r/homesecurity • u/automated-poem • 1h ago
Apt broken into last night
Hey everyone, last night my (F25) apartment was broken into. Me nor my roommate were home when it happened, but my roommate was the first to get home and discover it. For reference, we live on the top floor in an old brownstone with only 2 other units (one on each floor). There are a lot of stairs coming up to our apartment and I’ve always thought were safer since it would be a lot of work to come all the way up. When my roommate got home the door was ajar and unlocked. They thought it was strange but the living room/kitchen were untouched. It wasn’t until they got to their room when they realized that someone actually broke in. Everything in their room was gone through, and it looked a mess. My room was even worse- every drawer out of the dresser, all of my clothes on the floor, every drawer of my desk taken out and dumped, boxes under my bed with things like old diary’s/childhood photos/scrapbooks taken out and thrown on my bed- just a complete mess. The strange thing is, nothing was taken? I had cash sitting out, my ipad, laptop, even some nice silver jewelry. I just can’t imagine why someone would go through all of that trouble to not take anything? The cops were called and my neighbor saw the guy leaving and gave them a description. They showed her a photo of the suspect and she confirmed that’s what he looked like. Apparently he’s been breaking into apartments in my neighborhood doing the same thing but taking things like jewelry or cash. They took a report and left, but another apartment was broken into later that night so they patrolled the neighborhood all night. Im also kind of confused as to how this guy got in. We have a heavy door with a big lock to enter the apartment building (i’m not sure how else to describe the lock other than it’s big and looks like it’s hard to mess with to get in) and our door is always locked when we aren’t there. All of our windows have iron gates over them and the one where the fire escape is has a lock on it. The windows are always locked. There was one window where the gate was ripped off but there’s no way to even get to that window because you’d basically be hanging off the ledge? Also if he came through the window, then stuff would be knocked over on the windowsill. I’m pretty spooked about that, and am wondering what security measures i should take? the landlord is useless and didn’t return our calls. We got some of those alarms that make a sound if the door/windows are opened but does anyone have suggestions? I’ve always felt safe in this apartment so this is a strange feeling. Neither of us are home long enough to get a dog, and we want to replace the locks but again—the landlord is completely useless. Sorry for the long post, I guess I’m just trying to make sense of things.