The job thieves struck again last weekend. Total lost:
2 Panasonic metal cutting saws
2 Milwaukee metal cutting saws
4 dewalt battery drills
1 small dewalt rotohammer
1 large DeWalt rotohamer
1 Milwaukee hole shooter
Various sockets and wrenches
One Journeyman wireman’s tools (all of them)
2 destroyed gang boxes.

And to think, I just last week sent back to the shop 2 pallet jacks, a ½” thru 4” hydraulic KO set, a full set up of tugging equipment and 1 tri vise .

While we are all at home watching the Supper Bowl they all go out and get to work.

Nick, can I ask how they got in the gang box, we got hit a couple of months ago and it looked like it was not much work.

Both of our boxes they broke the welds on the hinges, it turns out the hinges were just spot welded every 10" or so.

For what you pay for the box it seems a continuus weld would be better.
Bob

Theft like this not only takes personal belongings but also attacks one's livelyhood and that is what angers me the most about it.
Does anyone have any stories of jobsite thieves getting caught?

I never have, it just seems to perpetuate itself, and they get bolder and bolder.
There is no feeling I know, after being ripped off of your personal tools that you use everyday to earn a living, that can make you feel like , yes, I have been violated, Its personal and it hurts.

WOC

yep...i know what your saying...in the words of of our former pres. from arkansas, "i feel your pain". ....but, you know what?...the great thing is when you i.d. some of your "lost" tools on a big job, with multiple contractors, and you succeed in getting some of them back, not to mention the "perpetrator" getting kicked off the job, getting arrested, and his employer getting banned from the jobsite!......the feeling of justified revenge is sweet....... ....if i had my way, thieves would be shot on site, and the survivors would be hung with a piece of 14 ga. romex........................from their nutsack (scrotum?)

Speaking of ID, I recall that it is best to engrave a personal identifier into your belongings (at home as well--TV, VCR, etc.) such as your initials and the last 4 of your Social Security number.

This makes for an almost fool-proof way of IDing your belongings when (hopefully) they are recovered.

I can't stand a thief!

I've come to think of every lock I buy being part of the price we pay for crime; Just needing a lock means you're already a victim.
I try like hell to make my stuff less valuable to thieves. Here are some of the things I've done:
-As mentioned above, I ID my tools;
-I paint them a distinct, plain color. This not only marks them as mine, but makes them lose that shiny new "steal me" look, and makes them far less pawnable;
-If I had the balls, I'd paint them pink!;
-Many of my tools are of a different brand than what everyone else has (I'll never forget the guy who told me to get rid of my "junk" Starret and buy a Craftsman!); and,
-I have locks, etc., that are decent enough to require serious effort to defeat.
Last, but not least, I refuse to patronise flea markets, "tool stores" operating from the trunks of cars, and any situation where I have the slightest doubt as to the source of the items. I will not help a thief by providing him with a market!

There were two gang boxes both Knack. One "Forman style" (with the table for plans) one double door material style. They drilled out the locks on both. The Forman’s box opened right up for them. The material box wasn't so easy. After drilling the lock it still wouldn't open so they took a cutting torch and cut a hole just above the lock cutting through the mechanical linkage. After closer review the Forman box is ok except for the lock mechanism. The other can probably be patched up.
When cutting the hole in the material box they caught boxes inside on fire and used our fire extinguisher to put it out!
They also used there torch on the lock securing the storage container. They got about 3/4 the way through and gave up. Maybe they ran out of gas or something. Given the time and the right tools it doesn't matter what you use to lock your stuff up. If they want it, they will get it.
On a good note. The journeyman that lost his tools will get some help. Our local has a fund set up in conjunction with the local NECA chapter to replace up to $500.00 worth of tools that are on the tool list. It won't cover everything he had but it is a pretty good start.
It’s a sad state of affairs when we even have to start such a fund.

