Instrument and home security

Al Stevens

Al Stevens

I'm doing research for a writing project. I remember stuff from my youth about how to pick locks but did not recall the details.

A google search turned up numerous sites that explain how to do it. Picking common pin tumbler lock is a very simple procedure using two homemade tools.

Out of curiosity I made those tools from some scrap brass in the workshop.

Yesterday I picked the padlock on my workshop door. All my power tools are in there.

Today I picked the deadbolt lock on my studio where I keep all my instruments. It's the same kind of lock that's on all the doors on my house.

Each time it took less than a minute to get the lock open. Criminentlies!

And how to do it is available to anyone with internet access. They even show you how to make the tools with a bobby pin and the pocket clip from a ballpoint pen. Wait until you read about "bumping" a lock to open it. That's really scary.

On one site a locksmith advises that people spend the extra money (about $150) for locks that cannot be so easily picked. Tomorrow, I'm going to see about getting deadbolt locks from this maker, one of the ones the locksmith recommends.

http://consumer.schlage.com/

I think I'll sleep on a chair in the studio tonight with a shotgun in my lap.
 
Security of anything (homes, banks, trailers, whatever) depends on three factors: identification, security means taken, and dilution.

• Identification involves the thief discovering that there's something worth taking. Money in a pile, valuables visible through a window, horns in the back of a car (or a trailer - more on this later) - all are easy to pick out of the general "noise" that we all see each and every day.

• Security means taken are the precautions observed by the owners. Some of these can be quite involved, vis the expensive locks on a door. However, anyone with some common sense and a little enterprise can defeat these lock systems by breaching the wall next to the door. I can break through most standard residential walls in a matter of seconds with a little sledge work (and pretty quietly, too) - commercial construction takes a bit longer. Fire departments do it all the time when confronted with locked doors.

(I got to practice my lock picking skills over in RVN. My unit (an armored cavalry troop) used to steal blind the field artillery unit co-located at our fire base. A padlock on a freight container is little deterrent against young minds with time on their hands and metalworking tools in the belly of the VTR.)

But, expensive locks are only one security system. Most of us use others, often much less expensive, and they work quite well. Just locking a car door is supposed to cut down theft from automobiles by 80% or more. Throwing a sheet over the horns in the back of the van has always been a very low cost (we buy a king sized sheet to generally match the interior color of our vehicles, throwing it over any load visible from the exterior) way of cutting down the visibility. Not flashing a wad of bills when shopping at an inner city quick mart is another.

One that I recently employed (or, more properly, put into place by not doing something) was to avoid the decoration on my band trailer. Having seen any number of these, I was all ready to have a vinyl "wrap" applied to my white trailer when Mike Brooks of EmBee Ideas (the plastic "front" company out of Saint Louis) sounded a cautionary note. He pointed out that several Saint Louis groups of his acquaintance had had their trailers "hit" and the contents ransacked by young folks looking for sound equipment. Seeing the prominent ads on the sides and rear of these trailers, young folks with malice in their hearts can easily break through the sides of these tin cans and scatter your arrangements to the winds while they make off with that mixer that's a lot easier to replace.

I saw his point, and thus omitted the decoration (saving me $500 in the process). Not as spiffy looking, but a whole lot more anonymous.

• Dilution is the method that works the best. With (in my area) millions of buildings and vehicles from which to choose, thieves are more likely to opt for the easy targets, the low hanging fruit. So, the money laying about in a car (I once (and in Saint Louis, no less) had a car window smashed for the $1.95 carefully stowed in the "toll booth change" holder in the center console - ask me if I have ever done so since...), a pickup bed full of boxes with handles, or other such stuff is going to draw their attention a lot sooner.

Keep it covered, take reasonable lock up precautions, keep your activities as low key as possible, and you lower your profile alarmingly.

However, despite all of this, we still carry a lot of insurance coverage. A necessity for some aspects of the business (like liability for performances in some venues), but it's also a way to get horns and other equipment replaced. Sure, it's cold comfort if you lose a prized Mark VI, but it's a lot better than nothing at all.
 
