Chiroptera, you are totally correct. A home “invasion” is precisely that: you can invade privacy, invade thoughts, but a home invasion is an enraging act against you & your sanctuary. No “violence” has to occur. I don’t care if I catch a crook in stocking feet who throws up his hands & hollers “no foul!”. The damage is already done.
I may not understand what home invasion is, I thought a non-violent one when the occupants weren’t home counted but I don’t know if home invasion is the same as burglary. I have never met anyone who was a victim of a violent home invasion that I know about. I’m sure it has happened to people, they just haven’t told me.
I have known of people having their homes burglarized when they were gone, but those were not violent crimes per se.
I know, which is why I didn’t complain stridently. To me, the term “home invasion” implies that violence was either committed by or threatened by the criminal. It hadn’t occurred to me that others might not see violence as being implied until I read your post, as you are clearly didn’t see things that way and you are neither an asshole or an idiot.
Look, you can take the word home and the word invasion, put them together and come up with any definition you want. But there is a specific law enforcement meaning to the term “home invasion.” It doesn’t matter that you might feel violated or invaded by a burglary. A burglary is not a violent crime. A home invasion is a robbery in your home. Robbery is taking something by force or threat of force. Burglary is simply entering a stricture for the purposes of theft. A home invasion is when someone breaks into or forces themselves into a home knowing there are people there. It is a violent act. Sorry if your personal definition does not match the law enforcement definition.
I have known multiple people that have been victims of home invasions. All on a professional basis. None of my friends or family have been victims of such crime.
It hasn’t happened often in this town but I’ve been doing this for 15 years so its happened times in my career.
Loach, if I recall aright, you’re a cop. In the thread that inspired this one, I laid out my plans for dealing with intruders in my home. Here it is:
Have you any problems with it?
Does my mooching loser roommate count?
And can I use that “stand my ground” thing in this circumstance?
Not really. Sounds sensible to me. It’s hard to plan for every contingency ahead of time.
In that case my answer is no, I don’t personally know anyone who has experienced a home invasion.
I voted before reading, so apologies to Skald for throwing off his stats because none of these are “violent”, but I totally agree with WhyNot.
- When I was very young, my aunt had her heirloom jewelry stolen from her bedroom while she was home during the day - out in her backyard with my cousin in the pool. Re-read WhyNot’s post, and that’s about where she is regarding the feeling of violence and personal invasion, STILL, nearly 30 years later. No arrests, never found the jewelry.
That’s the only one that even sort of counts according to the revised guidelines. However, there’s also all of this:
A) I was in a parking lot walking towards my car when I heard glass shatter. I remembered that I left my purse in my car on the seat, and sure enough, it was my window that had been broken while I was headed right towards it. Dark night, alone in that parking lot, with no phone or ID or any way to protect myself from whoever just stole my stuff? Yeah. Violated.
B) Purse-snatched in England. Classic snatch-n-grab in a busy internet cafe - ripped it right off my leg (I had the straps wrapped around my legs while I sat at the computer). I had just gotten a wonderful 15 page handwritten letter from my aunt which contained her memories of my father - her best friend, who had passed away several years before. That letter was in the purse, of course, along with everything else stolen - hotel key, ID, school course info. That was nearly 10 years ago now. I STILL wake up in murderous rage wishing nothing more than to have a baseball bat and an hour with that asshole. I will NEVER get over the loss of that letter. Ever.
C) Husband’s car broken into and everything stolen from it while it was parked in our driveway in our (we thought safe) neighborhood, while we were inside having dinner. Violation? Hell yes. We moved away shortly thereafter. What if they hadn’t been satisfied with what was in the car? What if they were on drugs? We didn’t lock our doors in that neighborhood, and knew all our neighbors! No one saw anything - no arrests - never got any of his things back. He still gets depressed over the loss of most of his CD collection.
None of these involved physical violence, or even the invasion of a home, but I would argue strenuously that violence was done towards all of us emotionally, and places that we consider safe “our” spaces (car, purse, driveway) were invaded.
That’s just as bad, IMO.
I agree with this. I spent years doing sexual assault crisis counselng and still remember a cringe-worthy thing I said once to a woman who had been digitally raped by multiple people…I said something incredibly moronic along the lines of “well, at least you weren’t ACTUALLY raped!”
Seriously that was an awful, truly horrible and insensitive thing for me to say and thankfully that woman set me straight in no uncertain terms and I never forgot it and I learned from it.
Which is not to say that there is not a qualitative difference between someone breaking into your home whether you are there or not. There may well be, and certainly the level of danger in a home invasion is greater than when the homeowner is off running errands or working.
No disagreement that a retreating person should not be shot in the back (and as I understand it, the castle doctrine does make this distinction) but in real life: as a small female alone in a house in a high-crime area, just how much latitude do I give an intruder? How many warnings do I give him or her? If you are already in my house without permission at, say, 2 a.m., why do I have any responsibility to give you the opportunity to retreat or run away? I don’t get that. 
To put it plainly: If you are a stranger to me and you are attempting to break into my home whether I am present or not without permission and for whatever reason, I personally believe you have relinquished your right to not being maimed or killed. And you should accept responsibility for said action. And were I the type of person to own a firearm I see absolutely no reason why you should not be shot dead on sight.
Again: I am a single female person of small stature, living alone. A stranger who refuses to identify him or herself in on my property. That I pay for and care for and am responsible for.
