Case Study – Two Real Home Break in

Home Break in – Don’t let it happen to you

Just a couple of weeks after my house was broken into, one of my neighbor’s had a home break in as well. It was across the street, just five houses away. The scary part is that he got two break-ins within two weeks.  Let’s learn from this situation and be more prepared.

The first break-in happened around 12:00 PM, and this is actually not uncommon, most burglaries take place between 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM, so during the day while you’re at work. My camera recording showed the burglars entering and exiting my neighbor’s house. They spent 12 minutes in the home, they entered on a side door in the garage and they broke also the garage door in the house. The “luck” of the owner was that one neighbor heard some noise and went to the front to check. At that point, the burglars fled. Still, the damage was done, two doors broken and around 20K worth of gold jewelry lost.

As I mentioned, everything was recorded on my outdoor cameras, and I supplied the video to the Police. I am not sure if the Police could do something with my video, as it’s a long way to the other home, and we observed and confirmed just the timing, and how they operated.

The second break-in

– was at 2 weeks after the first and took place around 2:00 PM. Same process, the burglars drove around with the car a couple of times back and forth on the street. Two guys were dropped off on another street, came to the house in a team of two, split the team to go around to check if everything is clear, rang the bell. When nobody was answering, they smashed the front door and got in. This time the guys took longer than expected, around 20 minutes, after which they left the house walking as two normal people, got into the car and were gone.

This time I was able to provide to the Police more detailed video, as they were walking across the street, close to my house. The same, not close enough to make out their faces. Maybe the Police has a better technology. Damage was done to the door, and I am not sure the value that was taken the second time, but the burglars left with two shopping bags full of goods, just walking down the street as nothing happened.

As you can see, both break-ins happened between 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM. Why? Because everybody is at work. I checked around that time, there are people home usually in our neighborhood, elderly and night shift workers, nobody heard anything suspicious.

Lesson learned

If you’re still wondering what to do after a break-in, please consider at least an indoor video camera, to point to the main door. Had my neighbor done this, he might have prevented further damage after the first break-in. I’m glad to see he now has a webcam in his window.

You can read about my story, my house was broken into as well, but I was lucky, as the guys observed my camera and fled.

These webcams are not expensive, the cheapest one is around $35, and the installation is simple. You can check it on my blog, step by step wireless camera installation.

Be prepared, don’t let the burglars surprise you.