Residential Burglaries

[Capt Jeff Kraynik]

I received as very disturbing phone call this morning.

A friend & fellow duck hunter was the victim of a residential burglary.

Taken were all of his firearms (15+) & all the wife's jewelry.

They even pepper sprayed the dog!!!

This is just a friendly reminder to take an afternoon & record all the serialized items in your home.
TV's, VCR's, computers, tablets, firearms, whatever has a model & serial number on it.

Go through the home & take pictures of EVERYTHING!!!

Take photos of all the unique setting on the jewelry.

Download all the numbers & pic's on a thumb drive & store it @ work or a safety deposit box.

There is a high recovery rate here in Florida due to mandatory reporting of serialized items by pawn shops.

Where we are loosing cases is when the suspects take the jewelry to the "Cash for Gold" places. Normally within days the items are smelted down & the evidence is lost. The SAO will not prosecute w/o evidence.

Another trick that we recommend for both serialized & non-serialized items is the use of Data Dots.

http://www.datadotdna.com/us/brand_datadot.php

We've make many successful prosecutions when the Data Dots are applied & recorded correctly.

Hope some of you take the time & document your home.

The one thing I here from victims is how "violated" they feel after a residential burglary.

Don't be a victim!!!

 

[Mark Koch]

Another idea is to document the contents with a video recorder. The advantage is you can add audio. We walked through the house, room by room, and did a inventory of all personal property. Keep a copy at a friends house in his gun safe and a copy of his in your gun safe. Not only does this help in the event of a burglary but also for fire, tornado, ect.

 

[Ray]

Spending $1000 on even a "cheap" gun safe is good insurance. I know that any competent thief with some power tools can cut into one, but that takes time and most pros don't like spending time making all that noise. However, the majority of these folks don't have the mental skill set to figure a gun safe out. Most gun safes are not real safes, just fire resistant metal boxes with expensive locking systems. Don't tell the kids that though.

After almost 20 years of living on the "wrong" side of a major city I am still shocked every time I come home from being gone for months at a time that no body has touched the place. Living in a run down looking house has its advantages I guess - "that dude don't have nuthing worth takin".

However, things are getting more interesting and I will be setting up some video gear now that the price has come down significantly. Also having cell phone service over the majority of the State now allows me to check in while gone all summer.

I keep a photo file here at the federal office building I work in. Both on CD and thumb drive.
When taking pictures of items I found that my macro setting on my point and shoot camera has an LED light on it. This takes the best photos of serial numbers on items. The flash washes the numbers out, and ambient light can cause the photo to be too blury. This LED light appears to be made just for this kind of photo taking.

Thanks for the link to the datadots. After reviewing the FAQs and application guide it looks like a decent way to hide identifying information on lots of items. However, to apply on a firearm it might require installation in a hidden location that will not be exposed to cleaning solvents or constant handling. The dots would have to go under the barrel on the fore end stock on most of my weapons. Inside the grips of the pistols. Same places I already write my last four. But a small dot would not cause someone to break out a file, paint can, or dremel tool to remove it.