I agree with Terry, but offer that all the security in the world can be thwarted by a determined crook.

My advice is to harden the target and lock everything (make the thief work for his crime), and record your serial numbers in a place where you have them with you at all times.

We've been over this before, but reporting the serial number(s) at the time the theft/burglary/robbery is reported is the best guarantee of recovering stolen items . . not weeks later when you dig them out of your files at home or the office, but right there when you make the initial police report.

Lastly, work to increase sentences for convicted thieves, burglars, and robbers. Long jail terms actually reduce crime. Most felons are multiple offenders with a long history of slaps on the wrists. While they cool their heels in prison, they are NOT breaking into your instrument room or car trunk. We can argue social philosophy all day, but I'm writing from experience (and NOT as a thief). DAVE
 
Some recommendations:
  • Keep nothing of value in out buildings. Try to keep them in the house.
  • Neighborhood watch. I've seen this work time and time again.
  • Car goes in garage. Exterior garage door is metal. Interior garage door is fire door with lock.
  • Own a dawg or two. Mine are German Sheppards.
  • Deadbolts on all exterior doors. You wanna be able to prove you were broken into. Six inch screws in hinge plates.
  • Security system with exterior alarm for neighborhood.
  • exterior motion spot lights at key junctures.
  • 45 cal. pistol in speed save with hollow points. These bullets are less likely to go through a wall after exploding in a body.
  • If you can, have someone at home with the dawgs. Since I work during the day and the wife at night, this works well.
Nothings perfect, but you do your best.
 
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In Utah we lock our car doors so the Mormon neighbors don't fill the back seat with zuchinni from their garden. :)


John
 
Gandalfe: Criminal law is weird in many places, but most states have similar statutes. For instance, in California, an automobile needs to be locked before 459 PC (Burglary) can be alleged. If the vehicle was unlocked, the thief only commits Theft if he/she takes something, even from the locked trunk.

Yet, when anyone enters a structure to commit petty theft or any felony, the mere entering with the intent is sufficient to establish Burglary - no actual theft or felonious crime is necessary - just enter with the intent.

So, a victim doesn't need to PROVE the structure was locked - only when a motor vehicle is entered does locking it serve as an element of the offense.

I agree with the .45ACP pistol and jacket hollow points. That's what I carry. But actually using it can become dicey unless your or someone else's life is in danger. DAVE
 
It usually is a good idea to take some pictures of your instruments, along with serial numbers, and give them to your lawyer and/or your insurance person. Do check with your insurance that these instruments are covered. Won't prevent theft but makes filling in police reports a lot easier.

Then, store your instruments in different places if possible, the cheapest one (or a prop) on a stand in your practice room. (Dah Missus always has some cheap jewellery in the usual places where one would expect jewellery to be). This kind of "honeypotting" will steal valuable time from the thief; they rarely want to be more than five minutes in an apartment, at least here in the city.

The usual deterrents apply - a large dog bowl outside the door, a (random) timer switch that switches on and off some lights or TV in your house, have the neighbor check your flowers and the aquarium etc etc. No guns as far as I am concerned.

Besides, a bump-proof lock doesn't cost all that much. Some insurance companies might even sponsor such a part of "home improvement".
 
Having used pistols (rarely) and other weapons like rifles and grenade launchers (much more frequently) for a living at one time during my life, I have very little confidence that a pistol would be available at the exact moment of time that an anti-theft "opportunity" would present itself. Even with a fingerprint or hand geometry safe, you literally have to be "right there" when the intrusion occurs to be able to take the three to five seconds to open and acquire the weapon. Other locks (like trigger locks or my solution, disassembly and separate locked storage) make successful use even more improbable.

While in the military, most of the pistol "injuries" recorded during my years were either accidental injury to the firer, or intentional (but non-combat) injuries to others on our side (just like happened yesterday in Iraq). I have my beloved Mauser "Bolo" (wood stock holster and all) in several pieces in locked enclosures, but I know that nailing someone coming through the door is just not practical. A short shotgun is a far more potent and "accurate" weapon for these purposes, but even in that case you still have to negotiate the legal system.

