Those dirty thieves

[Russ Sears]

I discovered this morning that my compound miter saw, a Delta 10" model, and my Firestorm cordless drill (and a bunch of bits) were stolen from my garage.
That's a total of about $400 worth of stuff including the good blade I put on the saw.

Time to file a police report and start replacing them. By the way, I live in a "nice" neighborhood. You just never know. I woke up the other morning to discover that one of the kids left the garage door open all night. I didn't notice the missing tools right away but I'm sure that's when they disappeared. The CMS was mounted to a large platform. Someone had to put it in a vehicle. They wouldn't have walked very far with it.

Just needed to vent.

[Brian Kent]

Russ, I'm really sorry to hear that. Luckily they are replaceable objects, but they are also personal. I hope it is a one time occurrence.

As consolation, may your favorite team win the Superbowl today, may you find $400 laying on the ground in a field, and may your new tools end up even better than the ones that were stolen.

I have often wondered if we ought to have a few really shiny new totally cheap and useless tools in plain sight with the real ones hidden away.

Hope you have an OK day anyway.:(

[Ken Shoemaker]

Russ, sorry about your loss. Never a good thing. As an ex-cop, a word of advise: That douche bag may well know that you'll replace the tools with new ones. He'll hit you again in a couple weeks, after insurance pays off, to get the new ones as well. Trust me, scum thinks of everthing, they have nothing more constructive to do. That's why we call'em A$$ H@*!s.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Russ,

Sorry to hear of you loss!

My sympathies.

[jason lambert]

that sucks. Intresting thatthey knew what to take and bring a way to transport it. Elk and some other companies make a portable alarm tht is pretty nice for worksites/gurages. Not sure how much it runs but a siren and a motion detector should scare anyone off if they try again.

[Dave Ray]

Sorry for your loss, Russ. Hope you had them marked somehow. Keep an eye around your "nice neighborhood" sometimes things just turn up. DAHIKT.

[Jim Heffner]

Russ, hate to hear of your loss, might start checking the local pawn shops
or fleamarkets they will most likely turn up in one of those places real soon. If you start trying to hunt them down...take the serial numbers with you, might come in handy if you would happen to find them!

[Robert Conner]

Sorry to hear that. When something like that happens you really feel violated.
Keep your eye on the CraigsList for your area and those surrounding you, you may just find your tools listed there. Unfortunately that seems to be the clearing house for a lot of stolen stuff. Strange postings like cordless drills..no charger, cell phones.. no charger case or manuals and I'll meet you someplace.
Just my observations.
Robert

[Victor Stearns]

Russ, Sorry for your loss. As I recall you can pickup an inexpensive alarm at Radio Shack that is very loud. Maybe using it may deter someone the next time.
Victor

[Joe Chritz]

I spend a lot of time on B and E's and larcenies and when one is solved it usually clears a lot. Well over a hundred on the last one I was involved in.

I recently lost a generator and a couple small portable tools to the same thing. Since everyone has a car "nice" neighborhoods don't help much anymore.

On the bright side for 2006 property crimes were down with a shade under 10 million reported.

Joe

[glenn bradley]

He'll hit you again in a couple weeks, after insurance pays off, to get the new ones as well.

My condolences. When I got hit, it was about $2200 worth. Unfortunately if I would have filed a claim, my insurance would have doubled for the next 3 years which along with my deductible would have cost me even more than the replacement costs.

If I would have gotten hit again during that 3 years the insurance company would have used my then doubled figure to base another doubling on if I should wish to actually use my insurance coverage again (how dare me want to use what I am paying for).

This and innumerable other examples explain why most decent hardworking folks would gladly pile all the insurance companies right on top of that man-made reef we'd like to build out of all the crooked law firms who drive the law-suit-insurance-rate-hike circle of life.

[Peter M. Spirito]

We had the police knock on the door at 2:00 AM. Our garage door was open. It was during a thunder storm. I know it was closed when we went to bed. We now also turn off the circuit breaker at night and when we go to work. I also never leave the door open except to drive a vehicle in (or out). Its too easy to "case the joint" from the street. And we too live in a nice neighborhood.

[Russ Sears]

Thanks everyone. Ken, the cop that came over today said the exact same thing. I'm going to take steps to alarm the garage and make sure everyone's more careful about keeping the door closed.

We leave it open a lot like when we take short trips to the store or to take a walk and we've never had a problem in the 17 years that we've lived here.
No more though. That's the saddest part. It's not that losing $400 worth of tools is going to send me to the poor house; it's the idea that enough people are scum and you have to protect yourself against them.

