Before you go out and spend thousands of dollars on a new home security system, it's a good idea to find out how secure your neighborhood is. Or to put it in blunt terms, find out how many crimes are being committed where you live. This information can have a big impact on what steps you take on the home security front. www

This may sound like information you can't get without going door-to-door and interviewing everyone within a four-block radius. Have you been robbed in the last year? Has anyone broken into your car? Has anyone stolen mail from your mailbox? It sounds like a pain, doesn't it?

Fortunately, you don't have to do this. Chances are the police station has this information already. As you might or might not have suspected, most police agencies keep detailed statistics of these things. They have records of crimes committed, and can often narrow down the statistics to the block level.