Here in the Lone Star State, it is quite easy to blow someone away who is just on your property and still walk away from the experience. People who have knocked on doors (asking for directions at 7:00 PM at night) or kids out trick or treating have been shot, in some cases without any warning, and the homeowner has been no billed by his fellow Texians . You have to go through the grand jury process, but the vast majority of them get off, even in cases where the "intruder" is anything but.

With one in twenty five cars (per Houston Police Department figures) having a legal firearm in them (if you cross a county line down here during your day's travels, you have an implied right to carry a firearm in your car), minor traffic incidents often turn ugly. We are awash in handguns here, and accidental deaths from children playing with them is quite common. But, they are seldom used to thwart a home intrusion or business robbery.

(A former colleague of my wife, an otherwise rational teacher of small children, has had two admitted incidents where she has accidentally discharged a pistol in her house. She is such a ditz that I wouldn't allow her near a toaster, but there she is, juggling weapons next to her bed, loaded with the safety off. Thank God her nearest neighbor is 800 feet away. But, I do fear for the life of her poor husband (who did not want to have guns in the house).)

Mind you, I'm by no means anti-gun, or anti-hand gun. I have owned one for many years, and have actually used the things (but mostly something a little more useful than a pistol) on a daily basis as part of my "job" for a year "in the field". I am just enough of a realist to know that they are far more likely to injure the ones you love than someone you don't

The use of insurance is an often neglected element of music, and most of the folks that I know in the craft haven't taken the most elemental steps to ensure that their claim will be properly adjudicated and paid. And, without taking those steps, you are open to underpayment or non-payment from a typical insurance company.

Photos are easy to take these days, and every real horn has a serial number. Recording these is a snap, and filing them with the insurance company can be handled by your insurance agent (mine has always been most helpful in this regard). Retail prices are acceptable (which is a good thing as your loss will be depreciated, no matter how hard you argue that a good horn is forever), but you will most likely have to pay for a rider to cover them all.

Another distinction that needs to be made up front is commercial use. My policy (homeowners for my personal horns) has a commercial use provision that prices the coverage at 200% of non-commercial use. Lose a horn on a gig, and the adjuster will be able to tell if you are doing it as a charity case or are being paid.

Overall coverage for a business is somewhat different. I own a piano (well, a high quality piano keyboard and amplifier combination), but cannot play a note on same. It's under my policy for the band, as is all of the other "stuff" that we haul around to jobs.

Unfortunately, you do have to pay for the coverage. But, it's a part of "doing business" as a musician (or group leader), and come tax time you get to offset your profits in the "trade" with expenses such as these.

Sadly, these factors have little to do with actually making music. However, they are still critical to the whole picture.
 
Terry: While I respect your writing ability and your contributions to this site, I must disagree with your comments about gun use, practicality, and safety.

This site is probably not the appropriate place for this discussion, but I must respond.
It would require pages and pages of detailed writing to describe which firearm is best for which situation - suffice to say that any firearm may work - or it may not. The subject is highly subjective.

I choose a .45ACP for daily carry but also have a variety of handguns, rifles, and shotguns in my safe, from antique 11MM to ,22LR, and many in between. I've seen shooting victims survive seven solid hits with a .45ACP, and die from one .22LR shot. I've carried concealed (legally because of my military then peace officer status) for over 40 years and have seen it all.

But the myths associated with an armed society are plentiful and the myths about more people being wounded or killed with their own weapons, the numbers of accidental discharges, and the rate of violence in traffic and other social encounters caused by firearms are just that - myths. True, some folks would be better off NOT having a firearm, but the few who fit that mold are not cause to conclude that many are in that mold.

Gun-myths are popular to throw about but can't be backed up with statistics. Citing specific incidents are anecdotal and not typical. Most reported incidents are but a drop in the bucket when compared to total firearms use . . . much like airplane crashes and deaths are but a tiny fraction of overall air miles travelled. And lest someone research national stats, be aware that those stats are misleading and inaccurate.

