6 ms·

The strange expertise of burglars

100 points by d_a_robson 11y ago

murbard2 11y ago
TL;DR practice
WalterBright 11y ago
The article is frustratingly vague about what the actual strategies used by burglars are, giving little useful information about what can be done to blunt your losses.
- ColinCochrane 11y ago
  There were a couple of useful points in there. Instead, Nee says one trick could be to find something unexpected that doesn’t fit the usual script of a crime, breaking the burglar out of the automatic, below-conscious processing. “That’s likely to make them abandon the crime,” Nee suggests. Playing a recording of someone’s footsteps, or even something as simple as gentle white noise, might be distracting enough to perturb the burglar. Equally, you could lay out your house in a distinct way – anything that confuses their automatic mental maps. “The thing is, you have to be innovative over time because burglars will get used to whatever you do,” she says. and For the time being, there are some easy measures that we could all take. Besides the obvious (remembering to close windows and lock doors) Nee thinks one of the best strategies is to pretend that someone is always in the house; almost all the burglars she has interviewed report that they will do anything to avoid a face-to-face encounter
  - knodi123 11y ago
    One line jumped out at me, though- whatever you do, you have to keep changing it, because burglars will get used to it. Excuse me? If you have that much burglar traffic in your home, maybe you ought to just move.
    - noxToken 11y ago
      I'm pretty sure that's not specifically pointed at any person. It means that you should try to stay ahead of the curve. For example, it could be recommended to install motion-sensing lights. Burglars figure out dead zones to those lights to avoid them. Then you upgrade to a video feed. Then burglars figure out those dead zones. Then you upgrade to cameras on a timed swivel. And so on... I think.
      - gedrap 11y ago
        I think that's not what was meant. The way I understood (and I agree) is that if you have to go great lengths to stay ahead of burglars, etc you should consider changing the neighborhood. Well, unless you are well known, flashing cash and sports cars but you get the point.
        noxToken 11y ago
        Ah. I didn't think of it that way. Good point.
  - fredgrott 11y ago
    believe it or not an empty gun cabinet and some empty ammo boxes place inside works for some reason
    - hga 11y ago
      Tends to signal "I'm off hunting/shooting, it would be a really good idea to finish before I'm back...." Particularly strong in Texas, at least until the law is judicially nullified as it's been in other states in the nation like Oklahoma, where you to can use lethal force to stop a theft, as in someone walking away holding your TV, after a verbal warning.
    - richardw 11y ago
      Not where I live (South Africa). You'll be targeted for your gun. I suppose one benefit of the U.S. gun laws is that they're so easy to source that there's no need to steal yours.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    We'd just moved into our house, went out to supper, came back to a broken window. Inside, cupboards were open, drawers pulled - and they were all empty. We hadn't put anything away yet. The burglar went away frustrated and empty-handed.
    - PhantomGremlin 11y ago
      Did this happen recently? If so, then I think you should consider moving again. Sooner rather than later. If it was a while ago, did you have any more problems?
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Nah. It was a neighbor kid. Just got out of a short term in prison, they were having a 'welcome home' party, he got drunk and came over and tried to burglarize us. Found him sleeping in the bushes.
- cobralibre 11y ago
  True. It might be because the research has not involved empirical tests of any such practical information, as far as I could tell from the article. My vague takeaway is that burglars rely on patterns of typical household layouts and homeowner behaviors so that they can do their work, as it were, at a higher level of abstraction than an amateur can. Anything that you can do to frustrate their assumptions of typicality, then, might lower their efficiency or discourage them from attempting a burglary in the first place. Perhaps some clever applications of home automation tech could be employed. Or if you're fortunate enough to keep an inconsistent schedule, that too could help.
  - kriro 11y ago
    Yeah this seems to be the case. I've actually read one of Dr. Nee's papers recently (since I'm interested in VR). My takeaway without being a psychologist is that there are stored patterns of navigating houses and a general understanding of the starting situation (all burglars took the rear entry, all students took the front entry). Link to the paper (somewhat vague on the details as well but gives a better overview than the article, should be free access): http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1068316X.2014.989849 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1068316X.2014.989...
- gingerlime 11y ago
  yep, pretty thin on this front and not much more than common-sense. My personal tip: when away from home for a while, I try to leave an electric timer connected to a light. I also use a timer-based radio tuned to a channel with lots of speaking (rather than music). Just be careful. I once left it too loud and the neighbours downstairs complained... (luckily it was running on my pc, so I could ssh into it and turn the volume down remotely).
  - rbritton 11y ago
    In addition to some motion sensitive lights, I use a couple of these connected to lights: http://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-Econoswitch-RPLS740B-Programmable-Switch/dp/B004AP92N2/ http://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-Econoswitch-RPLS740B-Program... They have an "away" mode where it will randomize the circuit it's connected to during the normal evening hours after sunset.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  I thought it would be interesting to have a geo tracking device made up that looks exactly like a credit card. It could be activated by removing it from a wallet. Then leave it on your dresser or in a decoy wallet in the house. So if someone automatically picked it up it would send a trail of where it had been to the cloud and later you would know which way the burglar went after they left your house. With chip and pin cards it would be even easier, a card with the chip programmed to alert the cashier when ever it is used.
  - ugexe 11y ago
    I did something similar with a briefcase when my car was being broken into multiple times. Except it also had pepper spray rigged to spray when it was forced open. Yes, it worked.
