The Key to Getting Burglarized

In response to the tragic plight of Mitzi's brother and his wife, I decided to write a quick post for those of you who may be burglarized or robbed in the future (knock on wood). To bring you up to speed, their storage unit was burglarized and thousands of dollars of property were stolen, including wedding pictures, mission pictures, personal documents, TVs, furniture, etc. They had moved to Boise recently from San Diego and are currently waiting to close on a house. Consequently, most of their stuff is (or rather, was) in storage.

Here's a little something I learned during my 5 1/2 months as a copper: Almost the only way you can ever hope to see your property again if it gets stolen is to give the police the serial numbers. Why is that you ask? Well, when police take a burglary, theft, or robbery report, they get a list of all of the items stolen as well as your estimation of how much each item was worth. This is all simply for insurance purposes unless you have serial numbers. If you have serial numbers, the police can enter those numbers into the NCIC (National Crime Information Center) system and then those serial numbers are flagged as stolen property. That way, when the crooks sell them to a pawn shop, or someone tries to buy them from a pawn shop, the pawn shop's computers will show that the property is stolen and they will hold it and call police. Now, of course, if the crooks don't use a pawn shop then that greatly reduces your chances. But considering that your chances of getting your property back if you don't have serial numbers is about 0.5%, and the chance if you have serial numbers and the crooks use a pawn shop jumps to 80%, I'd say that this could be a worthwhile addition to your Saturday to-do list.


By the way, the police department here has a surprisingly large fenced area behind the station where hundreds of recovered bikes sit unclaimed because the police don't know who to contact with the good news that their bike was found. If the owners had bothered to write down the serial numbers then if their bike was ever stolen and subsequently found (as many are) the police would know exactly who to call. Even better, if they found the bike with the crook riding it, you get your bike back and the dirtbag goes to the big house for possession of stolen property. "We found your bike." "Hooray!" No serial number, no bike, and dirtbag keeps on riding. What happens to the hundreds of unclaimed bikes? They are sold for dirt cheap at police auctions. Doesn't it make sense why so many more stolen cars are found and returned compared to stolen bikes? Because cars have license plates that identify the registered owner. If the car has been reported stolen, a license plate check will tell the police that. If the crooks take the plate off (so the cops won't know it's stolen), what does that tell the police? "Hey, why doesn't that car have a license plate? Maybe it's stolen." End result of either scenario: You probably get your car back.

In conclusion, I have an electronic and hard copy printout of all of the serial numbers on everything we own that has a serial number. I also rented (for free) an engraver from the police department's crime prevention office and engraved our names on iPods, cameras, etc. to make them less appealing to crooks who may not have the same last name that we do (of course that also means that we will have a harder time reselling these things, but honestly, I'm not much of the reselling type).

I hope this has been educational and informative.