Give me a reason NOT to buy;

dynamite, a gun, barbed wire etc....
Possession is all strictly prohibited in our country.
All for many good reasons. But after our latest 'experience', reason is a bit lost here.
Oh well.... get over it !



Above picture shows the result of our burglar visit.

What happened?
02:30 AM; I wake up because of a crackling loud sound. I switch on a bedroom light and go downstairs to the living room. There I find nothing abnormal; all doors are correctly locked, all windows seem OK. So back to bed again. I sleep quickly, so QSY zzzzz...
02:45 AM; again this loud noise. Instead of going downstairs, I put aside the window curtain, look downside left at my parking lot.....to see a guy in total black tight clothing, hand gloves and baseball cap. Upon detection he winks his fellow man and both run away quickly. There's an attempted burglary going on.
I jump into my hobby overalls, put on a pair of sneekers, open my front door and run into the direction they went off. I spent some 7 minutes looking at several cars, checking alleys and several roads.
It is not my intention to force a confrontation being alone without any arms whatsoever, but at least I want them to know that I do not just sit back and p*** my pants. And besides, I was being just a bit upset...

Burglar result
Using a 200m glass sucker, they tried to break the lock of the sash windows, which are on the side of my house where the parking lot is. They needed several attempts before the plastic window-chassis broke.
Only one lock of the outer windows is broken before they were detected while performing their profession.
No other damages have been found.

Police assistance
I call the alarm number at 02:55 AM and report the attempted burglary. At 03:30 they arrive, look at the window and enter my house to write a report. Upon their leave I ask if there have been any other attempts recently in my area; "no, not that we would know".
Later that day,I'm visited by two officers of the forensic research who take prints of the glass sucker and a hand glove on the second inner window.

Property owner action
Since I never open these windows, I decide to fixate the window permanently using glue. Next, I have cut some 25x25mm bars to block the windows:




More protection is needed; a Halogen floodlight with motion detector is mounted on the bottom of my antenna tower. It switches in after dark automatically.

The back fence can use an upgrade too; so I add a new layer of treated plywood. The most vulnerable part is done first. Next week I will do the rest.



Next to installing extra safety-locks, there are some more tricks&tips I will
be implementing this week.

Neighbourhood monitoring
A quick check at the closest neigbours revealed that there was a succesfully burglary 6 doors away, just the other week. Talking to these people and others across the street I learned that 2 more houses in our area have been victims last month. Would have been nice if there had been a short informing letter to everyone. Let's start doing that ourselves.

With regard to possible psychological effects
I experience no anger, extreme frustration or other negative effects. In fact I went to bed again 30minutes after the police left the house that morning. But I do understand very well that such might show up sometime. For now let's just say that at this point I regard the whole story a 'negative business encounter'; they want something from me, I want to avoid that deal as much as possible. I need to put more effort in my work there.
The story is different for my girlfriend though. Thank god she slept through the whole story. But she's seeing burglars everywhere and she hasn't slept well ever since. I'm doing my best to bring back that comfort to her.
Let's end this with the simple fact that there are other more serious issues in life and we will grow over this too.


If you have any tips or remarks, please feel free to add any comment