  - jeffreyrogers 11y ago
    In high school one of my friends had some of his things stolen from a locker room by a member of the opposing team. His phone was with the things and his things were eventually recovered because they tracked it to the thief's house.
- prawn 11y ago
  Apparently laminated windows can help.
mhb 11y ago
Burglars who have been caught...
koonsolo 11y ago
I once came across this AMA of a burglar on reddit, much more interesting than the above article: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eewou/iama_retired_cat_burglar_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eewou/iama_retired_cat...
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  also this story of a career art burglar in Venice: https://medium.com/epic-magazine/pipino-gentleman-thief-ede9713dafb1 https://medium.com/epic-magazine/pipino-gentleman-thief-ede9...
  - mod 11y ago
    Long story, but it was a great read. Well worth it if this kind of thing interests you.
- __z 11y ago
  That was a somewhat interesting post but this part confuses me - "I drew the line at wedding rings and wedding bands. I never stole a person's wedding rings." How can you tell a ring is a wedding ring? Do wedding rings have some sort of special design? I thought a wedding ring could be any ring. I am married but neither my spouse or I own any jewelry including wedding rings so I don't know.
  - IvyMike 11y ago
    Typically the wedding ring is simple and unadorned--it's just a plain gold ring, no jewels. There are a lot of exceptions to this. But I assume the burglar kept his rule simple.
    - ars 11y ago
      If you are wondering about the origin of that custom, it's because Jewish weddings are consecrated with a ring, technically any item of value works, but a ring is the custom. The bride who receives the item must be able to tell more or less what it's worth (so that there is no falsehood involved). If the ring is decorated, or if it's made of more than one metal, or if it has jewels on it, this is more difficult. It's hard to tell just by looking what the quality of a Jewel is, but everyone knows that gold is worth something, and you can see how much gold there is. (So a hollow ring would also be a problem.) As a result the guidance is that wedding rings are always plain gold bands.
__z 11y ago
>“In the past, people thought of offenders as impulsive, indiscriminate, opportunistic – they didn’t think they were very clever because they usually aren’t well educated,” There's two categories of burglars: those that are clever and those who actually are impulsive, indiscriminate, and opportunistic. To group them all together is really untrue else "crimes of opportunity" wouldn't be a thing.. I've seen cases of some really dumb and obviously unplanned burglaries - including the time my own house was burglarized. I've seen even dumber petty thefts - those that were impulsive, indiscriminate, opportunistic to a T. Example: a friend of mine had a bottle of Gatorade stolen from her car but the robber left the cash in the (unlocked) glove compartment.
- gmac 11y ago
  The verb is (traditionally) to burgle. When I see 'burglarize' I can't help wondering where it will all end. burgle -> burglar -> burglarize -> burglarizer -> burglarizerize -> burglarizerizer -> ... ? (Yes, this is off-topic pedantry; I can't help myself; sorry). Edit: corrected my assertion that burglar comes from burgle.
  - waqf 11y ago
    No, no it's not. The word "burgle" is back-formed from "burglar". Were it otherwise, we would write "burgler".
  - kenko 11y ago
    Pedant, correct thyself: the first citation for "burglarize" in the OED is 1871, and the first citation for "burgle" is ... 1872. (The first definition for "burglarize" in the OED is "To rob burglariously", which is wonderful. For "burgle" they note that it's "a back-formation < burglar n., of very recent appearance, though English Law Latin had a verb burgulare of same meaning. Orig. colloq. or humorous." They define it too using the adverb "burglariously".)
  - __z 11y ago
    >The verb is (traditionally) to burgle. No it isn't. Not where I'm from, I've never heard of the word "burgle."
moron4hire 11y ago
So my grandmother storing her jewelry in the freezer was not insane? Or, rather, not for that reason :P
- keithpeter 11y ago
  OA suggests that the average exploit takes a few minutes. So, find baroque and time consuming ways of storing high value stuff. Having said that, you would be hard put to find £1000 worth of stuff in my humble home even given an hour or two, unless you happen to be stealing on commission for a circle of book dealers...
  - thrownaway122 11y ago
    On the other hand a lot of the time they need £40 for a hit of their drug of choice and it is unlikely you have nothing that can't be sold for £40.
robinsloan 11y ago
If you are into this kind of stuff, keep an eye out for "The Burglar's Guide to the City" by Geoff Manaugh, coming in October. It looks fantastic: http://www.amazon.com/Burglars-Guide-City-Geoff-Manaugh/dp/0374117268 http://www.amazon.com/Burglars-Guide-City-Geoff-Manaugh/dp/0...
- _asummers 11y ago
  And with that, I realized that Amazon doesn't have a feature I wish it did -- wishlisting an item that won't be available for several months. Perhaps that is on purpose. If you don't want to forget about it, you're then forced to order it then and there.
  - j_s 11y ago
    ?? It's on my wishlist. Click 'Add to Wish List' under the box with all the pricing info on the right.
    - _asummers 11y ago
      I swear that wasn't there when I looked at the page. I must be going blind. Completely disregard my earlier comment!
      - nitrogen 11y ago
        Could be an ongoing A/B test? While it's probably impossible to be successful in e-commerce without A/B testing, I hate the gaslighting effect it can have.
nkrisc 11y ago
I imagine that an effective alarm would be a recording of a blood-curdling scream and loud, random, dissonant chords. That would probably throw off and disturb most people, let alone a burglar in your house.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- prawn 11y ago
  The Jaws theme?
  - Uberphallus 11y ago
    Requiem for a Dream theme, I'm gonna play!
boothead 11y ago
Making smaller circles in action: http://theartoflearningproject.org/resources/make-smaller-circles/ http://theartoflearningproject.org/resources/make-smaller-ci...
mattbeckman 11y ago
We have an HOA. For years, I've been getting crap from them about not parking one of our two vehicles in the garage. I work from home, so IMO the best bet for me is to keep my car on the driveway. We had a house a couple doors down burglarized twice within 6 months. I'm still being stubborn and keeping one of my cars on our driveway whenever I can.

