Getting Back Your Stolen Property

As anyone who has been victimized by a robber or burglar knows, there are few feelings as disturbing as the sense of loss and violation that accompanies having your personal possessions stolen. The bad news is that while the police always take these crimes seriously, resources are limited and your loss of items worth $50, $500, or even $5,000 is not likely to trigger a huge police manhunt. The good news is that modern communications technologies are making it more and more possible to carry out an effective search for your stolen items.

Before You’re Burgled

Hindsight is 20-20, of course. But although it’s not possible for you to know for sure when or if you’ll be burgled, you can still take common-sense steps ahead of time to increase the chances of getting your things back.

1. Copy down serial numbers on electronics and similar devices.
2. Take quality digital photographs of high-value items, as well as of items with great personal or sentimental value.
3. Install or sign up for a discreet home security system with video surveillance capability.

In The Aftermath

1. File a police report immediately upon discovering your victimization. Not the next day, not the next week – right away.
2. Start visiting the pawn shops in your area. Despite laws to discourage it, pawn shops are often the fences of first resort, especially for novice criminals. If you find your stuff, don’t try to buy it back or confront the pawn shop workers; ask the shop to hold it for you and then call the cops.
3. Follow up at least weekly with the local police to see if their investigation has made progress.

In The Long Term

1. Work your social network. Post pictures of the missing item(s) and ask your friends (especially those in geographical proximity) to keep an eye out for items for sale matching yours.
2. Check eBay, Craigslist and Backpage daily. These sales sites have become the fences of first resort for the NON-novice thief, because they are difficult to track and the volume of ads makes it easier to hide stolen property. If you spot your items for sale, again, do NOT try to get them back; call the cops. You’ll find a much warmer response from the police when you’ve already found the perpetrator for them.
3. There are a number of web sites that facilitate the search for stolen goods. One good one is Stolen911.com, which does automated searches for your items on a variety of different sales sites. There are also specific sites that specialize in one type of stolen item, like StolenBicycleRegistry.com

You may or may not be able to get back what was taken from you, but if you play smart and keep an ear to the ground, you do have at least a chance of seeing some of your property again.

Gun Safety Begins at Home

The recent tragic shootings in Arizona, Colorado, and Connecticut have focused renewed national attention on the role of guns in our daily lives. Regardless of one’s position on the issue, there are certain facts which every American needs to recognize in order to minimize danger to ourselves and our families, and to deal with the present guns in a safe and responsible way.

There Are A Lot of Guns

Gun ownership overall has declined either slightly or somewhat in recent decades (depending on who you ask) but the decline comes from a starting point of extremely widespread gun ownership. The percentage of households that have at least one firearm varies, unsurprisingly, from region to region. City dwellers are less likely to have firearms than rural denizens, and southern and western states generally have higher rates of firearm ownership. However, the overall numbers are quite large: somewhere between 1 in 3 and 1 in 2 households have at least one firearm, and there are thought to be at least 270,000,000 guns of all types in the United States, almost one per person.

Don’t Assume

Unless you are locking your children in the basement of your gun-free home (and not permitting them cable TV or Internet), they are certain to encounter guns in the media and on the Net, and they are very, very likely to encounter guns in real life as well. Parents should refrain from assuming they know what their kids have seen or touched. In one study of parents who reported their child as having never seen a (real) gun, 20% of those reports were falsified when the children themselves acknowledged having seen or touched a gun.

Knowledge is Power

Teaching our children about gun safety means teaching them about guns. As parents, there is always the temptation to wishfully hope that if only kids don’t know about a sensitive topic, that topic can’t hurt them. Alas, things do not work that way. The best way to reduce the hazard posed by guns is to learn about them, how they work, what they’re for, and in some cases how to handle one.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has a very well-regarded gun safety program for young people. Under the ‘Eddie the Eagle’ program, kids (even those too young to learn to shoot) learn the following critical gun safety tips when they see a gun that isn’t being properly used by an adult:

• STOP!
• DON’T TOUCH.
• LEAVE THE AREA.
• TELL AN ADULT.

These are simple enough for even very young children, while covering the basic elements of keeping safe.

Adults and older children can learn even more. There are two basic categories of safety rules: rules to cover the operation and firing of the gun, and rules to cover the safe storage of the gun, often in a home.

The first category can be learned at almost any shooting range, which offer gun-safety courses, some under the NRA banner and some independent. These rules include common-sense behaviors as never pointing a gun at anyone (loaded or unloaded), never put your finger on the trigger until you are actually ready to shoot at something, always aim a gun in the least-dangerous possible way (usually down), and perhaps most importantly, assume that an empty weapon is a loaded weapon. Although accidental shootings are a relatively small portion of the deaths in which guns played a role, many accidental shootings reflect individuals who thought their weapon was unloaded, when it was not.

