You know what’s kind of twisted is I get more bent out of shape about the trivial stuff. I’ve had my car busted in to before, and when they take my CD Walkman (hey, it was the 90s!), that I understand. But when they go into the glovebox and take a half pack of cigarettes (about $2.00 at the time), a Safeway coupon book (really?!) and a stack of napkins from McDonald’s, that’s just insulting.
Big city girl. I lock EVERYTHING.
I live in a nice neighborhood where most crime is underage drinking and burglary of (shock) unlocked vehicles. And in this nice neighborhood where we tend to know our neighbors, this guy moved in:
http://austinist.com/2012/04/06/_in_stark_contrast_to.php
And now one of my nice neighbors is dead. Locked. Always.
My parents live in the country and never locked the house because people are honest in the country. And one day, a Bad Guy walked into the unlocked house, took all the keys he could find and went down to the locked shed and unlocked it and went over to the locked gun safe and unlocked it and stole a dozen guns. Now they lock up. And now they’re thinking about moving to the city where they’ll have neighbors in case some other Bad Guy comes around.
I don’t understand why you’d leave your house unlocked when there are opportunists who look for unlocked doors to open and take from. It never happens to you until it does.
Yup, I lock all our house doors, windows and our car too. There are recurring waves of petty thefts in our near-urban neighborhood (although it’s a nice place to live otherwise). We have a neighborhood email round-robin and I’m always surprised by people who admit that they left their car unlocked yet again and that someone took money, a briefcase, a cellphone etc. from their car. :: headsmack ::
Don’t usually lock my car at work or at home. Front door is usually locked, I enter the house through the garage door anyway.
I live on the edge of Ann Arbor, in a relatively low-crime part of the city; most of the burglaries in town seem to happen in other neighborhoods. But I still lock the house, unless I happen to be out in the garage. cars stay locked, even though we park them in the (typically closed) garage). It’s extremely rare that we need to get into our cars’ interiors unless we’re about to drive somewhere, so this is not particularly inconvenient.
I live in a peaceful English village, where the most serious crime in the last 10 years was an incident of car vandalism (somebody nicked a hood ornament.)
Nevertheless I lock my door. As others have said, if there is a burglar, they will go for unlocked stuff before locked ones.
Front door but not the car (at home). I have a mini van with a key fob that doesn’t work. 99% of the time when I am getting into or out of the car, I am hauling my toddler. It’s a giant PITA to have to try to unlock the door with the key while carrying him and juggling whatever else I’m carrying. He’s almost two and now that the weather has gotten better he can walk out by himself so now I might get back into the habit of it. However, I do lock the car when we are out and about, unless we are in the swanky suburbs near us.
At home I don’t worry about locking the van because we have a state trooper who lives across the street who parks his patrol car out front. The crime rate on our block is damned near zero.
Even though I live in what I feel is a pretty safe environment I don’t trust humanity enough, on the whole, to leave my house or car unlocked. I like to think of it as a “better safe than sorry” way of looking at things.
OK. Sorry. But that made me laugh.
Judging by the poll results, it looks like my way, (lock car; no lock house) really is the minority method by far.
My kids are still away on Spring Break, so I’ve got time for one more recollection. I call this one: when security backfires.
Back in my urban years, I was attending school in a rough section of West Philadelphia. I lived on campus my first year, and had my first *“we’re not in Kansas anymore” *moment on the second day after classes started. A school secretary was gunned down and killed in the street, just catty-corner from my apartment window. She was simply walking toward her car, carrying her briefcase. The police figured it was either a thrill kill or a crossfire situation. No suspects were apprehended. The sight of blood seeped into the trolley tracks is something burned into my memory.
In my second year, my friend and fellow classmate, Steve, and I decided to move off campus into our own place—the bottom floor of a row house, also in a rough neighborhood. I could write a book just about Steve (but, I’ll just devote a few paragraphs to him here). He was a real character and one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever known. He was sharp, funny, looked like a movie star (a young Richard Gere) and had a passion for life. He got his well-toned musculature not with weights or machines, but entirely with calisthenics, isometrics, walking on his hands down sidewalks and riding his unicycle long distances every day. He also had a pet monkey, which he kept mostly at his father’s apartment in New Jersey (Steve had no relationship with his mother, but he adored his father, talking to him every day on the phone and visiting him every Sunday). He could charm the birds out of the trees (my parents thought he was the nicest friend I ever had). But mainly Steve had a grab-life-by-the-balls philosophy. He lived to have fun and had a very infectious laugh.
