Unfortunate robbery at friend's house - suggestions?

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Jaymo - I have a 3/4 Havanese, 1/4 Lhasa Apso. I know when ANYBODY gets close to the house :).

I would have a PI or maybe the Detective working the case do some background checks on the staff. It was way too "easy" to get inside that house.

Carry all the time, and have long guns easier to get to.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr
 
if 4 perps break in and you don't know they are coming you are better off just not being armed than a gun fight with 4 guys who have the drop on you. I don't know how anyone could not hear them coming unless the door was open and unlocked.
 
There isn't much you can do when taken by surprise in a take over robbery, other than to just pray they don't start offing family or staff members, and keep a cooperative dialog going. Been there.

GS
 
Having "staff" implies that your friend is quite affluent.
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If he has "staff" he has money.
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Your looking at this from an American's standpoint.. However, In some parts of the world staff can be had for pennies a day.
 
And in those parts of the world better security can be had rather cheaply as well. If he can afford staff, he can afford better security.
 
That is the basis of a home invasion. Superior numbers of armed individuals. Willingness to employ violence.
 
Sitting here reading this

Our two dogs sleeping in the living room while I type.
The door is 6 feet away. Drive way 200 feet long. I can see lights coming down my direction.
The front door is half way down the porch so I will hear feet coming.
So will the dogs.
Mt M-19 is poking into my side as I sit here and God help anyone with ill intent.
As for what happened here. Be happy no one was injured or killed.
No one cak say you should have done differently.

Get a dog they are more than friends.
Lock the door if you live in a place where you need to.
Remember locks are detergents and just slow someone down. Glass breaks and windows are glass.
 
Locks help honest people remain honest.
No more.

Dogs are the best money ever spent.
I have 2 Great Danes.
One's a lover & will play ball or tug of war til it kills you.
The other ... well he's been beaten and abused (certainly not by me).
He's my guard dog.
Heaven help the poor fool that tries to harm me or mine.
Once he gets to know you, he's a sweet heart, but he doesn't trust strangers.
 
I had to reread this a couple times; guess I'm poor enough that "staff" threw me!:uhoh: So I take it he had maids/servants in the house? That probably changes the equation a bit. Initially I was trying to decide if this was at a business or home. If it's a home it's maybe difficult to keep things completely buttoned up if you have a large enough house to have "staff" coming and going.

But overall I think that the first layer to look at is physical security. To us unwashed that means good exterior lighting with no blind spots and/or good hiding spots for criminals to access inconspicuously. The next obvious point of entry would be doors and windows. Doors should be heavy and anchored to the frame with 3" screws. The door jamb should be reinforced thoroughly. It does no good to have a strong deadbolt if the strike plate is a $1.00 affair held in with 3/4" wood screws, either. The strike plate needs to be hardened and reinforced as well.

After this is seen to you can add electronics and dogs. Between alarms, dogs and strong locks you should have some time to prepare to repel boarders, or get out of the house if need be. There isn't a great way to take on four or more invaders armed with rifles! But if you have enough money to need "staff" you can probably afford a safe room, preferably one that's reinforced and bullet-resistant. Having AR500 armor for the occupants wouldn't be a crazy idea, either.
 
Short of parking ED-209 outside and having an armed cyborg guardian inside, you'll probably never be anywhere near "completely safe" from any given armed household burglary. You do the best you can with whatever reasonable means you have to make your home less than desirable for such activity, and prepare for any reasonable eventuality as best you can otherwise. Much of this has already been covered.

But when you've been caught with the proverbial pants down, there isn't much you can do without a reasonable opportunity in which to act.

For what it's worth, I'm of the opinion that keeping these guys away from the basement was a good idea. And I'm darned happy nobody got hurt.

Study what happened and why, then see what preparations can be made to minimize the possibility of such a think happening again.
 
I've seen what happens to hostages sometimes. Public video taped beheadings with machetes or combat knives. Extremely unpleasant. Also mass execution shootings where people suffer, laying there to die with mortal, but not immediately fatal, GSWs. These things never leave you.

From these experiences, I would have a very hard time with complying with these folks.