[Rick Gifford]

Man Russ that just sucks. I'm sorry to hear about this.

It may not break the bank replacing them, but I always say... no it isnt greatly expensive, I just don't want to have to buy it again.

Hope your insurance deductable isnt too much you can recoup a little.

[glenn bradley]

Thanks everyone. Ken, the cop that came over today said the exact same thing. I'm going to take steps to alarm the garage and make sure everyone's more careful about keeping the door closed.

I guess I could have mentioned the positive side of alarming the place; you get a discount on your insurance around here if you run a monitored system with police response. All said and done my house and shop service only runs about $15 a month after factoring in the reduction on the insurance.

[keith ouellette]

There probably in a pawn shop some place or sold to some friend real cheap.

A few months ago 2 back pack blowers ($700), a sthil fs250 string trimmer ($400), a large sthil edger ($300) and a smaller sthil string trimmer ($250) just cut their locks and walked off of my driveway without even saying good buy.
It was a concerted effort because i found out 4 other lawn guys lost their equipment that same night.

[Doug Shepard]

Hope your stuff surfaces somewhere and you're able to recover it. One side effect of getting my dog a few years ago is her built-in early warning system. My normal hangout room is on the backside of the house away from the drive but I always know when someone's here long before the doorbell rings. She knows which cars belong to friends too. Friends and relatives can pull in the drive and she gives a single woof to let me know someone's here. The UPS man can pull up in the street and it's a woof + growl. I got woke up in the middle of the night a few months ago when my next door neighbor came home late. This wasn't unusual and normally doesn't get any reaction. But thier car was in the collision shop and they were driving a rental, so she was doing a continuous growl over the strange vehicle pulling up so late in their drive that it prompted me to investigate out the window. So far it's been a pretty good system.

[Matt Meiser]

Having an alarm is really nice for peace of mind since I know I'll get a call if something happens--unless they really know what they are doing and cut the phone line (you can get cellular and internet-based comm modules for that but they are pricey.) And it did save us about $100/year on our insurance.

BUT, alarming the garage may be a pain. If you use your garage you would probably need the garage door programmed as an entry point which means you would need to enter your code within so many seconds of opening the garage door. You could get around that using a key fob remote. I've though about adding contacts to our garage door and programming that zone just to warn us that the door is open when we arm in "stay" mode at night. We have the mechanical room door in our basement done this way so that chimes when it opens so we know if my daughter would go in there.

[Rob Will]

Sorry about your loss.
An inexpensive camera and DVR would put the hammer on problems like this.

Rob

[Rick Gifford]

There probably in a pawn shop some place or sold to some friend real cheap.

A few months ago 2 back pack blowers ($700), a sthil fs250 string trimmer ($400), a large sthil edger ($300) and a smaller sthil string trimmer ($250) just cut their locks and walked off of my driveway without even saying good buy.
It was a concerted effort because i found out 4 other lawn guys lost their equipment that same night.

Hey Keith has a good point. You should contact all local pawn shops and give them a list of what was stolen. They might have some of your stuff and they have to return stolen goods.

A friend recently had a digital camera swiped. We tried all the pawn shops. They are usually good to try to help. They dont want stolen stuff, too much trouble comes with it.

[Norman Pyles]

Sorry to hear about this, I worry about this happening to me also. Having worked 20 years in corrections, I know these folks will steal rather than work.

[brad kellner]

i also live in a good neighborhood and all of the vehicles at our house were broken into along with about 40 of my neighbors. and this is in a GOOD neighbor hood with either very young kids or older retired families were everyone tries to lookout for one another. the funny thing is if u go online and look they will tell u the crime rating for your area. my city prides itself on being a very low crime city and online it says the same, but when i was talking to the cop making the report it comes to find out that there were around 3500 burgleries that year alone and this happened in early spring. but the downside to living in a good neighborhood is they are usually bordering a craphole drug neighborhood. and these pos think they have more right to your stuff than you. and they usually dont rob anyone in their broke drugged out comunity becuase they know they have nothing worth stealing so they go to the good neighbor hoods to steal off those who actually work for a living rather than riding the welfare gravy train. personally my thoughts are if u dont work they should not provide u with welfare and u should have to starve out in the cold or get a job. well atleast the tools they stole werent big price tag tools. and u can get the wife to let u replace them and maybe do a little upgraging. got to look at the bright side and stay positive. after finding this out i am selling my home for cheap to a family member on a land contract and moving out into the sticks, far away from neighbors and thieving eyes. i know my small part time cabinet/woodworking sales with probly suffer but it is worth not having to keep replacing stolen tools. keep an eye on ebay (use the search with a radius) check craig's list to check your area and areas around you. chances are it is someone that you know. once again best of luck in the future.

