The owners lost two laptops, a flatscreen, and a few other misc items. The owner made a police report, and I visited him this evening.  Here are a few disturbing elements to the crime aside from the loss of property:

1) The owner suspects that a person on foot investigated his house by going in the back yard, looking in his windows, and then calling in a vehicle for a quick strike. The owner noticed that a section of his
back fence was down when he was there for lunch, but because he expects workmen on the property for a construction bid this did not attract too much attention.  The owner set this fence section back up, but the same fence section was down when the owner returned in the mid-afternoon and discovered the burglary.

2) The robbers broke the front door by kicking it in. It was a foam core door enveloped in sheet metal, and the top half was a glass window.  The door broke in half across the middle, and the deadbolt also broke.  These are common doors and might be the same type that you have.  The door frame was not reinforced by long nails or screws fastening it to the frame, but that probably would not have mattered.

3) The owner recalls a “thuggish” looking fellow dressed in baggy pants and a backpack wandering the neighborhood and looking back very hard at the owner.  He also noticed that two supposed alarm company
reps canvassed the neighborhood.  This afternoon these reps did stop across the street to call on a house with no car present, but strangely they neglected to stop by and talk to him about an alarm system when he was in the front of his house replacing a broken door.  (A neighbor of mine spoke to two alarm company reps yesterday who made inquiries about whether she had an alarm system and worked away from home, etc.)

4) The burglars were not deterred by one of the owners dogs, about 40-50 pounds, but they decided not to take a TV from the bedroom where two other dogs, one small and one about 50 pounds, were staying.

Here are some reminders of what we can do to protect ourselves:

1) Call the police to check out suspicious people.  This is encouraged by the police and, as far as I know, gives them a legitimate excuse to stop and question people.  This may be the biggest help we can give them as they can’t patrol our neighborhood perpetually.

2) Keep valuables out of sight in your car and hopefully hard to view from outside into your home.

3) Consider how easy it can be to break into your home and take steps to make this harder.  I will try to have information on this posted by the first week of June and I am trying to recruit more people to be block captains so that our entire neighborhood is covered.

4) I have an alarm system and am happy to give you the name of my company or the other that I checked before choosing.  An alarm system may not have deterred the burglars, but unfortunately today the owner had his alarm company monitoring sign down from the street front because he just replaced his mailbox.

Thank you and keep me informed about events,

Ben Hendry, Neighborhood Watch Coordinator