NALs is right up to a point, this was no "inside job". As for the rest of it, well as usual such abstract reasoning is all well and good, and not exactly incorrect of course, but it lacks details. our balcony has no bars but the doors are securely lockable, heavy, and easily prevent a thief from entering. It is not as though there is no barrier -- and the arrangement is one that the owner has insisted on so the placement of bars in addition to the present barriers has been a bone of contention. the thief took a chance that the barlessness might indicate easy ingress. And with a bit of luck he was proven right, given that our doors had been open. there is no way to ascertain from the street or any other vantage point (unless you are in someone else's balcony with binoculars) the exact nature of the entrance from the balcony tothe inside of the apt. As I said, the bars have been an issue between us and the owner of the apt in an ongoing dispute, which, on top of other things led us finally to decide to move. The house is in fact all packed up.
The opportunity was noted by an enterprising thief who investigated the situation a bit (barlessness and a couple other factors regarding negligence on behalf of the condo's maintenance); however, it should be said that mere barlessness, while of course it would call a thief's attention, would not have been sufficient to convince him of the possibility of pulling this off because other mitigating circumstances, upon close observation, would have discouraged him and that is why it never happened before. It is a bit complicated but it has to do with things like height, location, visibility, and structural details of the facade which prevent access. This particular thief was able to take advantage of the condo's descuido in one aspect which he must have carefully ascertained beforehand and which I was entirely unaware of: the front door of the building has no lock at the moment, it is wide open and none of us was informed of its condition; normally the procedure is that the door be locked at midnight. They have been expecting to install a new intercom system but due to delays and lack of cooperation they simply left the matter unresolved and neglected to fix the lock in the meantime.
This being a night before a major holiday (when the thieves are also working overtime in order to pick up a little something to enjoy the fiesta), the usual protocol came almost entirely to a halt. The condo is bustling, usually, even in the dawn hours, people come and go, etc. But of course given the date, the place was a ghost town. The door was open, no one was on hand to man the gate at the entrance of the condo's lot, and the thief had already figured out that by entering the building itself and using an extremely small accomplice who could squeeze through the crevice I mentioned and swing round and up onto my balcony, there would be a possibility of entering and perhaps hitting a jackpot.
I should mention that this building is at the front of the condo and is a multiuse building with a mix of businesses and residences -- so people are always coming and going and thus the building is available for inspection by undesirable people looking for an illicit opportunity. Controlling that traffic has also been a consistent bone of contention. the building was made in the days when such problems were not on the average designer's mind.
Anyway, this crime was pure opportunism graced by the negligence of the condo and my own unwitting negligence in having for once left the balcony door open to catch a bit of a breeze. If we had had a dog or some such alarm, it might have been different. Believe me, I readily recognize my own failure to act appropriately in this matter, and that is one reason i posted this thread -- to serve as a warning: never let your guard down. During the dismal end of the Mejia admin, our building was victim of several robberies -- one that involved a very nasty armed push in robbery which obliged me to perform first aid on the victim when I unwittingly interrupted the tail end of the event -- those were indeed bad times. Things have improved mightily at the condo and as i said there was a protocol, albeit an unsatisfactory one (another reason we had decided to move, though essentially our move is motivated by a desire to get our own place and stop renting).
This was a Fagin style operation: a small cat burglar probably aided by an older teen or adult who waited nearby. Let me point out an irony about the protection lent by the bars. Dont be overconfident. the crevice through which this thief squeezed is no wider than the bars on the other balconies. They are in fact the same width,they were made purposely that way. I cannot get my head into that crevice, and I am a small thin person. This boy could have squeezed through the bars too. Course my own barlessness pointed to an easier opportunity, so I am not saying that bars are no deterrent -- they are -- but they are not foolproof either and I can give several examples. Not too long ago, some months, the condo just one block down, with bars on every balcony, had a similar breakin which very sadly resulted in a violent end (assault, rape, etc). none of the bars were broken or cut, the thief managed to slip in. A friend of mine in the colonial zone, who owned a very well known building there, also had a long drawn out history with local thieves and bars that amounted to a macabre comedy of errors and outrage such that he finally decided to sell off the property after losing so much.
There is no doubt about the MO, we were able to reconstruct how he did it. It was pure opportunism -- they just wanted a quick haul, there was no attempt to seriously cash in -- and a little more thorough search of the place would have yielded some riches. No, they just wanted something valuable they could cash in on quickly. The MO restricted what they could have taken away with them anyway, as nothing bigger than a radio, laptop, cellphone or other such small items could have fit through the crevice. They got lucky.
But we got lucky too, really, because no one was hurt. These situations often turn ugly. The day after, my wife went to a local comedor to get some take out. The young woman who works there, very nice young mother, asked my wife if something was wrong, and was given the story. She responded, well you arelucky because you are all safe. It turns out that she lost her husband in a similar incident: they entered the house and simply killed him while he slept. The couple had a month old baby sleeping just nearby. This poor woman lost her husband on the eve of their new life together, and now she must struggle as a single mom working in a comedor and dreaming of some means of getting a leg up.
Lambada, I usually back all my work up, but it turns out that I have lost some documents. Mainly I lost some work I was about to post to a new website dedicated to a comprehensive analysis of the bateys -- work I am doing in collaboration with many orgs in compliance with a fellowship I received. That work all has to be redone from scratch. But that is OK, the only real labor involved is meticulously reconstructing the bibliography I had amassed. Exaggerating a bit, I feel like Carlyle after his maid burned the first draft of The French Revolution - but he had to rewrite a thousand pages and i just have to re-pen some articles and do some web coding, etc. And of course I have to replace the laptop.
Where did this happen? does that really matter? You are missing the point. It can happen anywhere. This is a cautionary tale for your benefit.
