Things Your Burglar Won’t Tell You, But Listen Here
By Bill Primavera
The Home Guru
The distant memory of that morning still makes my blood run cold. When we awoke, my wife told me that she had dreamed someone had been in our bedroom while we were asleep. Until we were wide awake, we had no idea that this had actually happened.
When we went downstairs, we found that our back door had been taken totally off its hinges and that an intruder had spent considerable time with us. He had scoured ever one of our rooms, looking only for cash. We knew this because every book in our library had been leafed through. He even stayed long enough to help himself to a meal of snack foods in our kitchen.
The combined anger and fear I experienced when I realized that a stranger had been in my child’s room, close enough to her bed to have stolen her piggy bank, makes me shudder when I think about what might have happened had I awaken.
At the time, living in a single family house in New York City with no alarm system, we were totally vulnerable to burglary or worse. Never again, I thought. Since then, and following our move to the country, I have taken the traditional precautions, as well as some unconventional ones, to guard against robbery and home intrusion.
Just recently I received a forwarded email from a buyer client, a police officer in the Bronx, with the subject line, “Things Your Burglar Won’t Tell You.” While I already knew many of its points, I found some of its content new and useful. Credit for the advisory is given to several investigators and criminology professors who interviewed a large number of burglars in prison systems.
You may have received the same or a similar email but, if so, the points bear repeating as a reminder. I have extrapolated some advice from the burglars’ comments in the list below.
1. I may look familiar to you because I was at your home recently cleaning your carpets, painting your shutters, or power-washing your siding and deck.
2. Thanks for letting me use the bathroom when I was working in your yard. While I was in there, I unlatched the back window to make my return a little easier.
3. Love your landscaping. Lots of flowers tell me you have taste, which means there are nice things inside, and I can hide behind your shrubs since you don’t keep them pruned.
4. Yes, I really do look for newspapers piled up on the driveway.
5. If it snows while you're out of town, I’ll know it because there are no foot tracks. But, you might get a neighbor to provide them for you.
6. A good security company also alarms windows on your second floor where I might be agile enough to enter for direct access to your master bedroom and jewelry.
7. If it’s raining and you’re fumbling with your umbrella and forget to lock the door, remember, I don't take a day off because of bad weather.
8. I always knock first. If you answer, I'll ask for directions somewhere or offer to clean your gutters, but don’t take me up on it.
9. I always check dresser drawers, the bedside table, under the mattress, the refrigerator and the medicine cabinet, but I almost never go into kids’ rooms (this was not true with my burglar who was quite thorough).
10. I won't have enough time to break into that safe where you keep your valuables. But if it's not bolted down, I'll take it with me.
11. A loud TV or radio can be a better deterrent than the best alarm system.
12. Too things I hate most: loud dogs and nosey neighbors.
13. I'll break a window to get in, even if it makes a little noise. If your neighbor hears one loud sound, he'll stop what he's doing and wait to hear it again. If he doesn't hear it again, he'll just go back to what he was doing. It's human nature.
14. I'm not complaining, but why would you pay all that money for an alarm system and leave your house without setting it?
15. I love looking in your windows to know whether you’re home, and for flat screen TVs or gaming systems. I'll drive or walk through your neighborhood at night, before you close the blinds, just to pick my targets.
16. Avoid announcing your vacation on your Facebook page. It's easier than you think to look up your address.
17. To you, leaving that window open just a crack during the day is a way to let in a little fresh air. To me, it's an invitation.
18. If you don't answer when I knock, I try the door. Occasionally, I hit the jackpot and walk right in.
19. If someone in your family dies, get a house sitter when you go to the funeral. I always check the obituaries to know when a family will be out of the house.
Here are two other suggestions I’ve heard recently; one is legal and the other may not be.
Keep your car keys next to your bed. If you sense that someone is trying to enter the house, press the panic button for your car. With the alarm going off, the intruder won’t want to hang around.
Another email making the rounds recommends the use of wasp spray rather than pepper spray for self defense. It reports that wasp spray can shoot up to 20 or 30 feet and is more accurate in hitting its target. I researched this and found that federal law prohibits the use of a pesticide that is inconsistent with its intended use. However, some might argue that this method of self defense might be compared to a homeowner’s hitting an intruder over the head with a shovel, which is certainly not the intended use for a garden tool either.
It may be unpleasant to think about the possibilities of burglaries, or worse, the terror of a home invasion, but we know that they do happen and, lately, they seem to happen in our communities more often. Being informed and taking every precaution possible, rather than trying not to think about it, is the smartest thing to do.
Bill Primavera is a licensed Realtor® (PrimaveraHomes.com), affiliated with Coldwell Banker, and a marketing practitioner (PrimaveraPR.com). For questions about selling or buying a home, he can be reached directly at 914-522-2076.