The second category of rules, how to maximize gun safety in your own home, has a bit more scope.

Lock it Up

About 200,000 firearms are stolen from individual owners each year. Criminals love to steal guns; they can use them or they can sell them, and demand is always strong. When not in use, your guns need to be in a locked and concealed safe, chest, or other box. In addition, your guns should be stored with trigger locks (which prevent the gun from firing) and/or cable locks (which prevent the gun’s action from operating).

Keep It Empty

Store your guns unloaded to prevent accidental discharges when you are retrieving a gun from the safe, and to minimize the immediate danger if an intruder manages to defeat the lock(s) and steal weapons. Keep ammunition somewhere discreetly away from where you store your guns – but be sure that YOU remember where it is, and how to get working access to a gun (out of the safe, locks off, bullets in) in the minimum possible time.

Don’t Teach Safety – Live It

Well, teach it too – but study after study, to say nothing of ordinary common sense, tells us that kids treat guns the way their parents treat guns. If you act like your rifle is a toy, do not be surprised when your kids – who lack your judgment about when such joking around is harmless – pick up the habit. Send kids to the Eddie Eagle class, but more importantly, let your children see you attending the grownup gun safety class, and practicing good range safety, and being scrupulous about safety rules in the home. That example will set the pattern that your children need to be able to follow – and if you don’t do it, who will?

Be a Pro

Lots of us have various items that we mean to learn how to use properly, but never do. The kayak sits collecting spider webs in the garage and the fancy new computer (the one we were going to use to learn databases) has never run anything but Facebook. Those are harmless – but having guns on a casual, uneducated, “I’ll go to the range next year” basis is irresponsible. If you are going to have guns, then you owe it to yourself, your neighbors, and your family to take the time to learn the operation of the weapon. Learn how to shoot, how to aim, how to maintain, how to clean – all tasks, by the way, where taking the ‘Learn Kayaking…Eventually’ approach can literally get someone killed. Your local gun store can recommend classes (and probably offer some themselves), and your local shooting range is usually an outstanding source of practical education on how to safely bear arms.

Talking to Kids about Abduction

It is every parent’s greatest fear: that someone, usually a stranger in our fevered imaginations, will take our child away never to be seen again. Although the truth is that abductions have happened all through history, there is a greatly increased awareness of the problem today, thanks to modern media. While this is beneficial in that people are more aware of a real risk, it is also very stressful in that every case tends to be amplified in our ears until what is still, thankfully, a rare event seems like a constant onslaught.

Children are not immune from this fear, and so it is the responsibility of parents to both alleviate the fear and to prepare against the real danger. Fortunately there are a number of steps that parents and children can take to reduce risk and prepare against the unthinkable, without adopting paranoia and fearfulness as a way of life.

Talk About Risk – Real and Exaggerated

Kids should understand that the absolute number of “bad people” in the world is not zero. But they also should understand that the majority, even the vast majority, of the people they encounter in daily life are decent folks. And parents, while they do not need to emphasize the point with their kids or even bring it up, need to quietly remind themselves that the vast majority of child abductions are not stranger abductions – they are cases usually involving family conflict and/or divorce, where one parent or relative takes a child to evade or forestall a custody order.

Role-play and Practice

Kids love playing games, even about things like war or violent crime. Don’t make light of the perils of abduction, but you can role-play possible scenarios to help kids practice good defensive techniques in the event that something does happen.

Explain that Rules are Sometimes Optional

Be sure that your kids understand that when someone is trying to hurt them, the usual rules of behavior and decorum go right out the window. It is totally OK to scream in the mall. It is totally OK to knock things off store shelves and draw attention. It is totally OK to hurt an adult who is trying to hurt them.

Emphasize Smarts and Sense

Abductors like nothing more than a child who is afraid – people who are afraid react in predictable ways that the abductor can take advantage of. A child who is reacting with intelligence and thinking through their moves, however, is a child who creates a huge risk for the abductor – enough of a risk that they may well just give up and go away.

Be Prepared for the Worst

It seems morbid, but preparation can turn a slim chance for recovering a child into a fighting chance. Have hair samples, recent photographs, and fingerprints available in a folder for each child that you can give to police literally within seconds of being asked. Know what your child is wearing every day. Without being obnoxious about it, make sure that the other adults in your child’s life (teachers, babysitters, coaches, etc.) understand that your child will NEVER be taken out of school or away from an event by anyone other than a parent, without that responsible adult being informed by you personally of the necessity – and then keep to that rule, even when making the call or arranging the transfer to grandma is inconvenient.

Child abduction is a crime almost too awful to think about – but thinking about it, and the appropriate response to it, is your first and best recourse to prevent it.