Had an uninvited visitor in my shop this morning!

[Doug Domm]

Fortunately my wife got up for a glass of water early this morning and witnessed an uninvited visitor entering my shop this AM. I quickly went into property protection mode and "DETAINED" the intruder while my wife called 911. Our city's finest ( four patrol cars where there in short order) . The first officer smiled and asked, Hmmm What happened here? Enough said! My question now is. What do you have for security other than a monitored alarm? It is definately time to install something ASAP. I often times never even locked the shop because our German Shepherd did a fine job of keeping us secure however after 14 faithful years she is recently no longer with us ( boy do I miss her). Doug

[stage1scott]

"The first officer smiled and asked, Hmmm What happened here? Enough said!"

not enough said-did you shoot the worthless ******* or not? I unfortunately rely on the local alarm only, but live 5 miles from my shop. Fortunately, it is heavily patrolled a block off the main drag here. Nice you got quick response, hard to do better than a good dog or two as well.

[Beth Denysenko]

Since we are about 12 min. from our shop, we have both night vision capable cameras with audio that we can log on to from anywhere online as well as motion detectors. At the track, two german shepherds guard our pit spot while we are gone. If they can get by them, they have earned anything they take!

[Glenn Person]

Way to go Lurch, Hope you got a picture of the poor fellows "accident" on yur cell. Comming to the Acess car show today?
G.P.

[CMcAllister]

I have had this happen to me, it is not a good feeling.

My first thought is get another dog. They are a great early warning system and some knucklehead looking to steal something does not want to deal with a 100 pound GSD. They will look for easier prey. Just be careful, a dog attacking an innocent person on your property can become an ugly legal mess.

How did they get in if you had a monitored alarm? Does your alarm have an outside horn? Makes a godawful noise in the middle of the night. I don't know the layout of your property, but dusk to dawn lighting, motion lighting, systems to alert you when someone comes up your driveway or approaches on foot (infrared, etc.) can be considered. Public awareness (whether real or perceived) of you possessing the means and the willingness to inflict bodily harm, on anyone who comes onto your property for the wrong reason, can also be effective. Rumors of trespassers being shot at in the middle of the night (regardless their source) can be useful in convincing the bad guys to avoid your place.

Here's the number one thing to my mind. Did you recognize this person? Has he been in your shop or know someone who has? Is this a business or a personal shop? I pretty much had an open door policy. People would stop to bench race or see what projects we had. The person who burglarized me had been in my shop, he had tagged along with another person who had stopped by one day. I remember him walking around looking at everything. When he came back, he had his shopping list ready and knew how to get in. After that, my place was closed up tight. You needed to be family, an old friend or a trusted customer to have access to my work area. You may not want to appear unfriendly, but you have to limit access to you building. Gearheads and others passing by will want to stop and check out the cool cars and shoot the breeze. They may not all be innocent enthusiasts. Burglar alarms are not very effective if the perp has been able to inspect the system. There should be a public area for customers if you are doing business. Either way, you have to limit public knowledge and access to your stuff.

Sadly, the times we live in force us to be less friendly and trusting than we may want to be.

ETA...Reread your post and see that I had assumed you had a monitored alarm. The same type hardware can be used to alert you without having a monitoring service since you are right there. But, who's going to respond if you're out of town next time?

[Doug Domm]

This was my home shop in back yard with no alley access. Did not recognize this individual from past. I came in from the shop late last night and may not have locked and armed. My enclosed trailer was blocking driveway and doorway from street sightlines and I don't have visitors other than invited close friends. If I have something for sale it is not kept in the shop for strangers to view. I don't publicly display my shop either. Police feel it was random and the perp had no priors. As for the quick response it was likely that my neighbour is a cop and the responding officers know his address. Read: Looking out for each other! Doug

[CMcAllister]

Sounds like you are careful and none of my thoughts would have been helpful. Don't know what else you could have done other than replace the 4 legged guard and increase the locks/security on the building to increase the effort required to get in. I know that sometimes it takes an incident like this to really get a person to pay attention to security. Glad you caught the guy, I hate thieves.

[FED 387]

I had an incident a while back and then I had a guy install an alarm system both motion detector and the doors and windows too---when the alarm does go off the guy will probably be deaf for life!!!! My alarm not only turns the lights on by both electric and battery back up but the audible sound is 120-130 DECIBLES!!!! Comp 387

[Ron Ortiz]

Cactus and land mines are great deterents.

Ron Ortiz
U/SA oww, boom

[THE LEGEND]

In june I found a flash light in my drive way at 2 in the morning as I came back from the track. HHHMMM I thought. Next night the dogs were growling at the window at about 2 in the morning. Me, my 2 sons, the dogs and a baseball bat and some golf clubs made a trip outside and watched a silver pontiac sunfire drive off. Hav'nt seen it anymore. I do have an alarm on the shop. Thinking about buying something that spits out little pieces of lead. Never owned one any suggestions?
Chip