Shaughnessy burglary

 

GarbageAt 10:22pm on Wednesday night, thieves used the garbage enclosure to gain access to the backyard of a client who had taken our advice about locking their side and back gates… but left the garage enclosure accessible.

As a result, at least two crooks used the enclosure to get into the yard and then smash through the back glass door in order to commit a quick theft of jewellery from the master bedroom.

As I posted a while ago, this burglary again followed the very typical M.O. of the vast majority of crooks and focused exclusively on the master bedroom and closet.

Please take a few minutes today to look at what you have in your bedside table drawers and closet… are there items that should be in a safety deposit box at the bank? or at least in a better hiding spot?

The loss from this burglary may well have been avoided had glassbreak detectors been installed at the home as the crooks had to break through two glass doors in the mudroom in order to gain access to the main part of the house. Given that there were not any glassbreaks, the first and only zone that we received was the main floor motion detector.

Further, because the alarm was so old (about 12 years old) it uses a very slow language to communicate with our Operations Centre… further reducing the likelihood of our being able to interupt a burglary.

Is it time for an upgrade of your alarm system? If your system is more than 5 years old, give us a call to discuss whether you should be considering upgrading your control panel to a newer model.

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Posted August 4th, 2006 by mjagger in Home Security Tips | You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

 

2 Responses to “Shaughnessy burglary”

Arnold Cheung Says:
August 10th, 2006 at 2:43 pm

I came across your blog through the mail-out you sent a few weeks back and find it very interesting and informative. I had a question about home security and was wondering if you had come across similar concerns from other home owners:

Do you know if there is a correlation between increased traffic at a residential construction site and criminal activity (e.g. residential B&E) at neighbouring homes?

I had heard that with the construction boom, a lot of the contractors and labourers are less than scrupulous and may be scoping out neighbouring homes to determine patterns while they’re on the job. In turn, they or their acquaintances may be tipped off about the patterns of neighbouring residents and thus increase the odds of a successful B&E.

Your insight would be appreciated.

arnold

Michael Jagger Says:
August 11th, 2006 at 10:10 am

Arnold:

Thank you for your question… I’m glad that you are finding the blog helpful.

In response to your question… while I am not aware of any specific statistics that would prove that burglaries are affected one way or another, I have found that even the most scrupulous contractors cannot control exactly who is on the jobsite at all times … Anecdotedly, I have dealt with several burglaries where we believed the likely culprits were working on a construction site across the street over an extended period of time and saw the homeowner leave every morning. In fact, at my own home a few years ago while we were getting the roof redone, I came home to check on the progress and overhead two of the labourers pulling the old shingles off of our roof talking about coming back to steal my motorcycle. After hearing that, I was able to talk to the contractor who immediately sent the men off the site (while I double checked the security on my motorcycle).

It is always possible that a construction site could bring some thieves who are also ‘scoping out’ the neighbourhood. If there is a site nearby to your home, I think that it would be wise to be a little more cautious about any suspicious activity as well as trying to avoid maintaining an obvious pattern of activity.

Here is a link to a post I wrote back in March about a burglary set-up during renovations:

http://www.providentsecurity.ca/blog/2006/03/burglary_setup_.html

Irrespective, the same security tips still apply no matter who is trying to break into your home. Provided that you have five-minute proofed your belongings, it will be very tough for any criminal to pull of a successful burglary.

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