Even the notorious shooting incidents in Texas are anecdotal - and the details, as I recall of one such incident involved more than a person walking on someone's property. AND, what is written in the law, then ruled on by a jury are two different things. It is just as likely that a jury would convict as they would acquit on the same facts. Juries are unpredictable and to infer one person was acquitted means that all folks who did the same thing would be acquitted just isn't true. I point to the O.J. case in West L.A. several years ago as an example of weird jury decisions. It happens everywhere, just not in Texas.

Will a firearm prevent crime? Of course not - all of the sentencing, security, locking and identifying discussions in this thread are more effective. But Gandalfe mentioned a .45ACP and that's all I was commenting about. I don't mean to say that firearm will prevent your saxophones and clarinets from being stolen - only that the .45ACP with JHP ammo is my preference in a defensive handgun.

If I had to use a firearm (and I have), if it was a handgun, the .45ACP would be my first choice, even though the .357MAG has been proven to be more effective in statistical studies of actual shootings.

However, my first choice, if I were able to make that choice immediately before an incident, would be a 12-gauge shotgun. Most incidents do not allow that choice to be made - one has to already be equipped when it happens. My .45ACP choice was made way before any incident develops. DAVE
 
A bullet hole can drastically and permanently reduce the financial and use value of your instrument. ;-)

Suffices to say that I think there are more efficient de-escalation techniques than pulling a trigger...
 
Ben: I agree but the tactics of de-escalation would also require more space than we can give it here. It is not my intent to put forth firearms as the FIRST option in protecting one's valuable property. I think we made that clear enough.

I also appreciate that this site is read by many folks who think firearms are outrageous and anti-social. I am not one of those and it seems that most of America holds dear their right to bear arms.

But as they say, when seconds count and the police are only minutes away, I feel the need to be able to defend myself (and my precious saxophones) in a proficient manner. Trying to de-escalate a deadly threat may end in more tragedy than if the trigger was pulled. There are times when concern for my fellow man and proper de-escalation techniques are outweighed by an immediate need to save my own skin.

I hope my aim under pressure is better than putting a hole in my prized Buescher soprano. DAVE
 
I'll re-hijack my own thread to discuss lock-picking again. ;-)

I learned how to pick locks over the weekend. Today I had to use that skill. It was a sad day.

I visited a fellow musician now home from a stay in a rehab facility following surgery. We sat in his house and chatted. The doorbell rang.

A distraut woman was at the door. She was frantic. She checks in on my friend's neighbor, an elderly lady who lives alone, once every couple of weeks. The lady was not answering the door or the phone and hadn't for several days. She asked about a ladder to look in the garage to see if the lady's car was there.

My recuperating friend was not able to participate. I took his ladder next door and saw that the car was indeed in the garage. The woman had already called 911, but no one had responded. The woman did not have a key. The doors were locked.

I went to my friend's workshop and found a small screwdriver and a heavy-duty paper clip. I picked the lock to the front door, went in, and found the elderly lady dead on the floor next to her bed. The younger woman freaked out. I told her to call 911 with an update. A deputy sheriff was there within five minutes.

Now everybody involved thinks it was some kind of weird irony or fate that I learned to pick a lock two days before I needed to pick a lock to find a dead body. Except me, that is. I believe in coincidence over weird irony and fate.

I told the deputy how I got into the house, just so he'd know. He wrote it all down. He said there was no problem because the situation called for extraordinary measures. She might have still been alive.
 
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Al: That's a nasty job even for those of us who have actually done it and were paid for that duty. While I never had to pick a lock, I've made many of those discoveries and it ain't fun. It WAS a weird coincidence that you had just learned to open locks and then had to use it for such ends. Sad.

And, I apologize for "hi-jacking" but it seemed to follow a logical sequence. DAVE
 
And I will respond only to the extent of pasting a quote or two from my earlier posting.

Regarding gun/anti-gun arguments:

Mind you, I'm by no means anti-gun, or anti-hand gun. I have owned one for many years, and have actually used the things (but mostly something a little more useful than a pistol) on a daily basis as part of my "job" for a year "in the field". I am just enough of a realist to know that they are far more likely to injure the ones you love than someone you don't.
Click to expand...

