Stolen cameras

[PDL]

Yesterday ( Wednesday - 8/6/2008 ) when I got home I found that our house had been burgled.

They got my 27" LCD HD TV.
About 100 USD in change (bowls of quarters, state quarter collection and a box of 50 cent pieces)
All but one of my Film SLR's (some of which had been stolen before and)
Fujica ST801, AZ-1, Pentax SF-1 - gone. (Have the ST901 but no lens)
Broken Toshiba P&S.
Pentax *ist DS, K10D
Tokina 28-70mm macro
Vivitar 300mm TX mount (Pentax and Fujica)
Kit lens, DA 50-200mm, FA 50mm f1.4
Both my camera bags with lenspens, SD cards, filters, old flashes etc.
My Fujica 55mm f1.8, 55mm macro, 28mm, 43-75mm zoom, 135mm and AZ-1 autowinder.
My personal laptop, my company laptop, a 30GB Zune and a old Compaq PDA that gave up the ghost years ago. My son lost his Xbox and his 22" Samsung monitor.

Middle of the day, came in through a window that was left open in the back of the house. They went through every drawer in every room and carried the stuff out using my luggage as transport.

Needless to say, no one will be seeing anything from yours truly for a while.

Although - they did take everyone of my DVD's except for The Prisoner and a set of Yo-yo Ma performances. My desktops were not touched - nor were my backup DVD's which were in plain sight --- go figure. They ignored by Wolverine too and two new sealed 1TB hard drives on the floor.

Oh - the alarm system will be installed tomorrow morning. No idea when I can get my stuff replaced - if I can get anything out of the insurance company or not.

This S*cks (sorry to use the language - but it really does).

PDL (duplicate message at Pentaxforums)

[Driver3]

Man o man...that does S*ck. Hopefully your insurance company will not be too hard to deal with and get a settlement to you post haste.

You must feel extremely violated.

Dennis

[PDL]

Not violated actually, just really stupid. I have been wondering when this was going to happen, we should have been taking steps to make it not so easy.

PDL

[ennacac]

Sorry to hear about your problem and hope you get some of your things back. That is why I don't live near a large Metro area like Seattle, people are more honest out in the sticks where I live.

I would think home owners insurance would cover most of your losses.

Tom

[Black Knight]

PDL

So Sorry To hear about Your loss. I Hope Your Homeowners Insurance will Cover the loss.

BK

[Goldwinger]

Oh man I hate it when that happens! I know exactly how you feel. In the past 25 years I have been burglarized 6 time and have had 3 different cars stolen. One car twice in one week!
Plus 3 different cars burglarized. I found the best alarm is a big dog. I know nothing I say will help you feel any better right now but, try to think positive. If you can show the insurance Co. proof of everything that was taken, and have replacement cost coverage, you will come out pretty good. Especially when you take into account all the stuff you didn't use or was broken and put it all towards the really nice camera/lens combo that you've been dreaming about!
this is for the jerk that riped you off!

GW

[NonEntity1]

I thinks your terminology was pretty mild all things considered. I am sure you have reported it to law enforcement. Hopefully you have some serial numbers but if not, you might be able to get the camera numbers from Pentax, if there was a rebate involved when you made the purchase or you registered. Being able to provide the police with serial numbers is a big advantage to getting your stuff back.

Be active in the investigation, talk to your neighbors to see if anyone saw anything, check with the law enforcement agency, and see if they are putting your burglary in a detective unit and find out who is assigned to your case. Call that detective or officer and check on the case status every week or two. Ask particularly about their procedures for comparing their hot sheet to pawn records. WA will have different laws than FL but locally we get a copy of all pawn shop records and we can check for items that match stolen property. Many of the items stolen (the SLR cameras, especially the film ones and the lenses) will have very low to no street value and this might prompt the thieves to move them through a pawn shop, especially if they are fairly new in their chosen "profession."

Available fences, markets for stolen property, laws, and other factors may be very different there than here, so some of my thoughts may well not be relevant. I can guarantee that your law enforcement agency will have more cases than they can work, though, and being an active participant and "squeaky wheel" (nicely) can work wonders for making sure your case does not slip to the bottom of a pile.

Very sorry to hear about this nightmare and good luck,
Tim

Edit: One other thought. Watch ebay and craigslist for someone from your area trying to move a bunch of items matching stuff stolen from you. Obviously one or two items would not necessarily indicate a match, but if someone is trying to sell a number of items that all match your property it would certainly be a lead.

[ennacac]

I lost a bag of camera gear in San Diego once, had all the serial numbers and every item was marked with my initials. Gave all the info to the police and they told me up front, there was little chance of getting my things back and they were right.

The good news, was I had replacement value insurance and everything was replaced and one camera that Pentax did not make any longer was replaced with a current model.

An alarm is good, a large dog is better to keep the loosers out of your stuff.

Tom

[mtngal]

That's downright lousy. Miserable situation with the break-in. Hope we never get broken into- I just did a quick figuring and our insurance would never cover everything we have that would be attractive to theives.

If you get the insurance sorted out, that could be a good excuse to get a K20 as a replacement...

[Rodney9]

I'm so sorry to hear, good luck wirh the insurance company.