*Update – My initial dealings with the police officers that first visited our home left me feeling cynical and frustrated. More recently however, the detective has been doing a fine job of moving along our case. He’s single-handedly changing my opinion about our local police force, and I’m glad to have my cynicism proved wrong. I’ll still leave all my smart-ass remarks here on this page for posterity but please take them with a grain of salt, keeping in mind that it was a difficult, emotional time when I wrote them.

I don’t usually write about things that aren’t related to making things but this has been a rough week and I’d like to write about a few things to get them off my chest in a cathartic type of way.

This past Monday was a bad one but not in a ‘case of the monday’s', ‘not ready to get back to work’ kind of way. My back door was shattered by a group of men that need more stuff than they already had and didn’t have the time or money to acquire it themselves. Judging by the way that they trashed the house stole mostly the portable, expensive stuff, I’m guessing that they were in a big hurry and were huge assholes.

The worst part happened after the robbery.

I live in Port Saint Lucie, Florida, so I'm not sure why our officers name-tags say Maytag on them.

I don’t live in a small town but it’s no big city either, the police here apparently have neither the time nor inclination to investigate B&E’s. (That’s technical, police jargon for an act that citizens are technically discouraged from but in practice are freely allowed to commit without fear of repercussion.) The thieves cut themselves on all the glass shards they created and left blood, dropped some of their loot from our house and possibly another in the yard, left behind a mini-crowbar, and also boot and finger prints; yet, a week later no police report has been filed and a detective has not been assigned to our case. Don’t run a red light in our town, you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but if you get bored or could use a few extra bucks please feel free to drop by any house unannounced in full daylight and rob them blind. Seriously, it’s no big deal, and don’t bother wearing gloves or boning up on CSI: Miami.

The worst part happened after the ineffectual police response.

"I'm not saying your wife will be raped to death if you don't get the glass break sensor upgrades but... well.. don't you love her?"

After all the commotion I felt it was high time that I closed the barn door, seeing as the horse had left and kicked me in the nuts on it’s way out; so we called ADT to schedule an intrusion alarm installation. The great thing about ADT is that if you schedule an installation they’re very punctual! The bad part about their company is that they will attempt to charge you more than a thousand dollars more than what you’ll find on their website and use ANY means to get you to agree. From the moment that I met the technician/salesman he was relating seemingly unrealistic crime statistics about our area to my family, which seemed odd. Why would you hard sell something that’s already been agreed to, to a captive audience? The answer is that you’d like to charge them many, many times the advertised installation fee for extra sensors. Amazingly, after a brief talk with his boss out of earshot, the price dramatically dropped 200 dollars. I could tell that I was really looking a gift-horse in the mouth when he informed me that he could not re-offer that price after I refused again. After the kids left, the stories and pushing turned into a cheesy, saturday matinee nightmare story telling fest. If you’re ever in need of a good camp-fire horror-story teller, please do find a greedy, heartless, alarm salesman. You’ll be wasting your time with anyone less twisted. Here’s an incomplete list of abbreviated stories that the salesman told to turn up the heat.

• You’re lucky that your dogs are ok, I remember one of my previous clients telling me about a break-in where the thieves put the home owner’s dog in the oven and another where they put the family dog in the freezer, where the 8 year old daughter found it later. Apparently she needed therapy afterwards.
• In one break-in, the thief came in through a broken window, cutting himself. The next morning the stay-at-home mom found a trail of blood speckles all around the house, leading to a pool of blood at the foot of her bed. What was he doing there, Watching? Masturbating?
• Many older folks are really distraught by break-ins and the question I always get is, when will they be back? –dramatic silence–
• It’s best to get the break sensors for upstairs, you don’t think you have to worry about the windows, I used to never tell people to worry about upstairs… but recently, some crooks, dressed in uniforms, backed up a u-haul to a home, broke into the upstairs windows and unloaded everything from the garage in broad daylight. The neighbors saw and didn’t even call because they assumed they were moving out.

And now I’d like to take a little time out to do an exclusive mini-review on my project blog. I don’t usually review corporate products here on my site as I prefer the DIY route so this will be a first!

There, I feel better already! :)

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