It's been just over 30 days since the initial crime summary, so time for an update.
Nothing unexpected this month: two incidents of family violence, and two incidents of theft.
Of the two theft incidents, one involved the type of expensive and fairly-rare vehicle (H2) that would be expected to draw the attention of thieves, especially when left outdoors.
As noted in the first crime post, if you leave valuables in plain sight, including expensive cars in driveways instead of in garages, you run a high risk of attracting thieves.
Nobody knows this better than I do: Thirteen years ago, our previous house was not only burglarized but structurally damaged in the process. We were singled out because my ex-husband, a technology professional, kept an abnormally-expensive collection of electronics in the house at the time. When we were both away at work, the thieves broke down the front door with a battering ram, opened the garage, drove a truck or van in there, shut the garage so that they would not be detected, and spent most of a day loading up the good stuff and destroying that which they figured they could not fence.
Having found the Mother Lode of electronics, they concluded that there MUST be additional wealth hidden somewhere in that house, so they tore apart every single square inch of the place (the police said it was the single worst case of residential destruction that they had ever witnessed).
In fact, I didn't care about consumer bling, so there was no other wealth to be found, a fact that appeared to have made the thieves very, very frustrated and angry. Not only was my house and furniture destroyed but I came home to find every one of my brassieres hanging from the dining room chandelier, an unmistakeable message of ugly contempt.
I was five months pregnant at the time and had a full-time job, getting ready for baby and unable to deal with the monumental task of putting our lives back together. It was ONE FULL YEAR before we managed to fix all the structural damage and settle the insurance claims. The whole thing injected an enormous amount of stress into my pregnancy. All because of some fancy electronics that I didn't know how to work anyway.
Moral of the story: if you keep conspicuous wealth in and around your house, you are asking for it, period. Personally, I concluded that it's just not worth it. In the 13 years since that burglary, I've strongly avoided buying the type of consumer baubles that could make us into a target, and we've had no further trouble. I'm happier living this way. Not only are the risks lower, but the worries are less as well, and we waste less money to boot.
But back to the last 30 days here in Centerpointe: The other incident reportedly involved a theft of 2 uninstalled doors and 12 windows from a builder house in Section 9.
Construction thefts are not uncommon - all you need to do is look at that quad of video cameras aimed down Arlington and Willow to know that somebody must be seriously on the lookout for some kind of mischief.
The good news is that this type of thievery tends not to be indiscriminant - it tends to affect unoccupied build-houses, and to a degree that is rumored to involve a code of honor, because the thefts are often committed by individuals associated with the trades. The last time I had a chat with my TREC inspector, he noted sardonically that tradesmen target certain commodities with such precision that they have been known to take off their shoes so that they will not spoil the carpets as they are in the process of stealing hot water heaters and other appliances from not-yet-occupied new houses. To spoil the carpet would be bad form!!
So the moral of THAT story is that construction thefts, like family violence, are an unfortunate part of our society but have a lower likelihood of directly affecting the rest of us, by their nature.
And there you have it - another thirty fairly-typical days in suburban paradise.
:-)
Nothing unexpected this month: two incidents of family violence, and two incidents of theft.
 |
| Screengrabbed from http://www.crimereports.com/ |
As noted in the first crime post, if you leave valuables in plain sight, including expensive cars in driveways instead of in garages, you run a high risk of attracting thieves.
Nobody knows this better than I do: Thirteen years ago, our previous house was not only burglarized but structurally damaged in the process. We were singled out because my ex-husband, a technology professional, kept an abnormally-expensive collection of electronics in the house at the time. When we were both away at work, the thieves broke down the front door with a battering ram, opened the garage, drove a truck or van in there, shut the garage so that they would not be detected, and spent most of a day loading up the good stuff and destroying that which they figured they could not fence.
Having found the Mother Lode of electronics, they concluded that there MUST be additional wealth hidden somewhere in that house, so they tore apart every single square inch of the place (the police said it was the single worst case of residential destruction that they had ever witnessed).
In fact, I didn't care about consumer bling, so there was no other wealth to be found, a fact that appeared to have made the thieves very, very frustrated and angry. Not only was my house and furniture destroyed but I came home to find every one of my brassieres hanging from the dining room chandelier, an unmistakeable message of ugly contempt.
I was five months pregnant at the time and had a full-time job, getting ready for baby and unable to deal with the monumental task of putting our lives back together. It was ONE FULL YEAR before we managed to fix all the structural damage and settle the insurance claims. The whole thing injected an enormous amount of stress into my pregnancy. All because of some fancy electronics that I didn't know how to work anyway.
Moral of the story: if you keep conspicuous wealth in and around your house, you are asking for it, period. Personally, I concluded that it's just not worth it. In the 13 years since that burglary, I've strongly avoided buying the type of consumer baubles that could make us into a target, and we've had no further trouble. I'm happier living this way. Not only are the risks lower, but the worries are less as well, and we waste less money to boot.
But back to the last 30 days here in Centerpointe: The other incident reportedly involved a theft of 2 uninstalled doors and 12 windows from a builder house in Section 9.
Construction thefts are not uncommon - all you need to do is look at that quad of video cameras aimed down Arlington and Willow to know that somebody must be seriously on the lookout for some kind of mischief.
The good news is that this type of thievery tends not to be indiscriminant - it tends to affect unoccupied build-houses, and to a degree that is rumored to involve a code of honor, because the thefts are often committed by individuals associated with the trades. The last time I had a chat with my TREC inspector, he noted sardonically that tradesmen target certain commodities with such precision that they have been known to take off their shoes so that they will not spoil the carpets as they are in the process of stealing hot water heaters and other appliances from not-yet-occupied new houses. To spoil the carpet would be bad form!!
So the moral of THAT story is that construction thefts, like family violence, are an unfortunate part of our society but have a lower likelihood of directly affecting the rest of us, by their nature.
And there you have it - another thirty fairly-typical days in suburban paradise.
:-)
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