I think the best defense is picking where you live better, and situational awareness. Given that taking a hostage or ambushing a civilian would be so easy, I cannot emphasis that location and situational awareness are key here. Don't live in a dumpy crime ridden neighborhood, with high foot traffic, avoid living in apartments and common parking lots (esp after dark). And carry a gun, or have one immediately available all the time.

I don't have any magical answers. Headshots against multiple foes would be suicide. A standoff might also be suicide. No guarantee that turning over your guns and stuff would mean that you don't get executed to ride them of witnesses.

In this circumstance, I would try to discretely alert others in the home. Maybe come up with a codeword you can shout to alert others, even sleeping members.... it would be terrible if the sleeping person was either discovered unintentionally and killed, or started the hostage takers and was killed. You'd need to be able to shout something to alert them to get their gun, call 911, and take cover and prepare to defend with their life.
 
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as alarming as this sounds - he did absolutely the right thing.
and guess what - nobody was hurt and the robbers left with only some stuff. that is a pretty GOOD outcome compared to the alternatives .... three or four armed intruders in your house? things could go badly wrong if that situation went down to shooting.

i agree with other thoughts. to prevent this - you need good warning. locked doors, outside lights and surveillance cameras, maybe a good watch dog in the yard. a dog would be a great warning alarm.

if you find yourself behind the game, and the perp's have got the jump on you, stay cool and calm and dont do anything to irritate them. he actually handled it pretty well.

CA R
 
as alarming as this sounds - he did absolutely the right thing.
and guess what - nobody was hurt and the robbers left with only some stuff. that is a pretty GOOD outcome compared to the alternatives .... three or four armed intruders in your house? things could go badly wrong if that situation went down to shooting.
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Well, he got lucky really. It was up to the bad guys. They could have decided to execute them.
 
Well, he got lucky really. It was up to the bad guys. They could have decided to execute them.
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Of course. However, the point remains that whatever he did, or DIDN'T do, it was exactly the right thing at that time. Might not be the right thing some other time. Might have turned out to have been the wrong thing in this instance, but it didn't.

Something that's very difficult to explain, or teach, or even comment on after the fact, is the defender's ability to use his social skills and observations to choose the very best response in a very bad situation. Any response that gets you dead is not the right one, whether that means you died on your feet or on your knees as the saying goes. There may not be a "best" response for every situation, in that all actions lead to the same result -- in which case, go out however you see fit! :))) But the point is that formulated responses decided on in advance may push you to make a bad choice. Don't fall into the self-made trap of not listening to your own observations and instincts as the situation unfolds. Maybe you need to make a do-or-die (do-AND-die?) sudden violent response. Maybe, as was the case here, a reserved, calm response will see you still on the right side of the dirt when it's all over.
 
I would appreciate to hear your thoughts.
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1. Own a dog! We used to keep highly trained Pit Bulldogs in the house with us; and, yes, back in October of 1990, bright and early on an otherwise quiet Sunday morning, those Pitbulls actually saved our lives when our home was suddenly invaded. (I didn't have to do a thing; the Bulldogs did it all.) :D

FerFAL, the Argentinean survival expert, recommends keeping one large dog like a Pitbull, and one small loud dog like a Dachshund. (Which, at one time, we also had!) I think he's right: Pitbulls make really lousy, 'watchdogs'. Why? They're simply too confident. On the other hand our Dachshund was extremely alert, had a loud deep voice, and alarmed very well. While he was with us nobody could get within 25 or 30 yards of the house without him knowing, and immediately sounding off.

2. Because we've already had the displeasure of experiencing a home invasion (and vividly remember all the details) I'm almost never out of reach of a fully loaded pistol while I'm at home. I, also, carry all day long; so I regularly come onto, and leave the property while fully armed. (It's been, literally, decades since I've come home and haven't conducted a security check of the premises BEFORE settling in.)

I've studied dozens, if not hundreds, of these incidents and have formed the conclusion that home robberies and invasions are usually over very quickly; AND, wherever gunfire breaks out, the bad guys tend to get out of the home and off the property very quickly. At the most, the whole event tends to be no more than a two or three minute affair.