I was no ladies’ man, but Steve was and I often benefited by being his wingman at the clubs (usually disco, this was the ‘70’s) on weekends. But, this did not come without cost to me—the cost being often extreme embarrassment. You see, one of the things Steve found most fun was yanking my chain and making me sweat. I’d try to do the same in return, but I wasn’t in his league. One evening, for example, we were at Doc Watson’s Irish Pub on 11th street and Steve managed to get two fine looking ladies to sit at our table. He then proceeded to go into a very detailed, convoluted story about how he and I were special CIA operatives sent to Philly on some mission of intrigue. I didn’t mind him doing the fabricating (the girls were mesmerized and bought the story hook, line and sinker…I said they were fine looking, not the brightest bulbs), but then he starts lobbing the ball squarely into my court, just to yank my chain. “Tibby, tell the girls about that close call we had down in Nicaragua.” “…uh, that’s still classified, Steve.” “Show the girls your badge, Tibby.” “…uh, I must have left it in my other wallet, girls.” I did end up spending some alone time with one of the girls, but thanks to Steve, I had to put a lot of effort into getting there.
Then there was the late night “trip to Pat’s Steaks” incident that Steve loved recounting for months afterward. We’re driving to Pat’s in my little orange Fiat with the top down. Along the way, at a stop light, Steve spots a girl walking down the sidewalk and, against my protest, gets out of the car to chat her up. Next thing I know, Steve’s helping the girl into my car, “here, you sit up front, next to Tibby” and he wedged himself into the tiny back seat.
Well, the girl wasn’t really a girl; she was a woman; a mature woman about two to three times my age. She was wearing white patent leather boots, red vinyl hot pants and enough face paint to choke a clown. Yeah, she was a street hooker, and a very nasty looking one at that. Stumped for common interest conversation material, I start discussing the weather while she’s starting to demand some type of financial arrangement. Then Steve starts stoking the fire with his spiel from the back seat. “Oh, Tibby’s got a lot of money and he wants the works.” “Tibby’s kind of sensitive down there, so can you take out your dentures before you start.” He was thoroughly relishing my discomfort. I had to admit, it was pretty damn funny…until things turned more extreme…
Traffic was backing up a few miles before reaching Pat’s, then came to a complete stop when I turned a corner. We were on a one-way, single lane street. There were cars behind me and cars in front of me. But, the car directly in front of me was a decked out Philadelphia patrol car. That made me more than a little nervous.
For you non-Americans reading this, one thing you should know about Philly cops: you don’t mess with them. You just don’t, ever. This was particularly the case during the Rizzo years (and this did take place during the Rizzo years). (Extra, Extra! Read all about it). Even New York cops are afraid of Philly cops. So, lucky me, here I am stuck behind a Philly cop with a hooker sitting next to me in my little orange convertible with the top down. But wait…it gets worse.
Incredibly, the hooker, who must have been frustrated by my lack of commitment, and pissed being stuck with us in traffic, reaches across my lap and honks my horn (that’s not a sexual euphemism, I mean she really honked the horn on my car). The cop looks back and glares at me, then turns back around. I yelled at her, “don’t do that!”, but she did it again. Beep. The cop turns and really gives me the stink eye this time, but thankfully turns forward once again. I grab the hookers hand and hold it away from the steering wheel. Then Steve reaches from behind, under my arm and leans on the horn. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! That’s when the cop’s door flew open and I start wishing I had life insurance.
All I could think about as one of Philly’s finest started walking back toward my car were the Philadelphia Daily News front page photos of cops stomping on the heads of wrongdoers with their leather jackboots. For all I knew, beeping at a cop could be considered “doing wrong” in their eyes. He gets up beside the driver-side door, looks down and momentarily looks a bit bemused at the sight before him: me in my Izod shirt and khaki pants in the driver’s seat; the Happy Hooker wearing her formal evening attire in the passenger seat; and muscle-boy stuffed in the back.
To the police officer’s credit he did not pull me out and stomp on my head. But, he did verbally ream me out severely, concluding with a sarcastic, “you and your fiancée better get the hell out of here.” Steve found the cop’s quip funny and let out a laugh, followed by, “they’re not engaged, yet, officer, just dating…and I’ll keep an eye on him, Tibby just gets a little impatient sometimes.” Thankfully the cop had a sense of humor too, and smiled (like I said, Steve was a charmer). Situation diffused, but, the next few minutes were indeed tense and awkward; I was still stuck behind the cop and had to threaten body harm to Steve and the hooker if they even looked at my horn again.
