Your Daily Forum Question, 1st May. Have you ever been burgled?

Tikay10

An odd one this but has your home ever been burgled, or car broken into?

What were your emotions afterwards?

How did it emotionally affect any ladies in the house (wife, mother, children) & how long did it take them to recover?

What was strongest emotion - fear or anger?

Cammykaze

Car broken into when left overnight at local train station.

Emotions were of the peed off nature, maybe more at myself for not being overly comfortable parking in the area than the loss or cost of the items.

No or little recovery time as it was a moan and move on thing.

Strongest emotion - anger

trevil25

when i was a kid on canvey island back in the 60's, my dad saw a hand through our kitchen window ,quick as a flash my dad grabbed a knife of the table and stabbed the hand,my mum called police,the police and many of the locals believed it to be a local wrong-on , but the bloke in question had 2 mates from work back him up that he had hurt his hand at work ,so police let him off,about a week later i saw said wrong-on again but with both arms in a sling and looking a bit battered,moral to this storey is don't try to burgle an ex special forces commando from ww2 house ,my feeling after was a warm cosy glow that the old man would get them .

madprof

Yes....but it was complicated...

We always have a dog and wandered how a burglar would risk entering our house on 2/3 separate occasions , steal any amount of PlayStation, Xbox, gaming stuff etc over a period of months.......

so called friends of my teenage son were the culprits, just couldn’t prove it....then a recorded voicemail ( around 01:00 in the morning) telling us they were going to come again and steal more stuff freaked my wife out

I was working away so we moved house- 200 miles- to where I worked and in a weird twist it was the best move we’ve ever made as it took us from Essex to Somerset...every cloud and all that!

madprof

madprof said:

Yes....but it was complicated...

We always have a dog and wandered how a burglar would risk entering our house on 2/3 separate occasions , steal any amount of PlayStation, Xbox, gaming stuff etc over a period of months.......

so called friends of my teenage son were the culprits, just couldn’t prove it....then a recorded voicemail ( around 01:00 in the morning) telling us they were going to come again and steal more stuff freaked my wife out

I was working away so we moved house- 200 miles- to where I worked and in a weird twist it was the best move we’ve ever made as it took us from Essex to Somerset...every cloud and all that!

Sorry emotions..both

Fear, my wife as I was working away..
Anger, me as I would still want to baseball bat fat Steve and the other brothers, even now

Phantom66

Thankfully never been burgled but I did have my car broken into twice

When I first moved up to Preston I was living in a bedsit in a not so salubrious part of town (yes they do have salubrious parts).

I had one of these which was surprisingly untouched.



Next I got my (then) pride and joy, one of these



It had deadlocks fitted on the doors, which with hindsight was a costly mistake.

The 1st break-in attempt they jimmied the normal locks then realised they still couldn't get in.

The 2nd attempt they went for the more subtle effort of smashing the passenger side window.

They only got a not particularly expensive car radio and tape player, the replacement of the locks and the window cost me a darn sight more so I was pretty miffed.

Glenelg

@Tikay10 i do hope this Q doesn't mean you have been a victim recently? Luckily, not been a victim myself.

stokefc

I haven't got a drive so park on the street in a cul-de-sac
Had a knock on the door about 4am on a Sunday about 15 years ago, it was plod saying my van had been broken into but they said they didn't think they had taken much that was until I went out to it
They had robbed all my tools 4k worth i was devastated
The worst part was, I was sitting in the back of the police car nearly in tears giving descriptions of my tools then they started accusing me of insurance fraud, I was gobsmacked, I had to explain to them how much it would cost to insure tools in a van on the street they reluctantly believed me and said forensics would come in a few hours, they never came
Having no money i had to borrow from family then to pay them back i had to re-mortgage my house, my mortgage would have been paid by now but I had to add ten years just because of some scumbags
Fear for the future
Anger, i wanted to kill

kapowblamz

Only been burgled once but it was pretty scary because I was actually alone in the house sleeping in bed!

Woke up, went to grab wallet to go to greasy spoon, but couldn't find it. >£250 in it. Thought I'd simply lost it at first but a few hours later started realising other items were missing - an underwater camera, and my penny jar......unbelievable!

Reported it to police who said I'm lucky he didn't attack me in my sleep. The perpetrator was never caught.

SJspanky1

Yes, many moons ago when I was still living in Bristol. Some toe rags popped the front door and proceeded to steal our VHS machine and Sky box. Not so coincidentally the cat developed a limp so the culprit/s had more than likely had given her a kick. I felt worse about that.

Once my initial angry feelings of wanting to give whoever was responsible a good hiding dissipated it was more of an anxious acknowledgement of an ongoing vulnerability so had to spend the requisite amount of money on improved security.

Also had a car stereo stolen back in the day when that was a thing.

VespaPX

Phantom66 said:

Thankfully never been burgled but I did have my car broken into twice

When I first moved up to Preston I was living in a bedsit in a not so salubrious part of town (yes they do have salubrious parts).

I had one of these which was surprisingly untouched.



Next I got my (then) pride and joy, one of these



It had deadlocks fitted on the doors, which with hindsight was a costly mistake.

The 1st break-in attempt they jimmied the normal locks then realised they still couldn't get in.

The 2nd attempt they went for the more subtle effort of smashing the passenger side window.

They only got a not particularly expensive car radio and tape player, the replacement of the locks and the window cost me a darn sight more so I was pretty miffed.

Loved my Manta

Enut

Never been burgled. We live in a nice area and have an excellent burgler alarm in the form of two German Shepherd dogs. I have occasionally come home late at night, opened the gate and been met by two barking missiles flying down the drive at me, a quick 'FFS it's me you idiots' quickly defuses the situation, but they certainly do their job if you don't know them.

I had a Ford Cortina stolen many years ago but the car was quite quirky in that it would occasionally stop within the first few minutes and then not restart for about 5 minutes, after that it was fine. On this occasion I went out to find the car missing, I thought 'we'll if it's running to form it could be quite close', sure enough it was about 150 yards away round a corner. They did however steal my cassette collection, which was annoying, but I suppose I got away lightly.

rabdeniro

Phantom66 said:

Thankfully never been burgled but I did have my car broken into twice

When I first moved up to Preston I was living in a bedsit in a not so salubrious part of town (yes they do have salubrious parts).

I had one of these which was surprisingly untouched.



Next I got my (then) pride and joy, one of these



It had deadlocks fitted on the doors, which with hindsight was a costly mistake.

The 1st break-in attempt they jimmied the normal locks then realised they still couldn't get in.

The 2nd attempt they went for the more subtle effort of smashing the passenger side window.

They only got a not particularly expensive car radio and tape player, the replacement of the locks and the window cost me a darn sight more so I was pretty miffed.

I had 3 Viva's when I first past my test, 2 of them were piles of ****, one I paid £15 for, it was an estate had it for about a year never spent a dime on it, came in handy for the gals.

rabdeniro

I had a wee XR2 it was my fav car ever,The most expensive car I have ever bought, £4,000 in 1990, bought it of a pilot who was moving abroad, It had hardly any miles on it, was kept in a garage, stainless steel exhaust, 4 brand new perelli tyres, cracking stereo, I think I loved that car, the one thing he said to me was that the alarm was ****.

Six weeks later the polis found it burnt oot up a farm road, I had left all my documents in the glove compartment, I forgot to take them oot after taxin and insurin the car.
The insurance offered me £1,900 because there was problem with the log book and I couldn't get in contact with the previous owner and couldn't tell them where it got MOTed.
I still get angry when I think about it, although it was my stupid fault for not gettin a decent alarm fitted.