Your car/truck broke into at your house? What next?

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deltadude

Master of the Pit
Original poster
OTBS Member
Jun 3, 2008
1,529
38
Sacramento Area
Yo all,

This morning my wife discovered her car was either broke into or she left a door unlocked, nothing we thought was stolen, however the clove box & ash trays were gone through.  We reported it to our local police and even an officer came out and took a report.  We asked if they could drive through the neighborhood after 2am at least once a night.  Later a fella from the next street up came to my door, his car was broke into and again the door might have been unlocked because there was no sign of forced entry, BUT he had our papers from our vehicle that were in our glove box!

It looks like some teens have been trying car doors and seeing what they could get.  If they were successful once, and get a taste for theft, next will be breaking into houses or something else.

What steps would you take for home security that are low cost?  So far after living in this neighborhood for two years, we know of only one minor theft from a uhaul trailer that was left unlocked on an adjacent street.  In other words we are in a low crime area, most homes are occupied by owners, (however this is changing with foreclosures, and corporate buyers buy homes cheap and rent them out).

My current plan to prevent future possible vehicle crime.

1. Put our Garage front lights on dusk to dawn to motion sensor. 

2. Add low intensity spot light that will focus on our two vehicles parked in driveway, these spot lights will only come on from midnight until dawn when the motion sensor activates covering the driveway.

3. I am considering putting our garage inside lights on random timer to activate at least twelve times between 12am and 6am.  My garage door has windows in upper part.

4. My driveway is a 3 car drive with two car garage and gate for RV or boat parking next to the garage.  I already lock the gate, but am considering putting a low intensity light that again would be on a random timer dusk until dawn.

5. I am considering converting a pc-cam to a motion sensing camera that would wireless send pics to my PC.

Note my walk up to the front door entry is already using a motion sensing light.

We can't put our cars in the garage too much stuff in there from projects and wood working equipment.

Any ideas would be appreciated.
 
There are units out there that I've seen that come with 6 wireless video camera's that are activated by motion and send info to a DVR that is included in the package. I can not recall where I saw this but remember it was for like $250.
 
 
Sounds like you are doing all you can. The motion sensor light and cameras will help. We had Cell Phones stolen from both cars in the Drive way. We were the only house for 1/2 a mile in either direction. Figured it was the Garbage Collectors...JJ
 
Best deterrent is a barking dog. At least your cops will come out on a car prowling call. Ours won't even do that. They just send you a form in the mail to fill out.
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I see this stuff all the time. From my experiences, if there is one in a neighborhood there are probably several to go along with it. Our dept recently arrested two juveniles for breaking in to cars in a really nice neighborhood. The kids drove the investigator around and showed them the only two cars that they DID NOT break into in the neighborhood. A lot of the victim's did not even make reports. Anyhow my suggestion is A, make sure you sure you lock our car up. Guns, GPS, checks, wallets are all hot commodities. Make sure you put everything away inside the vehicle. If a perpetrator looks inside a vehicle and does not see anything of value in open view, then that makes the vehicle less appealing. I like the idea of installing the lights, but there is also a sensor that they make to alert the homeowner when there is movement in the driveway. It does not make any noise to the exterior of the house. Install a burglary alarms system in your house, and if you can afford it install some security cameras. Talk you to your neighbors and make sure everyone is reporting suspicious activity. If you are going on vacation for a while make sure you have some to get your mail for you. A mailbox full of mail just says" Hey I'm on vacation, please burglarize my house!" The same applies for a trash can on the curb. Oh one other thing, make sure that you write down your serial numbers to everything!!!! In the event that something is stolen and you have serial number it will be entered in a national database called NCIC. I think all agencies have the ability to check suspicious items through NCIC. I have found guns that were reported stolen from California and guns that were reported stolen over 15 years ago. 

In reality you can only do so much to deter crime, but if you have someone that is determined it really doesn't matter. They are going to get in the car regardless. Just be smart about what you are doing. 

Anyhow hope this helps!!
 
Also think about this, a lot of people keep garage door openers in their vehicles. Sometimes they will take the garage door opener and then return at a later time to get the burglarize the house. 
 
These days police do not solve robberies, they only fill out forms after the robbery has happened. Our home was broken into and after that experience I now don't have much faith in the police. Not much investigation, no prints were taken, even from a glass vase that change was dumped out of, or of other things touched by the thief. Now if you are driving drunk or the police pull you over and suspect drugs, then they will investigate. Buy a security system with cameras to protect your home, one that records video remotely once the system is tripped. To protect yourself and your family, buy a gun and learn how to use it because when seconds matter, the police are minutes away.
 
These days police do not solve robberies, they only fill out forms after the robbery has happened.

:biggrin:
At my place in PA, they won't even show up unless it's something extremely serious.
I had about $3,000 worth of stuff stolen 4 years ago and all they did was ask me a few questions over the phone.
No local police in that area, just the state police.
No surprise to me, I lost respect for most LEOS a long time ago,

~Martin
 
As far as leaving your vehicles outside, you're at their mercy (and like here, to hailstorms too.. baseball and softball sized hail).  Find some way to get your cars into the garage, that's what it's there for.  Good excuse to build a shop or storage shed, much cheaper than getting a vehicle stolen or damaged (just the deductible can be enormous).  

Then, install or have installed a good quality security system.  Yes, it can cost you up to $2,000 or more, but how much is your house deductible and peace of mind, and the revenge factor of actually catching the vandals vs. just being another blotter fodder on a police report?

Get a dog.  Mine is 8 yrs old and lazy as all get out, but a strange noise?  She is up on her toes in attack mode immediately and doesn't shut up.  Just had ATT come to the house to access our back yard for a neighbor's post.  They left a doorhanger saying they'd come back, and please refrain your attack dog, lol.. she didn't like them visiting on her watch, lol!


After 18 yrs at Radioshack, I helped countless people and heard   countless stories of "I should have done this before..." after they got robbed of thousands of dollars or vandalized, and no concrete proof.  Have inside and outside cameras and have a way to extract that information from a DVR or recording machine easily to give to police (something most people don't realize with cheap systems).  Help yourself before being victimized.

I do leave one vehicle outside myself, my '99 truck.  If it got broken into, stolen or damaged, it would be minimal loss, $500 max. and, they'd probably bring it back.... needs a lot of tranny work that's more expensive than the truck is work, only I can coax it to go forward, lol!
 
Sounds like yalls local agencies need to get with it. I do not know the size off the departments but it sounds like they dont have an investigation division. Most smaller agencies unfortunately do not have the personnel to have a patrol division that and a separate investigation division. If you have a large dept, then I have no idea why they are not investigating these crimes. If you feel like more should have been done, file a complaint and find out what the dept policy is find out why the scene was not processed for evidence.
 
There are 9 million peiople in the metroplex (Fort Worth, Mid-Cities, Dallas) and violent crimes take up most of their time.  If there wasn't a murder or fatality, you get a phone call and a hoh-hum.
 
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