In the subject incident? Hey, once they've, 'got the drop on you' I'd have to say that discretion is the better part of valor. I'm glad your friend remained calm, cooperated with the thieves, and got them out of the house as quickly as possible. The only thing that bothers me is things COULD, very easily, have gone the other way. Glad he, his friends, and family got through everything OK!
 
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"Well, he got lucky really. It was up to the bad guys. They could have decided to execute them. "

correct. if the bad guys decided to pull the trigger - everybody in that house would have been gone. generally the bad guys wont do this - because they need to stay quiet and work fast i.e. their motive is robbery. but if their motive had been robbery AND homicide - that could have ended badly.

stop and think about the alternative, though. do you really want to engage in a full-fledged gun battle inside a house? there are 4 perpetrators, three with pistols and one with an AK-47. the inside of that house would look like Swiss Cheese by the time the gun battle was over. And that doesn't count the noise factor of all these weapons going off in enclosed rooms - when no-one was wearing hearing protection. The result would be a lot of "random" shooting, and the real possibility that the occupants could be hurt/killed by friendly fire as well as hostile fire.

so the simple point I was making is that the guy involved in this incident stayed cool and collected, made good judgments, and it worked out pretty well for him. they need to get a good guard dog :)

CA R
 
To me, having a staff, and therefore having non family members with access to your home, seems like a constant liability. Eliminate the staff, live in a small enough house that you can hear any window or door break from anywhere in the house, get a dog, even just a little one.

Not living in a big fancy setup seems like it would reduce the likelihood of having a planned home invasion by a group of people anyway. Plus having a dog is pretty much required in order to lead a happy life anyway.
 
Having experienced a similar home invasion in 1979, "before alarm systems were popular", I can attest to the fact that if someone wants In badly enough, they will get in.
Alarms and Dogs, are the 2 best deterrents, along with Video in and outside, but some guys don't care or can still get around it.
If you have loved ones in the house, "as I did", unless you get very lucky, you are probably just giving them what they want , "unfortunately I didn't have what they were told I had". But there are no steadfast rules, in something like this, when it happens you have to constantly re evaluate the situation and if you are able to do that , you just may make it through with a few bumps and bruises. Shooting them coming in, is of course the best ultimatum if you are able to do so with no harm to yourself or family.
But don't let anyone tell you that there is a specific formula for handling these things, as they unfold they constantly evolve, and what worked yesterday may fail miserably today.
The evolution of new technology like off premises hard drives with streaming video and many other innovations are the best things to spend your money on, most new homes in my area come with "Panic rooms" now, and people with a few bucks are more in tune to the importance of this over say, a 5th bedroom, etc.
And of course get everyone on the same page as far as training and having a plan, also a word that signals everyone to drop what they are doing and head for the safe room.
Plus practicing shooting in a shoot house, which will help much more than all the target practice there is, "nothing like seeing what it really is like when there are people in a confined area and on the other side of a wall.
Also a few well placed guns perhaps a 12 gauge, scattered through the house so as to run and gun if necessary to get into your safe area. And tac lights scattered around also so u can kill the lights with a master switch, but it depends on the ages of the occupants, and their ability and willingness to follow instructions.
Even having been through it, my wife, "who wasn't" doesn't take it seriously, she thinks it won't happen here, not to her. It's hard when you have others who aren't on the same page. They will get you killed trying to save them from themselves.
 
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^^^^
To a very great extent it can be generalized that folks who have not "been through it", simply do not take it seriously.

This applies not only to home defense but to self defense out of the home. We all make decisions about preparedness. Those who are diligent enough to sustain a high level of preparedness are a minority.
 
UPDATE

I visited my friend last week just to check up on him as a routine matter. I was stunned to see that nothing has changed. He has gone back in to not carrying or taking proper measures. After the incident he was determined to carry and invest a little in firearms. It seems like that all has not been done. Instead I was surprised by his conversation. He was relaxed and carefree. He in fact blames the whole incident on the person living next door. He is under the impression that the thieves were actually meaning to rob the neighbor, and his house was skimmed through just because. It does not make sense to me why he is in denial.
 
Denial usually is a whole lot cheaper than fixing something, and less work.

Just human nature at work.
 
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