100 points by d_a_robson 11y ago

TL;DR practice

The article is frustratingly vague about what the actual strategies used by burglars are, giving little useful information about what can be done to blunt your losses.

ColinCochrane 11y ago
There were a couple of useful points in there. Instead, Nee says one trick could be to find something unexpected that doesn’t fit the usual script of a crime, breaking the burglar out of the automatic, below-conscious processing. “That’s likely to make them abandon the crime,” Nee suggests. Playing a recording of someone’s footsteps, or even something as simple as gentle white noise, might be distracting enough to perturb the burglar. Equally, you could lay out your house in a distinct way – anything that confuses their automatic mental maps. “The thing is, you have to be innovative over time because burglars will get used to whatever you do,” she says. and For the time being, there are some easy measures that we could all take. Besides the obvious (remembering to close windows and lock doors) Nee thinks one of the best strategies is to pretend that someone is always in the house; almost all the burglars she has interviewed report that they will do anything to avoid a face-to-face encounter
- knodi123 11y ago
  One line jumped out at me, though- whatever you do, you have to keep changing it, because burglars will get used to it. Excuse me? If you have that much burglar traffic in your home, maybe you ought to just move.
  - noxToken 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure that's not specifically pointed at any person. It means that you should try to stay ahead of the curve. For example, it could be recommended to install motion-sensing lights. Burglars figure out dead zones to those lights to avoid them. Then you upgrade to a video feed. Then burglars figure out those dead zones. Then you upgrade to cameras on a timed swivel. And so on... I think.
    - gedrap 11y ago
      I think that's not what was meant. The way I understood (and I agree) is that if you have to go great lengths to stay ahead of burglars, etc you should consider changing the neighborhood. Well, unless you are well known, flashing cash and sports cars but you get the point.
      - noxToken 11y ago
        Ah. I didn't think of it that way. Good point.
- fredgrott 11y ago
  believe it or not an empty gun cabinet and some empty ammo boxes place inside works for some reason
  - hga 11y ago
    Tends to signal "I'm off hunting/shooting, it would be a really good idea to finish before I'm back...." Particularly strong in Texas, at least until the law is judicially nullified as it's been in other states in the nation like Oklahoma, where you to can use lethal force to stop a theft, as in someone walking away holding your TV, after a verbal warning.
  - richardw 11y ago
    Not where I live (South Africa). You'll be targeted for your gun. I suppose one benefit of the U.S. gun laws is that they're so easy to source that there's no need to steal yours.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  We'd just moved into our house, went out to supper, came back to a broken window. Inside, cupboards were open, drawers pulled - and they were all empty. We hadn't put anything away yet. The burglar went away frustrated and empty-handed.
  - PhantomGremlin 11y ago
    Did this happen recently? If so, then I think you should consider moving again. Sooner rather than later. If it was a while ago, did you have any more problems?
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Nah. It was a neighbor kid. Just got out of a short term in prison, they were having a 'welcome home' party, he got drunk and came over and tried to burglarize us. Found him sleeping in the bushes.
cobralibre 11y ago
True. It might be because the research has not involved empirical tests of any such practical information, as far as I could tell from the article. My vague takeaway is that burglars rely on patterns of typical household layouts and homeowner behaviors so that they can do their work, as it were, at a higher level of abstraction than an amateur can. Anything that you can do to frustrate their assumptions of typicality, then, might lower their efficiency or discourage them from attempting a burglary in the first place. Perhaps some clever applications of home automation tech could be employed. Or if you're fortunate enough to keep an inconsistent schedule, that too could help.
- kriro 11y ago
