If this robbery had occurred in the USA, the thief would have been distracted with a hamburger and watching infomercials.
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The noun “burglar” (and “burglary”) apparently got on quite well for several hundred years without needing a verb, then two came along at once in the 19th century. Unfortunately, “burglarize” seems to have come first, making it hard to justify describing “burgle” as the more correct.
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“Damned as an American barbarism in England and Canada.”
'Nuff said. (But, yeah, it is odd that burgle first arose in the US and burglarise in the UK.)
The logic of course is that whilst USians may think a burglar burglarizes, the rest of us respond today by thinking that burglarizing is done by a burglarizer.
Which means a burglarizer must be burglarizering.
Which means anyone burglarizering must be a burglarizerer.
Which means a burglarizerer must be burglarizerering
(I could go on.) 
ETA
- I note that a person playing a bugle is a bugler - the military has buglers, not buglerizers as far as I know.
- I may go out this evening to do some burglarious burglerating but only so the cops will not get me for ‘going equipped for burglary’!
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Ooh, this even qualifies as burglary under the old common law definition of burglary. Breaking and entering of a residence at night with the intent to commit a felony. Nice! (sorry…bar exam brainwashing)
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Part of why I’d be bad at a life of crime.
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Classics majors gotta pay back student loans too.*
*I LOVE my classics, and we need more classics in the curriculum.
**Yes, it is from a developed country where they have a better and not financially crippling higher education system.
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I guess they might if they were a ‘buglar’ rather than a ‘bugler’.
Unfortunately Captain Beefheart is no longer around to tell us if he’d rather be called a ‘booglar’ or a ‘booglarizer’:
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Fair point - but I’d still like to see some buglerizing - it sounds fun!
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For a while it looks like “burglar” was in competition as a verb form:
It’s still newer than both “burglarize” (attested 1871) and “burgle” (attested 1872).
Of course, “burglar” itself comes from the 13th cent. Anglo-Latin “burgulator”, so maybe the verb form should really be “to burgulate”.
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