I recall either "The lock picking lawyer" or McNally explains that only in 3% of cases are locks picked during a burglary. In all other cases windows or doors are simply forced open. So at best locks are meant to prevent of crimes of opportunities.
I recall either "The lock picking lawyer" or McNally explains that only in 3% of cases are locks picked during a burglary. In all other cases windows or doors are simply forced open. So at best locks are meant to prevent of crimes of opportunities.
Yeah my understanding of burgling is it’s all about speed. One of the best deterrents you can have is I think called “laminate glass,”that doesn’t shatter into a bunch of pieces when it’s hit. It has a tendency to hold together so they have to spend precious seconds knocking out more of it which almost always makes them run away rather than risk it.
If I can go out on a limb here, I also think I recall that they have very specific things they look for. For instance they will often run straight for the master bedroom and start pulling out drawers/checking closets because people tend to keep jewelry in there. They want small items.
Anything that slows them down tends to deter them even if they make an initial attempt
Impact glass is one option. Another option is to have security film installed on your existing windows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_APQ3CzQno
Security film! That’s the one I was trying to find it first but then I found laminate glass and assumed I was mistaken.
One day I came into the office and noticed that one of our neighbors doors had a triangular hole cut into it near the door handle. It was a solid core door on an interior hallway. One of our cameras picked up the sound, someone brought a chainsaw and in about 30 seconds cut a hole in the door so they could reach through and open it from the inside. They took the safe, but I was told the safe was empty.
Oddly, this is a case where they would have had plenty of time to pick the lock as well, and it would have been much quieter.
> at best locks are meant to prevent of crimes of opportunities
A lock forces the thief to either spend time defeating it or physically break something. Even if it doesn't slow him down it should hopefully make it visibly obvious that he's doing something illicit.
IIRC there's a legal distinction between mere unauthorized entry and unauthorized entry that involves circumventing any kind of lock
You know those super secure double-glazed front doors, with the kind of hook things that engage when you push the handle up?
You can spudger one of the glass units out and back in from the outside, without leaving a mark.
They look better than they are.
Most uPVC windows and doors should have the beads on the inside and a solid profile on the outside.
I have heard of someone cutting through all the plastic and pulling the glass out that way, though.
Both rather more obvious that surreptitiously jiggling the obscenely crappy Eurocylinder that the door came with.
This is why the complaint about smart locks being hacked is so utterly ridiculous to me. A thief isn't going to hack your lock, they're going to bash a window in
Even if I can unlock a hypothetical 90% of physical locks, I still need to go in person to every house that has one. On the other hand, if I crack one smart lock I now have remote access to every home that has one, and I can operate on all of them simultaneously. Anything internet-connected makes doing damaging things at scale much easier.
Smart locks potentially give access to things that windows don't, like upper floor apartments.