Garden tool theft
You probably read some of the Shed Force blogs ranting on about buying an expensive metal shed or buying bike storage units for your bikes and locking up your tools in a safe and secure manner .. We bang on about if you don’t buy a metal storage unit then thieves will use your own tools to break in .. blah … blah … I have an Asgard shed in my back garden and I always lock my tools away and keep my bikes in there too… always!
However, this week I left a small trowel in the back garden (we call it our dog poo spade) this flimsy little spade is no more than a foot long, costing maybe £5 ten years ago. It’s a rubbish trowel hence its demotion from garden utensil to dog poo patrol.
A small tool can cause BIG damage
The Phone call no one wants.
Last Wednesday, I received a phone call from the chap who had come around to cut the hedges to say we had been broken into. He thinks he had distrurbed them in the act.
I returned home to find that cheap, useless, tiny little shovel had been used with great skill to break into my own house.
Method of entry
The thieves had first used the tip of the shovel to attempt to enter the house via the dining room by forcing the locks. There is no doubt these guys were definitely professional thieves. There were only three sections of the door attacked, they new exactly which points to attack in order to release the locks.
For some reason they failed to get into these doors, despite scratching the facsia, cracking the plastic and breaking the hinges. So they turned their attention to the kitchen doors. Once again these guys new exactly where to hit the locks inside. The kitchen has different doors to the dining room and so a different locking system. A 4 inch hole was chipped out of the base of the door to reveal the locking system. Again the thieves failed to gain entry though these subtle methods.
Internal of dining room door mechanism
In the end they took the little shovel and smashed the windows to get in. Once inside they emptied all jewellery boxes onto beds and went through all the drawers in the house. Using the shovel to open anything that resisted.
They then came across my locked office and had to smash their way through the door as the lock was too strong. In there they took the shovel and forced open my metal filing cabinet and took all the spare house keys, all credit and debit cards and a satellite navigation system.
The Kitchen Door
Of little consequence is that all of my bikes remained safe and secure in the garden locked up in my bike store. There looked to be no damage to my Asgard bike storage unit at all. As the Police stated at the time. “They won’t bother with anything as strong looking as a metal shed… that looks like a lot of effort and noise to break into one of those, and they can’t be sure what’s inside.
“The most common method of entry now is to use what ever is to hand, tools are the favourite, bricks if they are in a hurry”.
They had stolen the spare keys to my bike store, though the Asgard has a clever interchangeable lock barrel, so they took only minutes to change over.
The only other consolation is three other properties in the area were also victims. On each occasion the occupier had either left some sort of tool in the garden which could be used to gain entry or in one case the wooden shed was broken into to get tools to enter the house with. Modern day thieves don’t actually carry tools as they can be arrested for “going equipped” so they prefer to use items to hand. Garden tools are ideal.
So, my advice (and I am really in a position of authority) is;
A: Get a secure metal shed.
B: Don’t forget to use it.
C: Consider a home safe inside, for storing items such as jewellery, spare keys and credit cards inside the house.
“They won’t bother with anything as strong looking as a metal shed… that looks like a lot of effort and noise to break into one of those, and they can’t be sure what’s inside”. – West Yorkshire Police
Tool shed
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