[Russ Sears]

The policeman that came over today said that their detective checks the local pawn shops, craigslist (which I already did) and whatnot and would contact me if anything turns up.
I'm not optimistic.

I bought the same drill today because I really liked that model. I also pulled the trigger on an upgrade to the CMS. Mine was a 10 year old Delta which worked fine. However, the Dewalt DW715 that I ordered today seems so much nicer. Tomorrow's call to my insurance agent will determine how much of that I have to foot myself. My deductible is $100 on my homeowner's so we'll see how accomodating they are.

[Matt Meiser]

If it were me, I wouldn't file a claim--more likely than not you'll end up giving them back that $300 in premium increases. But if you are going to call him, ask what your premium drops to with a $1000 deductible. We save a ton by having ours there. Its actually what our agent recommends. I don't recall the details, but I want to say you have to have a claim more than once every three years to make a lower deductible pay with our company.

[Steven DeMars]

I live in south Louisiana . . . lets just say crime is something we are exposed to daily. Last year Baton Rouge had 116 murders . . .

You can get a device for under $15.00 that will let you know from inside you home if your garage door is open or closed. I have mine where I can see the green (closed) light any time I walk in the kitchen.

If you install a motion light, never put the detector near the light it controls, always on the obvious path to the light. You walk across or near my front porch, my side light and a receptacle with a lamp attached comes on.

I have an alarm system with traps for valuable items . . . You grab the shiny weed wacker (that has not worked for years) you set off the alarm. Have several of these setups in my garage.

Should you be plagued by a series of these little hit and runs, you may want to pick-up a motion operated wildlife camera (aka "deer camera)and mount it in your garage so you can find out who your friend is. It is a little easier to pressure the local DA in to prosecuting with a picture. It's hard for him to sell the "Ole" plea bargain lazy route with pictures of the perp.

A driveway alarm in the house is nice also. locate it far enough up that lost drivers using you for a turn around at two in the morning don't set it off. You can get those in wireless.

Remember, whenever construction work starts to dry up all that stands in the way of a tool-less crackhead carpenter starting his on little biz is tools.

Also Craigslist in your area and near is a good place to look. Also check by eBay with your zip code and a 50 mile radius.

Run an ad on Craigslist "WANT TO BUY" for a saw like yours because you need to replace one "a neighbor borrowed and broke" Say you will pay top dollar. Had a friend that got back a shotgun that way stolen from his truck.

[Anthony Fields]

Look into hooking up a camera covering the front and back of the house. Then have that camera hooked to your computer Hard Drive, and burning the images onto a CD... Sorry to hear about your loss. I've had mine too.

[David G Baker]

Having lived in California for 3/4s of my life I learned real soon to lock everything up and try to keep things out of view as much as possible. Several neighbors left their garage doors open while they were eating dinner. It took the thieves less than 2 minutes to clean out most of the valuable tools.
I now live in a semi rural area of Michigan, you would not believe how many locals make fun of me for locking all of my doors and windows prior to leaving home. They still laugh at me about my putting a chain and lock on my Weber barbecue. You should hear them squeal like pigs getting castrated when they get some thing stolen. It gives me the opportunity to smile privately.

[Mark Roderick]

I feel your pain. My wife and I just had all our stuff stolen on vacation - laptop computer, passports, clothing, the whole ball of wax. Taken from a parked rental car.

The sense of violation, as someone else noted, is very real.

Even more audacious and galling than the theft itself is that the thieves are selling our belongings on Craigslist. Apparently they do so with impugnity. The next time you're on eBay or Craigslist wondering how they can offer such great deals, bear in mind that a large percentage of the items might belong to somebody else. When I was young thieves needed to "fence" stolen goods. No longer, it seems.

[Tom Walz]

Years ago the police caught two guys in my shop. 2. a.m. some tools by the door and some in the trunk. They said I was letting them use them and they were returning them. Not true. They also had a five gallon can of gas. Steal everything worthwhile then set fire to the shop to cover the theft.

When I moved into the new building first thing we did was get an alarm set up. Three times in a week the alarm went off and the overhead door in the back was raised a couple inches, just enough to set off the alarm.