Regarding the generic "best gun" for a security-concerned individual:

A short shotgun is a far more potent and "accurate" weapon for these purposes, but even in that case you still have to negotiate the legal system.
Click to expand...

I am not anti-weapon nor anti-handgun (although I haven't carried one for many years, despite the legal right to do so here in my daily travels). I am against stupid people wielding firearms, something that may only be anecdotal in nature but that is also commonly seen down here. The problem is, you cannot (in Texas) legislate against stupidity...

Firearms, like many other issues in life, are only a problem when they (and their related actions) stop taking effect on you and start taking effect on others not involved in your situation. And, the actions of some have some very real consequences on others who have done no wrong, offended no one, and are not even in the same ZIP code as the unthinking perpetrators.

To quote one variety of this, every third year or so someone is killed down here due to the curious habit of firing weapons into the air at New Years (and, incredibly, even at Christmas). The deaths may be anecdotal, but they are very real and very pointless.

The other, and the one that bothers me more than the rest, is the very real tendency for children to get greased with loaded handguns left laying about without any security means.

My then-eight year old son hit me with this one day, talking about how little Tommy had shown him "a real gun with bullets in it" whilst he was playing in their house. My boy, who at that point in his life already knew how to field strip a M1911A1, knew enough to walk the other way as soon as he could. But, when I told the father what his son had been doing with his weapon, he tut-tutted it as if it wasn't a problem.

Regarding death in general, as a fourteen year old, I had the very traumatic experience of responding with my father to my grandmother's duplex (from which she refused to move) in the city after returning from one of my parent's fishing trips. My grandmother, obstinate to the end, refused a relocation to a better place for an aged woman, just as she fought the installation of air conditioning. And, when she did not respond to a telephone call, we went home a day early to find out what was wrong.

When we arrived at the house (of which only her half was occupied; she also didn't like having tenants any longer), and keyed the door open (no lock picking needed in this family of key box owners), we were met by a rush of insects who had discovered her death forty-eight hours or so before we did and had been having a field day with her body in the interim.

The stench was overpowering, and one I'll never forget. (There is some scientific evidence that we are "hard wired" to be repulsed by the byproducts of decay that follow death.) I never saw the body, and am probably glad of that fact. But, the smell will always stay with me as my last memory of her.
 
I kind of regret joking in #1 about sleeping with a shotgun in my lap. I hope that's not what opened the anti-gun/pro-gun floodgates. :cry: Those kinds of discussions derailed another group I once belonged to.
 
I didn't take any of Terry's comment to be anti-gun and I was aware of his comments about not being so. However, I think there were myths being perpetuated that, even made by a pro-gun writer, needed to be addressed.

Shooting guns aimlessly in the air are not limited to Texas - jerks all over the world do that. I've personally seen it happen (yes, I made an arrest) and have been close to falling shotgun shot from a neighborhood just south of our police station. I ducked under the building's overhang just before the shot fell on my parked police car.

As far as children accessing firearms, I agree. California has a law to prevent that but we all know how effective laws can be. But, I want to re-iterate - it isn't the gun's fault, it is the idiot possessing it.

Shotgun accuracy - another myth is that all one needs to do is point a shotgun in someone's direction and it will hit. NOT! Short-barreled 12-ga. guns (commonly called "riot guns") will spread a buckshot pattern about one inch for every foot of travel. . . 12 feet = about a 12" spread. So at combat distances, one still needs to accurately aim a shotgun to hit the target. However, once on target, the shotgun is devastating. I have seen the results.

Terry is spot-on about death scenes - homicide, suicide, or natural, it is awful. DAVE
 
Dave Dolson said:
However, I think there were myths being perpetuated that, even made by a pro-gun writer, needed to be addressed.
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On a woodwinds forum? I'm not having any luck getting this thread back on track, so I surrender peacefully. :)
 
Yes, Al . . . on a Woodwinds forum, or any other forum where I think something needs to be commented upon. You singled out one of my comments but not the others that went off topic, and for considerable length. Is it okay for others to do that (including one of the moderators), but not me? DAVE
 
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