Most of the home and small business safes I’ve seen at Staples and elsewhere don’t like like they would stand up to to a sledgehammer or power tools and torch for too long. How much money does a person have to spend to get a really secure home safe that would stand up to determined criminal?
Most such safes are primarily designed to stand up to fires, which are much more common than criminals. You will see them rated based on the number of hours they will withstand a certain fire temperature.
In many of these safes, the locks are mainly to keep kids & nosy employees out, and are not really designed to withstand an expert safecracker. For that you need a different class of safe, which you don’t get at Staples or OfficeMax – you see a real bank supply company,
We had a bloody great safe stolen from work - huge heavy thing. I guess in the privacy of their own home they would eventually get it open. We replaced it with a smaller one, but bolted it and cemented it into the floor - it’s still there as far as I know, my point being if they are able to carry it away they will.
Good point… a safe basically has one of two features to deter criminals. It’s either a challenge to remove it from the premises, or its a challenge to get it open quickly and without detection.
No security measure is absolute… it’s about layers of deterrence.
The best safe is the one that is securely bolted down.
Most criminals are opportunists. If it looks like a hassle and they can’t carry it away, They will leave it. If the thief is after something specific, and knows what is protecting it, he will come prepared. Then there is nothing to really stop them.
Friend of a friend ect. Had many Guns. Three gun safes to keep them in his garage.
" I don’t need to bolt these down, Too *@$% Heavy, They can’t just carry them off."
They all three disappeared. Thieves backed into garage with flat car trailer, tipped the safes onto it, took off. Since big trucks, car trailers, and people doing “odd” things around his house were normal, witnesses didn’t even call the police.
Get a good solid safe that looks like trouble to open, bolt it down in an area that is a little cramped, and you are 99% safe.
Bank holding company I worked for once had thieves decide to steal one of our ATM’s late at night from a rather isolated location. They came prepared, with steel cables, and a bumper-mounted winch on the front of the truck. They wrapped the cables around the ATM, connected to the winch, and pulled it off the mounting bolts, dragged it across the sidewalk, loaded the whole thing onto the truck, and drove away – all within just a couple of minutes.
However, they didn’t realize that the ATM had a camera mounted in the front of it, the video from that was transmitted to our control center abut 60 miles away, and that if anything unusual happened (like communication with the ATM was suddenly lost), the last few minutes of video & audio were saved. So we had a nice recording of them connecting the cables up to the winch on the truck bumper – including a very clear shot of their license plate on that bumper!
Our security center had contacted Dept of Motor Vehicles to get the address for that license plate, contacted the Sheriff in that County, and they had a Deputy out to that address before they even had time to unload the ATM from the truck. Not the brightest criminals around. But the Court enjoyed watching the video of the crime in progress.
Some of the literature I’ve seen on safes rates them by how long it takes to open them. The assumption seems to be that any safe can be cracked, but it takes longer for the better ones. If it takes 12 hours to open the safe, you need to take security measures that ensure that nobody will have that much time alone with the safe.
A couple of years ago in my city a couple of people walked up to an ATM, unbolted it/unplugged it put it in to a garbage cart with wheels and it was never seen again. People watched them do it but since they acted like it was something thew were supposed to be doing (as opposed to being sneaky about it) the witnesses just assumed it was okay and didn’t really play close attention.
Our safe at work is huge, several inches of concrete wrapped in1/4 inch steel. Plus it’s very top heavy so if you tried to push it, it’ll fall over, PLUS it’s in the office which is up two stairs, PLUS we built the office around the safe, I’m 99% sure it won’t fit through the doorway even if you could move it.
Nothing (well almost) will stop a truly determined criminal. Security is mainly to make what ever you don’t want stolen enough of a hassle to dissuade the less determined criminal.
You need to define “really secure” and “determined criminal”.
What are you trying to keep? Jewels and cash can fit in a small safe which cannot hold long rifles or a dead body.
Security is not only about spending a lot of money on a safe but on how it is mounted and a general policy on doing things.
If you need to have stuff at home the first policy is that it be well hidden and no one know about it because if the bad guys know what you have then all they have to do is ask you nicely to open the safe.
My friend argues over this with his elderly and forgetful father telling him to leave the darn safe wide open because he has nothing or real value and if the bad guys come in while he’s in the house they will beat the crap out of him to get him to open the safe and he will not remember how to open it so he is liable to get killed over an empty safe. If you are home and the crooks know what they are looking for then you are toast.
You want real safety? Rent a box in a bank. Nothing you can do at home can even come close.
How often and how easily do you need to get to the stuff in the safe?
If you need to have the stuff at home, how easy access do you need? The easier it is for you the easier it will be for the crooks.
A mediocre safe well installed is better than a good safe badly installed. Concrete and rebar can be worked quite easily and provide formidable safety. You can install the safe in a position where you need to crawl into a space. Not very convenient for you but how is the crook going to swing a sledgehammer or work in there? With great difficulty. Not impossible but difficult.
Nothing can defeat a determined crook with enough time on his hands. The purpose is to delay his actions until police can come.
Every house is different and you need to design the solution accoring to the specific location. In a wooden frame house with concrete basement you probably want to put the safe in the concrete. In a wood frame house with crawlspace you might be able to build a concrete block in the crawlspace with the safe embeded.
As, I said, if the safe is well hidden and you could not find it unless you know exactly what you are looking for and where to look that is a huge plus, better than having a better box. Do not tell anyone where the safe is, what you have, where are the keys, etc. You may think your friend or neighbor is trustworthy and you may want to share your secret but he might tell someone else and someone might be listening who does not need to be a crook, only have a friend who is a crook. Many robberies in banks, homes, etc start by someone inside passing information to someone outside.
Having said all that, $20 safe boxes as found in hotels closets and sold in places like Home Depot are not as good as $200 boxes you can buy at specialized places. You can see that by only inspecting them.
Right. Every safe can be opened; it’s just a question of how long it takes, and how much equipment. You need to either make sure that there are enough other security measures that nobody has enough time to open it, or that the contents are not valuable enough to be worth the hassle (and this last can be a problem, because the theif won’t know the value of the contents until he’s already opened it).
Shouldn’t any safe have both of these features? If it lacks one of them, the criminal will remove it from the premises/open it quickly.