That person (let’s establish right here that I’m not getting stupidly paranoid about the water meter reader, my neighbor’s sister checking the mail, my neighbor down the road taking a walk with his dog, etc) is in my house, on my property, at 2 am and is not immediately responding to my cease and desist demands. Perhaps he’s loopy and drunk, yet harmless. Perhaps he’s slow and not getting TFO as fast as I would like. Perhaps he’s got something in his hand that looks like a gun but I can’t be sure. Perhaps he’s fucked up and is lurching about being non-responsive. Perhaps he is mentally ill and delusional.
At what point, in the heat of the moment, do I determine no threat, possible theat, definite threat? And why should the onus be on me to determine that in the first place?
When I was about 20, I was staying at my parent’s home between semesters. It was after midnight, and my parents and my younger sister were sleeping. I was reading and could have been seen through a side window if anybody had bothered to look in.
I heard a noise at the back door. Thinking it might be my older brother, who was in the habit of showing up unannounced, I went to the back door and flipped on the outside light. It was a burglar trying to pry open the door, and the light coming on did not seem to bother him, as he kept at his work for several more seconds. I yelled “Hey” in my loudest and deepest voice, and the guy finally ran away, leaving behind a huge 30 inch two-handed screwdriver which would have made a formidable weapon.
Anytime someone breaks into a house knowing someone is home or not caring if someone is home, I would call that that a home invasion. In my mind, this was an aborted home invasion. An armed guy tried to enter a home that he had no reason to believe was unoccupied at the time.
Originally posted by Chiroptera
*[If you are already in my house without permission at, say, 2 a.m., why do I have any responsibility to give you the opportunity to retreat or run away? I don’t get that]
Oh! I like your thinking!
Last week actually. My neighbor.
I live in a condominium building; an old building in the city.
A neighbor in my building was ‘home invaded’ last week. A guy forced in with a butcher knife, took his change and ATM card and had the audacity to force him outside to go to an ATM. Once outside, the neighbor ran to a another neighbor who was outside. The next door neighbor was petrified and couldn’t help.
The perp had the nerve to chase down the victim and ‘re-capture’ him. Once he got to his car the victim hit his key fob and thankfully it only opened the drivers door. Armed with only a knife, the perp was helpless as the terrified victim drove off.
The victim lived there for 17 years. He’s walking away and will not return.
Sort of. At uni, a big old rambling Victorian, roommates all away, heard noises very close by, thought it was raccoons in the neighbours yard! It wasn’t. I sat and listened very closely and heard nothing, decided it was all in my head, jump up to merrily off, and heard a sound like it was right in the closet. Called the cops. They ordered me to the first floor and stay inside until they come to the door. Oh, and don’t turn on the lights! So I sat in the dark awaiting a blazing siren and the lights of a police car, unable to hear a single thing! Before they arrived, (creeping up to the house with flashlights), I’d convinced myself it was nothing and was preparing for the embarrassment of being a small young women, alone in a big dark house!
Suddenly there was shouting and the clears sounds of running across the roof, suddenly I was scared all over again! They caught him and dragged him off to their car, parked around the corner. He was on the roof of the bay window, using a knife to take down the screen. His pants were undone! 
Scared no longer covers it, believe me. (And to everyone in law enforcement-you rock!) The police called me a few weeks after to tell me he’d been convicted, and was off to prison for a long time because of added parole violations.
Not sure if this qualifies or not. Technically he didn’t get in. Additionally it’s Canada and neither he nor I had a gun. Furthermore, if it happened again, my first instinct would be the same, call the police! I’m going to guess for all these reasons this incident is of no interest, though I think it should count.
A couple of armed young men attempted to jack my elderly father’s car while he was sitting in it in his driveway. I counted that as a home invasion for purposes of this thread.
My friends were asleep when their apartment was broken into. All of their electronics that were in their living room were stolen. The cops said someone who worked in the building could have been the perpetrator as their door had been unlocked, it wasn’t jimmied open. They moved shortly after. No violence, but they were pretty disturbed that it happened while they were sleeping just a few feet away.
Nope. No burglaries, no robberies, no break-ins, no invasions of any sort. Not me and not anyone I know personally.
I can understand how people might feel personally invaded even when there’s no violence, but it’s not that way for me.
Our house was broken into while we were asleep. They took my handbag, purse, some jewellery and our camera, and drove off in our car. It was annoying and sad to lose my stuff but after that we made sure we locked up better. I expected to feel freaked out by the invasion of my space, but I didn’t.
I saw a woman get mugged while walking home, about 50 yards from me (about 300 yards from my house). He tried to snatch her purse but she hung on to it. He punched her in the head a few times until she let go. The physical violence added a lot of adrenaline, fear and stress to the situation. I felt unsafe in that street for ages.
Voted no in the poll.
I had a home invasion. The guy fled when I went for my gun. He was in another room and never saw it, but he heard the loud “SNAP” when when I popped the holster strap loose. I lived in a large house at the time that was an upstairs/downstairs duplex. The guy didn’t take anything but he roamed around the house for 20 minutes or so until I finally decided to go for my gun. The cops think he didn’t know the house was a duplex and he was trying to find a way upstairs where a young woman lived.
My sister and her husband were burglarized while they were sleeping by a guy who cut the screen and entered through an unlocked patio door.
My parents’ home was broken into and burglarized while they were out of town. Don’t know if that counts as a home invasion but my parents certainly felt it was.
Back in 1976 my and my then husband’s house was broken into. The only things taken was some food and my entire cache of yarn and pattern books. I can only assume it was someone hungry for a close-knit connection.
(Gawd, I had to reach for that. But the incident is true…)