Nick:
Sorry to hear your loss, along with everybody else that's been hit. They got two of our trucks the Wed Nite before Thanksgiving. One '00 van, broke pass door window & rear door window & broke the "guard" out of the door frame...net loss $2275 in ass't tools.
They went to the Ford F700 utility/bucket; blew out the drivers door window, found nothing; then they "tried" to get into the utility body. They didn't get in, but they did $2800.00 of damage to the compartment doors. BTW, the "take" from the van cab was the regular driver's prescription glasses that he forgot to take home Wed Nite; no our insurance co does not cover "personal" items, including the employees hand tools.

As to the engraving thing; ALL our tools are marked either "HLEC" or "Lic 8209". The local cop said "fat chance of getting anything back" to which I agreed.

John

Two years ago my service truck was stolen out of my driveway. Tore it up and cleaned it out. $8000 damage to the truck and
$25,000 in lost tools. Still recovering and now I'm paranoid.

Nick,I agree all you can do is try to slow them down, but if they have a torch its no use.


Ours were large Knack boxs, and they stuck a pry bar under the lip for the front top hinge and broke the welds.

But drilling the locks is pretty quick too, we have had to drill our own locks when "somebody" broke wrong keys off in the locks with glue.

A few years ago a buddy of mine was in a pawn shop and saw a band saw with his companies name engraved on it. Called the company president, who called the insurance and police, both said that since the loss had been settled they would not pursue the lead. It is supposed to be a crime in this state to posess stolen property!

I won't patronize those places that "might" be dealing in stolen goods either.

Check eBay often. You would be surprised how much stolen property gets sold there.

Somehow a culprit made off with $70,000 of 750 wire that had already been pulled (3 90's!) from a somewhat rural job we did a few months back! 12 guys had to do a hand pull to get it in the conduit. They showed up the next day to do the connections and said, "Where the hell is the wire!?". It's hard to tell what the might be "secure" these days. The owner of the company was not a happy man to say the least! Thank god for insurance, that's a mighty big bullet to swallow!

Nick, sorry to read about what happen.

Showing up at your job site and finding anything that belong to you missing is bad enough, be it tools or supplies.

My worst experience happen when thieves completly stripped a new house that we had just rough in. Meter socket,service panel,recessed and all the romex that was long enough to be worth taken was gone. Plumbers lost a new boiler. They also tried to steal the bay window, dropped it and broke all the glass.

The GC had no insurance on job so redoing the job came out of my pocket. This all happen when I first started out in business. This meant no pay check for two weeks. I did learn a hard lesson. My contracts now say GC has to carry all needed insurance on job.

A job site building a new school, mechanical contractor got hit. He lost one entire gang box, and the other two were cleaned out. Within a week they caught the theif, turned out it was a fired employee.

I was working in a school in Camden, NJ, anybody from NJ knows that this is a.... uumm.... not so nice area, to put it lightly. We were installing the camera system in the school and nobody really liked us, thery would push the cameras into the drop ceiling, tore access control card readers right off the outdoor box, tore the threads out, I guess security screws are not enough. They stole tools right out of our bags when they were no more than two feet away, they stole three of my two-way radios, $700, but luckly my company was able to back charge the school district to get them replaced. The kids, somehow I doin't think they should be called that, also stole parts off the job, that they have no idea what they did but wanted them anyway, they would follow us around and see what doors were unlocked and then when we went to set up for the nedd cable pull or to get more parts they would break in and one time stolf two cases or snapple out of the cafe. I never really liked kids to begin with.... Guess they are off to an early start to a life of crime

Jim

JCooper

I've seen Camden. The misery there is incredible. I rode a bus through the city, didn't dare walk through the streets.

This link takes you to a PDF file for the 2000 US Census figures on Camden, NJ.

In that city, 3,382 households have no telephone service. 586 households lack plumbing. That right there says a lot.
http://censtats.census.gov/data/NJ/1603410000.pdf

JCooper:

'Tis a shame none of the "kids" overheard you saying something like "I need the 12 gauge" as your helper gives you a spool of 14AWG...

