ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Thieves

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!