It is no secret and should come as absolutely no surprise to homeowners that when burglars enter your home they are essentially looking for three or four things: cash and/or credit cards, jewelry, handguns and possibly valuable collectibles. These are historically the top items that burglars steal. And there’s good reason for this. Cash is obvious but the other items are easily sold (at a great discount) usually with no questions asked at a pawn shop.
In today’s story we will highlight several examples from recent burglaries that backup this tenet of burglary.
In our first story from Potomac, Maryland comes an example with links to European organized crime. A midday burglary happened after a homeowner left to run errands. The burglar barged through a set of French doors off the living room and then stormed up the main stairwell where he plucked fine jewelry from the second-floor bedrooms. The burglar then hit the master bathroom closet where the family kept its safe. The safe contained more than $100,000 in cash, antique jewelry and silver dollar certificates. Quite a payday!
Police got search warrants and found many stolen items in the room of a man who had a rap sheet with theft, burglary and false identification charges. Police say he has ties to Eastern European organized crime. It is believed that the burglar shipped the jewels and cash directly to Poland more than likely never to be seen again.
Another story from the Murfreesboro,TN jewelry, cash and five guns worth more than $5,000 were stolen from a home according to a Murfreesboro Police Department incident report. According to the police report there were no suspects listed. It appears that the suspect or suspects entered through a window in the back of the home. When the homeowner arrived on the scene he found three long guns and two handguns missing with cash, several pieces of jewelry and a medium-size safe.
And just to show that homeowners in the United States are not the only ones who are victims of burglars, this story from the United Kingdom says that jewelry and approximately €1000 were stolen from a home while the homeowner was sleeping on a sofa. The burglar came in through the back bathroom window and rifled through drawers underneath the couple’s bed. He then stole the homeowners purse, jewelry box, passports and the euros and left through a front window. Apparently the burglar didn’t think much of the jewelry because that and the credit and debit cards were found in a neighbor’s garden.
The last story comes to us from Florida where an employee thought his boss shorted him money on his paycheck so he decided to take matters into his own hands by burglarizing his boss’s house. Apparently close to $30,000 in guns and jewelry, including a Rolex watch, were taken. That should cover the shortage!
Burglars, even professional burglars, know where to look for items that they are interested in stealing. But the fact of the matter is that burglars cannot look everywhere in a house because they only spend on average 10 minutes or less looking for valuables to steal. That is why diversion safes, which are really not safes at all, but rather disguised hiding places are so important in protecting cash, jewelry and even handguns.
Diversion safes are disguised as common household products that you would see in a home in a kitchen or bathroom that have hollowed out interiors to hide small items. They are even weighted to make them feel like the real thing.
This Book Safe is a great example.
We have 110 can and Diversion Safes for you to choose from, all of them geared to hide small valuables.
What has been your experience with home burglary? What precautions do you take to protect your small valuables like cash, jewelry and handguns? Share your secrets with us!