Then again, these days, maybe not...they might actually have a 12 gauge

On a lighter note...
A few years back, burglars in London noticed a warehouse that had especially good locks & doors; must be something valuable inside!
They came one Saturday night, equipped with a torch, and proceeded to cut through the back door of the....FIREWORKS WAREHOUSE! The torch set off the contents, which in turn ignited their getaway van. Police found them cowering in a ditch.
They're now known as the "hole in the ground" gang!

Talk about burnin' rubber

All I can say is it's a pretty sad society we live in.

Nick,

Just wanted to say I am sorry to hear this news!!!
What City did this happen in?

Hope you can find the jokers, and remove their testicles!
(hope this is not offensive to anyone)

Scott35 S.E.T.

I've rig'd up an alarm in our job boxes.. those 12V car alarms.. takes alittle room in the box, but i've found that a cars battery will last most of the nite .. someone opens the box it just gives them a nice ear blast of noise.. and if its not too rural.. it generally gets someones attention.. I've also gone as far as finding a spot where i put a camcorder (color) over our job box area.. police like that one.. saved my comp a few thousand..

You would be surprised what you can catch on a camera, I was a camera installer and covert video was my speciality, now if only spelling was too... One of the best video clips I saw was the president of the company open a door in the hallway, as soon as it closed opened back up and then exited the door next to it, guess he couldn't remember which door was the closet and which went to the hallway. If anybody needs info on covert video please feel free to e-mail me, they have everything from smoke detectors, which work great, to exit signs, phones, I even built one into a portable radio, the radio and cd player work and it has a small color camera and wireless transmitter inside it, out of all the people that have seen it nobody has ever seen the camera.

Curiously there's a borough called Camden in North London. It's about the same as you describe for Camden, N.J, and certainly not a nice place to be at night.

Nick,
Sorry to hear about your troubles. I guess I've been lucky as I've never suffered anything more than an odd screwdriver or pair of pliers disappearing on site, but then I don't usually do work in any of the big towns. Nothing would induce me to live in anything other than a rural area any more.

Some time ago, there was a firm in Chicago by the name of Gerson Electric. They were an old line firm that was part of the tri-venture that wired the Sears Tower. They were prime electrical on this job where we had a small part. They used to get large rolling safes. I mean these used to be just about if not just over 6' tall. They would have the crew horse them into the basement into their shop on the job, behind as strong a set of doors as they could. Only the foreman knew the combination. I guess that they had been burned a number of times before.

In another instance, we were called to restore power to a 400 amp 480 volt feeder in a section of the old Western Electric Hawthorne Works in Cicero Illinois. It had long since closed, and most of the property was converted into retail. But there was still this one old manufacturing building; it too abandonded. It was magnificent! It had the hardest concrete floors in places, and in some, the floor was lined with cork "bricks" I think they made wire & cable there. Anyway, at one time the powerhose, [also gone at the time] fed this building at 12 kV. Only the 480 portion of the unit-sub as left. As the person on site explained, theives were trying to strip out the remaining aluminum MC cable that ran on cable tray throughout the building, serving what few loads had to remain. Problem is they did it live, [ I'm serious]. They blew the fuse in their first attempt. We replaced the fuse and went on our merry way. Two days later, we got a call to come and replace the fuse again, the theives had returned.

When we got back, the place was a mess. The way the story was related to me was that the theived returned. The guard on duty noticed the truck and then noticed the lights go out in the building. He called the cops. Apparently the theives disconnected the leeder from the buss detail, again, live, using channel locks, and a hacksaw. Problem was these were recessed hex socket screws on the lugs. And they didn't blow the fuse this time! They hooked up a piece of 1/8" aircraft wire to the cable and the other end to the bumper on their truck. They were dragging it off of the tray by driving around the interior of the building. About this time, the cops showed up. The theives took off in their truck, and luckily the aircraft able broke. They ramed through some doors, and led the police on a short car chase. They were eventually nabbed, and, I'm told, tuned up on the way to jail. Cicero was kinda' a rough town, once home to Al Capone.

[This message has been edited by airportelectrician (edited 02-01-2003).]

CAN YOU FIND THE HIDDEN CAMERA?


(Hopefully you'll at least get a chuckle out of this--we all can use some cheering up these days.)