  Yeah this seems to be the case. I've actually read one of Dr. Nee's papers recently (since I'm interested in VR). My takeaway without being a psychologist is that there are stored patterns of navigating houses and a general understanding of the starting situation (all burglars took the rear entry, all students took the front entry). Link to the paper (somewhat vague on the details as well but gives a better overview than the article, should be free access): http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1068316X.2014.989849 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1068316X.2014.989...
gingerlime 11y ago
yep, pretty thin on this front and not much more than common-sense. My personal tip: when away from home for a while, I try to leave an electric timer connected to a light. I also use a timer-based radio tuned to a channel with lots of speaking (rather than music). Just be careful. I once left it too loud and the neighbours downstairs complained... (luckily it was running on my pc, so I could ssh into it and turn the volume down remotely).
- rbritton 11y ago
  In addition to some motion sensitive lights, I use a couple of these connected to lights: http://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-Econoswitch-RPLS740B-Programmable-Switch/dp/B004AP92N2/ http://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-Econoswitch-RPLS740B-Program... They have an "away" mode where it will randomize the circuit it's connected to during the normal evening hours after sunset.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
I thought it would be interesting to have a geo tracking device made up that looks exactly like a credit card. It could be activated by removing it from a wallet. Then leave it on your dresser or in a decoy wallet in the house. So if someone automatically picked it up it would send a trail of where it had been to the cloud and later you would know which way the burglar went after they left your house. With chip and pin cards it would be even easier, a card with the chip programmed to alert the cashier when ever it is used.
- ugexe 11y ago
  I did something similar with a briefcase when my car was being broken into multiple times. Except it also had pepper spray rigged to spray when it was forced open. Yes, it worked.
- jeffreyrogers 11y ago
  In high school one of my friends had some of his things stolen from a locker room by a member of the opposing team. His phone was with the things and his things were eventually recovered because they tracked it to the thief's house.
prawn 11y ago
Apparently laminated windows can help.

mhb 11y ago

Burglars who have been caught...

koonsolo 11y ago

I once came across this AMA of a burglar on reddit, much more interesting than the above article: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eewou/iama_retired_cat_burglar_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eewou/iama_retired_cat...

nosuchthing 11y ago
also this story of a career art burglar in Venice: https://medium.com/epic-magazine/pipino-gentleman-thief-ede9713dafb1 https://medium.com/epic-magazine/pipino-gentleman-thief-ede9...
- mod 11y ago
  Long story, but it was a great read. Well worth it if this kind of thing interests you.
__z 11y ago
That was a somewhat interesting post but this part confuses me - "I drew the line at wedding rings and wedding bands. I never stole a person's wedding rings." How can you tell a ring is a wedding ring? Do wedding rings have some sort of special design? I thought a wedding ring could be any ring. I am married but neither my spouse or I own any jewelry including wedding rings so I don't know.
- IvyMike 11y ago
  Typically the wedding ring is simple and unadorned--it's just a plain gold ring, no jewels. There are a lot of exceptions to this. But I assume the burglar kept his rule simple.
  - ars 11y ago
    If you are wondering about the origin of that custom, it's because Jewish weddings are consecrated with a ring, technically any item of value works, but a ring is the custom. The bride who receives the item must be able to tell more or less what it's worth (so that there is no falsehood involved). If the ring is decorated, or if it's made of more than one metal, or if it has jewels on it, this is more difficult. It's hard to tell just by looking what the quality of a Jewel is, but everyone knows that gold is worth something, and you can see how much gold there is. (So a hollow ring would also be a problem.) As a result the guidance is that wedding rings are always plain gold bands.

