action from the town council towards protecting community families from gun-wielding criminal groups. Apparently even the self-evident benefits of license plate readers, used by many other communities, are not clear to town government. Since families are on their own, per the Sheriff's good recommendations, each home should now improve and add locks, lights, alarms, and cameras. This will have a negative impact on energy consumption, say 100 Watts per house for network video recording locally and/or with cloud storage in addition to cameras, perimeter lighting, and alarm systems. For a proudly green community, this nets to over 1500000 kiloWatt-hours of additional electrical load per year -- not very clean.