…someone tried to break into our house while we were out yesterday, in broad daylight. They broke the lock on our sliding glass back door, and were apparently trying to lift it out of the track (to get around the physical barrier of a stick we leave in the track for added security) when our alarm system went off and apparently scared them away. A couple of our neighbors heard the alarm and came to investigate, but the would-be invader(s) had apparently already fled over the back fence.
I called the police non-emergency number and reported it, and after some confusion, they took the information about it and said that police analysts would use it to watch for patterns in the area, and try to match it to certain suspects.
I have to ask… what kind of idiot tries to break into a house with prominently posted alarm system signs, where they can see the very obvious alarm system motion sensors from the place they tried to break in? And where there wasn’t anything particularly valuable in sight? We don’t even have a flat-panel TV, only a ten-year-old tube TV, and not a particularly large one. I know your average thief isn’t an intellectual heavyweight, but this one must have been particularly deficient in that regard.
In any case, it’s a good thing we do have an alarm system, and that we always activate it when we go out. It’s the first time in the ten years we’ve had it that it has actually caught someone, but I added up all the money we’ve spent on it and its monitoring… if they’d gotten in and stolen just the easily-found and easily-moved computer equipment, it would have cost about three-quarters of that amount to replace, not counting the lost data (the off-site backup would have preserved the bulk of it, but not the last few weeks worth). If they’d taken our (very dated) game consoles, games, DVDs, or any other valuables as well, it would have cost us far more. And who knows how many other sneaks may have been scared off over the years by the advertised presence of the alarm system? Not to mention the peace of mind of having a monitored fire alarm as well. And the latch on that door could have used replacing anyway, though I’d have preferred not to be forced into it.
All in all, we came out of it pretty well.
Wow! I’m glad you’re alright! That’s rather scary. I wouldn’t think your neighbourhood would be one for break ins, but I guess it can happen anywhere. I have heard that most break ins occur during the day when people are out at work. At night, robbers have to worry about people being home.
This was almost 6pm. We’re guessing they were either ridiculously lucky or must have been watching, because there’s no easy way to tell when we’re home (since I keep the car in the garage, and the only windows into that are curtained), and one of us is almost always home. I’d just happened to go out to pick up GoddessJ from her last day of work, and we’d gone to get cat food after.
And yes, I wouldn’t have expected it in this neighborhood either.
I had a near-break-in myself at my old apartment, it’s one of the reasons why I’m glad I moved out of bedford-sty. (Not only that, someone was mugged right outside of our window too. I never went out late at night from there if I could help it.)
Yes, but where you are I’d expect that sort of thing. This city isn’t known for crime, and this neighborhood is a moderately nice one — not nice enough to tempt criminals, I’d think, but not run-down enough that there should be a lot of would-be thieves around.
The area I’m in now is pretty nice, two beat-cops patrol the corner on the boarder with bed-sty here and I’m across the street from a fire station, with Satmar Chasidic neighbors who are very activist against crime. (The “chapsem” system. Yell out “chapsem” and a dozen men run out of their building to see what’s the matter.) I’m much safer now than I was less than 5 blocks away. (Brooklyn is like that, a former taxi driver once told me “Brooklyn is like a sandwich, the meat and the bread are right next to each other” I should have known that before I moved to the wrong side of the neighborhood before.)