# Warning to those of you who leave windows open at night



## walkssoftly (Aug 18, 2005)

Hello all, I live about a minutes walk from Railton road, on a quiet side tree lined side street. 

In the early hours of Sunday morning, I heard a noise outside. Peering out, I see two guys looking up at a neighbours open window. One of them climbs up the bay fronted house peers into the window reaches inside and removes a small black object (a wallet?) and stuffs it into his pocket. Shocked, I dial 999, explain what has happened and told the information would be passed to the police, who would call me back! I wait 10 minutes for them to do so, by which time the two man have made their escape and disappeared down the road. The police turn up 30 minutes later

If you leave your windows open at night, please be very careful


----------



## Donna Ferentes (Aug 18, 2005)

Indeed


----------



## detective-boy (Aug 18, 2005)

walkssoftly said:
			
		

> If you leave your windows open at night, please be very careful



This is a very popular MO at this time of year - during the day as well as during the night and even for small windows which appear totally inaccessible at first glance.  If there is ANY way of getting to it, they will.

Make sure all open windows are fitted with locks which prevent opening beyond an inch or two and which cannot be further opened by reaching through.  And keep any valuables well away (they use sticks and fishing type rods, not just arms) and out of sight.


----------



## rennie (Aug 18, 2005)

yeah we got an intruder two years ago who climbed into my flatmate's bedroom at night. scary stuff. we always shut ours now n I live on the third floor!


----------



## MooChild (Aug 18, 2005)

Also, remember which windows you have opened, as another MO of burglars is to push them shut, hoping that you wont remeber and then come back later.


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Aug 18, 2005)

...at my work we had a burglary where they popped out a tiny plexiglass panel, put a small child through who then passed out small nickable objects. The SOCO said it was either a small child or a very thin person of restricted growth, and his money was on the former....


----------



## Donna Ferentes (Aug 18, 2005)

Could have been Eugene Tombs from _The X-Files_.


----------



## milesy (Aug 18, 2005)

i had someone try and climb in through my bedroom window when i lived in a ground floor flat on tulse hill, the room was at the front of the house, and my bed was right under the window. the chap had only managed to get his arm in and was trying to fiddle with the larger windows catch (i guess...he was behind a curtain). when i relaised what was happening i banged on the window (curtains still closed, i had my modesty to maintain!!) and shouted "fuck off!" in the loudest voice i could muster and he legged it. the police came round very quickly, to be fair. 

nut then i got burgled a few weeks later, but this time during teh day and whoever it was smashed a (very small) hole in my bedroom window and climbed in through that. he was rubbish at his job!! managed to nick a fake-bling dollar sign necklace, my brother's old watch that he never wore, and some dried up old weed that i had forgotten about until after the burglary when i found the pot that i'd put it in on the floor, empty.

very careful to make sure that our front window in our current flat is closed and locked when we're not in the room, even during the day.


----------



## tobyjug (Aug 18, 2005)

walkssoftly said:
			
		

> If you leave your windows open at night, please be very careful



Unless you have bars over your windows leaving them open at night is a stupid thing to do if they are easily accessable from outside.
I don't leave windows open at night because of past experience of ******* cats moving in overnight.


----------



## dynamicbaddog (Aug 18, 2005)

I used to live in a ground floor  room, and one hot summers day I popped out up the road to get some rizlas, got back and the telly had gone


----------



## marty21 (Aug 18, 2005)

walkssoftly said:
			
		

> Hello all, I live about a minutes walk from Railton road, on a quiet side tree lined side street.
> 
> In the early hours of Sunday morning, I heard a noise outside. Peering out, I see two guys looking up at a neighbours open window. One of them climbs up the bay fronted house peers into the window reaches inside and removes a small black object (a wallet?) and stuffs it into his pocket. Shocked, I dial 999, explain what has happened and told the information would be passed to the police, who would call me back! I wait 10 minutes for them to do so, by which time the two man have made their escape and disappeared down the road. The police turn up 30 minutes later
> 
> If you leave your windows open at night, please be very careful



could you not have shouted at them? they would have scarpered

i had a similar incident to milesy, i heard something outside, we were in a basement flat, i pulled the curtains back and roared "fuck off out of here" into the night....and no one was there....


----------



## pinkmonkey (Aug 18, 2005)

My mate (who lived in Kentish Town) popped out to buy a paper for five minutes one morning (she lives on a main road).  She left the front door unlocked and in that time someone walked into the flat.  Her flatmate woke up to see a stranger standing at the end of her bed holding her handbag.  He laughed at her and ran out of the flat, pushing past my friend who was jut coming in, back from the shop!


----------



## lighterthief (Aug 18, 2005)

Friend of mine has been burgled twice in Hackney this way.  Both times they were asleep in the (small) flat and both times they only woke up as the burglar was cheekily letting himself out via the front door.


----------



## milesy (Aug 18, 2005)

i'm lucky in one sense that i'm a very light sleeper and any unusal noise will wake me up.

this was a pain after the incident i mentioned above though, as for ages any slight noise woke me up and i would be very paranoid that it was another baddy coming to try and divorce me from my possesions, my modesty and my life


----------



## Ms T (Aug 18, 2005)

On Sunday in the middle of the day there were intruders in our back gardens.  We weren't here at the time, but one of them used my neighbour's ladder (which wasn't locked up) to get over our wall thus destroying my carefully installed trellis and making me very angry indeed!  I think they were trying to get out of the gardens rather than into our house (we're on the corner, and it's very difficult to get to our garden from the neighbour's because of aforementioned trellis and mature trees).  

One of them got caught, apparently. It does seem bonkers to be doing this kind of thing on a Sunday afternoon when most people are at home....

I'm going to be very careful in future about leaving windows open.  Having said that, I think it would be very difficult to get into a third floor window, so I'm still relatively relaxed about having the bedroom window open at night.


----------



## Neko (Aug 18, 2005)

I used to regularly lock myself out of my house when I lived in Tooting and regularly break in my sticking my hand through the letterbox to break in as my flatmates never chubblocked the door. Never had anyone break in, though if anyone had tried to they would have been sorely disappointed with the loot, the contents of my fridge tend to be the only things of any resalable value!


----------



## Poi E (Aug 18, 2005)

walkssoftly said:
			
		

> In the early hours of Sunday morning, I heard a noise outside. Peering out, I see two guys looking up at a neighbours open window. One of them climbs up the bay fronted house peers into the window reaches inside and removes a small black object (a wallet?) and stuffs it into his pocket.l



Oh for an air rifle at that very moment.


----------



## corporate whore (Aug 18, 2005)

Mate of mine lives in Britol - he's got the most secure house I know. Alarm system, allen key-style locks on inside doors, shutters with internal bars, right in the middle of a really long street with rear access only through many, many other gardens.

Then one night the ground floor bathroom window got left open and while they slept someone snuck in, loaded a laptop and a PS2 into a bag, got on a 500 quid mountain bike and fucked off into the night.


----------



## Minnie_the_Minx (Aug 18, 2005)

This was discussed this time last year.

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=84082&highlight=windows+weather


----------



## walkssoftly (Aug 18, 2005)

marty21 said:
			
		

> could you not have shouted at them? they would have scarpered
> 
> I thought the police would turn up and catch them  naive of me I turn.
> 
> When the police did turn up, the owner of the house didn't want to have the case followed up, which is a bit strange!


----------



## rennie (Aug 18, 2005)

in our case, the police showed up four days later. they were "busy".


----------

