18 December 2007

Home robbery

| tybreaker
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Just wanted to let people know we live in south Gordon and were robbed today.

It’s a good reminder to take extra care this time of season as crooks could create quite a bit of heart ache at this time of year with a successful strike. In our case, entrance to the house was attempted but failed. However, the two bikes we had in the back yard were stolen. One was a kid’s bike (Huffy, dark blue with a new white seat) and the other was an adult tricycle (INDI brand), red in colour with a large, white basket between the rear wheels. Unfortunately we didn’t make any identifying marks on them as to make them easy to link back to us if they are found so we’ll probably be lucky if we ever see them again. I guess the red tricycle is fairly rare as I have only seen one other in our general experience although I’m sure there must be more than that. The white basket is a little affected by rust since we kept it outdoors.

So if you do spot a couple of bikes that match this description, possibly abandoned, please contact the police and quote P581603 as the case number, thanks. We’re planning to contact Cash Converters etc tomorrow in case they turn up there at some point.

If you have gone through a similar experience, are there any other things we can do in an attempt to locate them?

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Sammy was it your pets setting off the false alarms?

Yep, also have a few flush-mount piezo screamers in the ceiling. Flush-mount are best as they’re much harder to disable with a swift smack from a solid object.

Best thing is to have noisy noise-makers IN the house, making it too unpleasant for the thieves to remain in the house. CCTV that activates when the alarms are tripped can be handy, too.

ADT installs are terrible, their response times and attendances are terrible, they have no local knowledge (“There’s an alarm going off in activation in Ng… Nuh-Guhn-nawl?”), and they overcharge.
Its alot easier to deal with a local company who you have a better chance of dealing with over the phone, and may eventually meet you in the street somewhere.
We had a typical response time of ten minutes for much of Canberra, and could give you a fairly accurate ETA to within a few minutes at the time we were doing the “Do you want a response” spiel.

Oh, and the worst thing about all those false alarms in the early days was that it mostly pissed the neighbours off, and it became a ‘boy who cried wolf’ situation.

In a somewhat convenient turn-of-events all of our nearby neighbours have since been recycled, and i’ve got a fresh set of neighbours who will hopefully be more likely to pay attention when my array of noise-makers is enacted.

and get it monitored

I had a monitored alarm that was installed by a professional installer, and due to the incompetence of the installer we had a lot of false alarms in the early days.

On more than a few occasions the monitoring company (ADT) would phone me to say the alarm was going off. They would ask if i’d like a patrol sent out, to which I would mostly reply ‘YES’, and on more than a few occasions I arrived home before the patrol had turned up.

This would be a good 30-60 minutes after the alarm had triggered.

In other words, monitoring is mostly expensive and useless, unless you have a company that guarantees a rapid response.

I now have a quality alarm system (Ness) that uses dual-sensor technology (PIR/microwave) that all but eliminates false alarms (none in 3 years from the dual-tech sensors). This is hooked up to an array of noise-makers both inside and outside the house.

The windows are the key to preventing people from breaking into your house. Lock them properly, i.e. with a key if you can and use the balsa wood sticks to prevent them from being slid across.

Most common way to get in is break a hand sized hole in a back/side window, stick hand through and open window from inside.

Serial numbers and such are always handy but a lot of stuff just gets swapped for drugs asap so it’s not overly effective and preventing your laptops/cameras from being nicked.

Also, those people who collect thousands of “worthless” coins in large jars equalling hundreds of dollars, take them to the bank and cash them in! They are the first item to go with kids.

hingo_VRCalaisV65:15 pm 19 Dec 07

What the f*ck is an adult tricycle?

“red in colour with a large, white basket between the rear wheels” LOL!!!

In all seriousness though, I’m sorry it got stolen. You shouldn’t need to worry about your possessions when they are safely stored in your yard or home.

Also to the above, buy a decent alarm, have it installed professionally, and get it monitored ($1-2/day).
Otherwise they just annoy the neighbourhood, as only a small percentage of strangers will ever bother to check out a house in alarm.

Easy time for theives.. they know most places are loaded with expensive christmas presents.

Unfortunately you need to nail down everything these days to avoid having it stolen, and your kids will have to learn to lock things in the garage or house, they will get in anywhere if they can.

Most of it’s opportunistic morons, we’ve had our locked side gate forced twice in the past few months.. only for them to find a dog in their face and looks like they’ve gone “oh shit” and buggered off.

Buy a dog (one that isn’t the equivalent to a rat and look after it) and alarm up!

Also on the note of little shits.. the police actually found that they could cut down on the crime rate a while ago by actually patrolling! Picked up something like 160 kids late at night down south, pity the government still thinks 2 policemen is good enough for Canberra and won’t put any money into it besides to top up the numbers.

For the things you’re missing, if they’re rare or marketable: check classifieds & trading post, keep an eye out at Sunday markets, listen for ‘back of truck’ sales from persons at pubs…
If they’re just going to be things that kids have taken on a lark, then start checking local storm water drains and ponds.

Timely reminder that Proud Local can probably back me up on:
Simple things work, if you’re going away for the holidays.

Getting someone to stop by and collect the mail frequently & put out the bins every week (before sundown),
Mow your lawns or get someone to do it when they come around to water your garden,
Use the timer switches to turn on lights and off,

If you’re wiling to accept that someone is going to get into your home at some point:
They’re successfully inside, so they want to get out with either as much as possible or as fast as possible.
Have a diversionary stash of quality fake jewellery or something you’re prepared to lose and a small stash of cash in a fairly logical place, and put your valuables either in a burglary rated safe or create a bizarrely located stash (jewellery in a plastic bag at the bottom of the freezer in the garage?).
Mark and inventory (serial numbers) your electronic and other saleable\carryable goods. Eeither engrave or visibly mark and identify laptop computers, game consoles, DVD players, tvs, as yours.

I caught some little bastards trying to break into my home once. I was home and they didn’t know it, so the look of utter terror on their faces and the speed with which they fled was satisfactory enough for me (they were all of 12).

When managing a local sports centre, we used to not even bother reporting thieves as the police routinely did nothing about it. 99.9% of them were 13-16, so we instead got in touch with their parents and handled it ourselves. Unfortunately in most cases, the parents simply didn’t care…

School holidays = dramatic increase in petty thievery and ‘street crime’ – everyone needs to be alert (but… wait for it… not alarmed).

They’re just expressing themselves through a non-confrontational form of expression i.e. “you’ve got stuff I want, and you’re not home – I’m taking it!”. 😉

It’s no coincidence that these things coincide with the end of school.

Sorry to hear mate!

I posted about 4 months ago about break and enters in O’Connor… 3 months after that post we were burgled again. 🙁

Insurance has just paid up this week, but now I’m very worried about it happening again in the future.

Make sure your house is secure and your family is safe!

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