Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/11/11/anti-burglary-advice-from-bur.html
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The big dog breed works. Where my parents used to live about 12-14 years ago pretty much everyone on the block had their homes broken into over the course of a couple of years. We were the sole exception because of our dog, a large Samoyed. I’ve always been thankful for that, despite the fact that he was a huge teddy bear and loved people. But strangers always seemed terrified of him because at the time he was an uncommon dog and they thought he was a wolf or something.
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Jokes on them, my bed is a mess, they won’t find a pillow case. And my apt is such a mess, you can’t figure out what is and is not valuable.
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HA! I will foil them alll! They’ll never figure out I hide my valuables in the ottoman in the living room. Fools!
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Never store valuables in your bedroom, that’s the first place they look. Maybe some decoy jewellery, but not the real thing. And all the clever hiding places? They aren’t so clever, everybody else has the same clever ideas and the burglars know it. Best place is in a non-descript box along with a bunch of other non-descript boxes in the garage or the basement.
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An ottoman hiding spot? that’s actually not a bad idea…make the wheels extra rolley so when somebody tries to kick it over, it just skates away.
Odds are, somebody who is in a hurry won’t chase it.
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One important lesson: “NRA sticker on car bumper = Lots of guns to steal.”
So in other words, if gun control opponents bought fewer weapons, there would be fewer guns on the black market and it would therefore be more difficult for criminals to obtain guns illegally. So widespread use and ownership of legal guns can increase the availability of guns to criminals. Imagine that!
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We use the policy of ‘Not owning valuables’. Mostly because they all went out the window about 12 years ago when we had 4 break-ins in 6 months.
If someone steals the tv then I get to buy a new one. The laptops tend to be with us, the tower runs Windows Vista and they can have it (HAHAHAHA). Wedding rings are on our fingers.
The only really valuable stuff in our house is the furniture, which requires more transport capacity than most burglars have. And it isn’t really valuable.
Seriously, why own jewelry? It is a bizarre skeumorph from the dark ages when people carried their wealth on their person and displayed their status. Now, if status display is a goal, humans have so many more ways to do it.
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I inherited it. See also: silver, crystal, and china.
Every few years MrPants will seize a box from the basement and unpack it saying “what is this why don’t you sell this” - to be met with “those are great grandmother Pants’ wedding crystal champagne glasses, I can’t sell those!” - and back into the box they go for another year.
Whoever cleans out my house when I pass away is gonna have a field day!
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Members in my HOA have a large, very large pitbull. It mauled the last burglar badly enough that his hand had to be re-attached. All that said, the bad guy is now suing them for damages, life sucks sometimes…
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I once had a guy show up at my front door at 2:30 am after driving up and down the street shining a flashlight into several neighbor’s houses. I happened to have a laser pointer on my keychain, though waited in my kitchen with a baseball bat while I rang 911 about the fellow, but kept the house dark to keep a better view of outside. They said they’d send someone along, but this guy first walked to the guy across the street, then came back toward my house. Anyway, I decided to put the laser pointer to its most obvious use.
When he came to my door and started trying to yank on it – again, 2:30 a.m. – I put a bead on him from the kitchen window. Never seen a guy run quite so fast.
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Asking those who got caught, convicted, and locked up seems unlikely to get the best advice. What you should really do is to ask the burglars who are successful at what they do.
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I just like wearing earrings and necklaces. But the joke’s on them anyway. I may have a huge jewelry box sitting in my master bedroom, but if there’s a single thing in there that I paid more than $30ish for, I’d be extremely surprised. Not a single precious stone in there.
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Victim blame much?
Even bad burglars are successful at what they do, and getting thoughts on the average criminal really is not a bad idea.
Also if anyone here remembers the Discovery show “It Takes a Thief” It’s a really really good show about getting advice on what homeowners can do to make their homes safer.
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Simplest protection is to have neighbors who are an easier and more lucrative target than your home (still need to watch the police reports to see when they get hit).
Also research “the five "D’s”:
The five D’s of security seek to do one or more of the following: Deter, Detect, Delay, Deny and Defend. If we can implement the first four D’s correctly and ward off any dangerous or unwanted intruders, we can avoid having to Defend.
It is poor strategy to focus entirely on “Defend”, but it is equally a bad idea to ignore it entirely.
so all the tips the Bb has posted over the years with clever ways to hide your valuables was just useless busywork? dammit!!
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Not quite everything posted has been useless… This one simple trick has kept uncountable gold doubloons safe for decades.
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My prediction is that when that safe is finally opened, we’ll find Rob Ford and a whole lot of bananas in there.
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My first time getting broken into, my apartment was the only one in my building without a dog of any type. My guess was the guy was too high to distinguish between a big dog and a Chihuahua at that point, so he just went for the only quiet door.
I got a big scary looking dog, and crate trained him.
The next time I got broken into, the dog was safely in his crate the whole time. Now the dogs run loose, I have an alarm system, and a protective, retired neighbor with a large armory watches the house and questions anyone who parks in my driveway.
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