And so, that’s a glimpse into my former roommate’s unconventional psyche. When we moved into our own apartment we decided to get a dog to protect against burglary. It was a very sketchy neighborhood, so we figured a very big dog was needed—a Great Dane. We got her from a private breeder and we learned a valuable lesson that day: if the pup you’re looking at is the last one left of the litter, there’s a good reason it’s the last one. Yes, we ended up paying top dollar for the runt of the litter. She never grew very big, but I guess we saved a little on dog food.
Within the first week of moving into our apartment we took “Spike” (the diminutive Dane) out for a long walk to the park. Arriving back about an hour later, from a few doors away I could see that our front door was wide open. “Steve, did we leave the door open when we left?” He didn’t answer, but immediately bolted to the apartment and through the doorway. Spike and I followed more cautiously. I heard a short scuffle (Steve managed to get a punch in) and the intruder dropped my portable TV as he ran out the door and down the steps. Spike didn’t even growl at him as he ran past us. He got away with some cheap jewelry, that’s all.
At long last, I arrive at the point and the irony of my story (when security backfires): we got a “security” dog to protect us from burglary, but we got burglarized because of the dog (we would have been in the apartment if not taking the dog out for a walk).
I had Spike for 3 more years without incident, and then gave her to my sister when I moved to Cleveland. Sis changed Spike’s name to the un-tough name, Guinevere. She and her husband loved her till she died of old age (the dog, not sis).
I’ll never forget Steve. He seemingly had it all and was living life to the fullest. He was, indeed, a unique character, the type rarely encountered in real life. Tragically, he completely degenerated 2 years later and ended up getting himself killed (in cold blood). But, that’s another story.
My Cleveland years were nearly a repeat of my Philly years: first year living on campus, then moving off campus to a rough neighborhood. But, this time my new roommates and I didn’t get a dog, we got a ferret. A ferret?…for protection, you scoff? Yep, read all about the British national pastime and you’ll understand.
Yes. I lived in Jacksonville, FL, for 20+ years, which has a very high crime rate. I lock down everything – car door, front door (multiple locks), charley bar in the sliding glass door, thumbscrew lockson the windows, lock on the bedroom door…
Ok, not really the bedroom door. The cats wouldn’t stand for that!
But I am very safety and security conscious.
ETA: at my WORKPLACE the crazed husband of an employee showed up with a gun and wanted to “talk” to his estranged spouse. Luckily the building was locked down before he could get in. We then got a show of helicopters, the SWAT team, and every cop in the county inside the company’s garage (where the guy spent forty minutes running around waving said gun).
Heck, I live just outside Jacksonville and feel as snug as a bug in rug, security-wise.
I used to be in habit of not locking my house door and often left my wallet in my car.
We just moved to a different city (but only 10 miles away). Someone has broke into my are and others in the neighborhood have the same experience. I am now in the habit of locking all doors.
I always lock my car and front door.
Has anyone ever tried to come in our front door uninvited? No.
Has anyone ever tried to get into my car? Far as I’m aware, no.
Would my front door lock or my car door lock keep out any serious thief who wanted in?
Nope.
Out of habit, I always do something that’s mostly unnecessary and probably wouldn’t help much in a crisis anyway.
Please tell us more stories about Steve.
Oh, so it’s ANECDOTES you want, eh?
Okay - Not long after we moved into our current home my wife came home one day and noticed something funny in the garage…to wit, that the door that leads to the side yard of our property from the back of our garage was WIDE OPEN! A state that we did NOT leave that door in when we left for work that morning (in very short order I installed a bolt lock on that door). Fortunately nothing - save for a rechargeable battery that had been recharging on the garage wall - seemed to have been taken during that incident. We felt lucky on that one.
Then just the other day my wife (who broke her wrist a few weeks ago and has been working from home, since) reported to me that at one point in the middle of the day one day she heard what sounded like somebody checking our front door to see if it was unlocked.
As I stated earlier: I feel that I live in a fairly safe neighborhood. But not safe enough for me to feel good about leaving my house unlocked when I’m not around.
Depends on where you are.
I lived in Riverside/Avondale, and in Baymeadows. There was a serial rapist running around Baymeadows at one point. And let’s not forget the guy who was running naked around the apartment complex…
Florida really is strange.
Hey, it was hot and all my clothes are 100% polyester…that material gets really sweaty, you know.
Yes to both, with one qualification: our cars are usually in the garage, so we don’t lock them. When we park in the driveway, we do lock the cars - as breaking into the car would allow thieves access to the garage door opener - and THAT would give them access to the house.
Of course, locking the car isn’t foolproof: our neighbors had their late-model minivan stolen right out of the driveway (the car was locked). Interestingly the minivan was recovered a week or two later.