ChrisK1970 said:
Hey gents. I would like to offer a couple bits of advice. I work in LE for the State and have been doing my job for 17 years. I just finished a five year stint in the fraud unit with NHSP (I was a Sex Crimes Detective before that in my home city prior to joining the SP). One of the things I would frequently teach at the academy was auto and equipment theft. I have given this information out before on another site.
Inventory all of your equipment. Take a quick photo of it, mark your tools. Take down the PIN (for heavy equipment - skid steers, loaders, generators etc) or Serial Number. Know what your looking at by it's correct name and be able to describe it to the officer. If you own a small construction company and have a Case Skidsteer and it gets stolen don't tell the responding officer "they stole my Bobcat". Everybody that is not you and doesn't work with power tools or heavy equipment identify things the wrong way. To most people that Case is a bobcat. A TS55 is a power saw. A TI15+3 kit is a power drill. It is important to you because if you have something stolen and you don't properly identify what it is it will be entered into NCIC wrong! If you don't have serial numbers you will never see your valuable (and yes...I know how valuable these are, I'm a proud Festool owner) ever again. In NH the owners of pawn shops have to photo copy their customers ID card (the seller not the buyer) and submit that report monthly to the PD but you might be surprised to learn...not all shop owners are upstanding citizens. Most are but not all.
The idea in short is provide a clear correct description and serial number or PIN to the officer so it gets reported in the system correctly so it can be recovered. In NH I have friends in the trades that have been picked clean by these slime bags. Most of the thieves are their own workers or other contractors on site. The advantage of doing these things I suggested help immensely in insurance claims too! You're just taking the time to protect yourself. As far as smash and grabs or DB's walking off site with your stuff it's hard to prevent but...at least you have the correct info to file with the police and have for your insurer. Also I have a slate tile on my main entrance. Normal people have a sign on that slate of a Pineapple that says "welcome". Mine is two crossed pistols that say "We don't dial 911". [big grin]
Good advice. The flip side is that sometimes it's the constables that are ripping you off. DC is one of the worst places for this kind of theft. You'd think a local precinct would be a safe place to work. Not in DC. Of all the off-the-wall places I've ever had to go to install and repair circuits and comm gear, nobody EVER bothered my tools - EXCEPT the precinct. Fortunately I caught the offending sergeant bragging to his buddies that he'd just gotten a set of phone tools - free. I will admit that my temper got the better of me on that occasion and the confrontation got quite personal, physical and ugly. The tools were retrieved from this jackass's desk drawer in front of his lieutenant. When I finished that job and was leaving, I passed the lieutenant's office. He said, "For a white boy, you got a set of nuts." My response was, "You ain't seen nothin' yet. Pray real hard that I never have to come back her again." There were no cell phones in those days, so when I got back to the garage, I reported the incident to my boss's boss who got on the phone with the security division. Needless to say, I've never trusted DC cops since, for any reason. They're even mistrusted by cops in surrounding jurisdictions.