__z 11y ago

>“In the past, people thought of offenders as impulsive, indiscriminate, opportunistic – they didn’t think they were very clever because they usually aren’t well educated,” There's two categories of burglars: those that are clever and those who actually are impulsive, indiscriminate, and opportunistic. To group them all together is really untrue else "crimes of opportunity" wouldn't be a thing.. I've seen cases of some really dumb and obviously unplanned burglaries - including the time my own house was burglarized. I've seen even dumber petty thefts - those that were impulsive, indiscriminate, opportunistic to a T. Example: a friend of mine had a bottle of Gatorade stolen from her car but the robber left the cash in the (unlocked) glove compartment.

gmac 11y ago
The verb is (traditionally) to burgle. When I see 'burglarize' I can't help wondering where it will all end. burgle -> burglar -> burglarize -> burglarizer -> burglarizerize -> burglarizerizer -> ... ? (Yes, this is off-topic pedantry; I can't help myself; sorry). Edit: corrected my assertion that burglar comes from burgle.
- waqf 11y ago
  No, no it's not. The word "burgle" is back-formed from "burglar". Were it otherwise, we would write "burgler".
- kenko 11y ago
  Pedant, correct thyself: the first citation for "burglarize" in the OED is 1871, and the first citation for "burgle" is ... 1872. (The first definition for "burglarize" in the OED is "To rob burglariously", which is wonderful. For "burgle" they note that it's "a back-formation < burglar n., of very recent appearance, though English Law Latin had a verb burgulare of same meaning. Orig. colloq. or humorous." They define it too using the adverb "burglariously".)
- __z 11y ago
  >The verb is (traditionally) to burgle. No it isn't. Not where I'm from, I've never heard of the word "burgle."

moron4hire 11y ago

So my grandmother storing her jewelry in the freezer was not insane? Or, rather, not for that reason :P

keithpeter 11y ago
OA suggests that the average exploit takes a few minutes. So, find baroque and time consuming ways of storing high value stuff. Having said that, you would be hard put to find £1000 worth of stuff in my humble home even given an hour or two, unless you happen to be stealing on commission for a circle of book dealers...
- thrownaway122 11y ago
  On the other hand a lot of the time they need £40 for a hit of their drug of choice and it is unlikely you have nothing that can't be sold for £40.

robinsloan 11y ago

If you are into this kind of stuff, keep an eye out for "The Burglar's Guide to the City" by Geoff Manaugh, coming in October. It looks fantastic: http://www.amazon.com/Burglars-Guide-City-Geoff-Manaugh/dp/0374117268 http://www.amazon.com/Burglars-Guide-City-Geoff-Manaugh/dp/0...

_asummers 11y ago
And with that, I realized that Amazon doesn't have a feature I wish it did -- wishlisting an item that won't be available for several months. Perhaps that is on purpose. If you don't want to forget about it, you're then forced to order it then and there.
- j_s 11y ago
  ?? It's on my wishlist. Click 'Add to Wish List' under the box with all the pricing info on the right.
  - _asummers 11y ago
    I swear that wasn't there when I looked at the page. I must be going blind. Completely disregard my earlier comment!
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      Could be an ongoing A/B test? While it's probably impossible to be successful in e-commerce without A/B testing, I hate the gaslighting effect it can have.

nkrisc 11y ago

I imagine that an effective alarm would be a recording of a blood-curdling scream and loud, random, dissonant chords. That would probably throw off and disturb most people, let alone a burglar in your house.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
prawn 11y ago
The Jaws theme?
- Uberphallus 11y ago
  Requiem for a Dream theme, I'm gonna play!

boothead 11y ago

Making smaller circles in action: http://theartoflearningproject.org/resources/make-smaller-circles/ http://theartoflearningproject.org/resources/make-smaller-ci...

mattbeckman 11y ago

We have an HOA. For years, I've been getting crap from them about not parking one of our two vehicles in the garage. I work from home, so IMO the best bet for me is to keep my car on the driveway. We had a house a couple doors down burglarized twice within 6 months. I'm still being stubborn and keeping one of my cars on our driveway whenever I can.