Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Door Markings
So in the last 48 hours a symbol has been drawn on my front door by the main lock. I can see online that this is a sign used by 'scouts' to suggest somewhere is a good target for burglary. Has anyone else noticed anything like this recently? This is horrible.
Lucia x
Tags for Forum Posts: Burglary
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Gordon T on
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Not seen anything, thank you for the alert. Guess you could contact the Harringay Safer Neighbourhood team if not done already, their page is at http://content.met.police.uk/Team/Haringey/Harringay .
There's more policing info on HoL, via the dropdown menu in the 'Public Services' tab.
Guess you could use a 'No Junk Mail' home made sticker or the like to cover it up quickly?
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Permalink Reply by Justin Guest on
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Can you tell us what the mark looks like?
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Yes it looks like this, but look online because there are a variety of different symbols which indicate different things, e.g - vulnerable person , alarmed etc
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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I would ring 101 and speak to somebody about it this evening. That is the advice from the police - see the last sentence in this article in the Telegraph
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Ha! No it doesn't look like that - let's see if I get it right this time....that could have been embarrassing!
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You can remove a mark like that with nail varnish remover if you have no paint. Hope the police are helpful.
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Ah thanks everyone for all the advice, so we've removed the mark & rang 101 to report it. They told us to tell our neighbours which we have now done, and so to you my extended neighbours keep an eye out for any creepy markings.
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What a pain. Lets hope it is just kids messing about.
In addition to what FPR said, make sure your mortise lock is locked - even at night while you are sleeping. My wife complained this was a fire risk, but if you keep keys nearby but not in sight or accessible you should be ok. A copper friend of mine told me this was the best thing to do. It takes one swift kick to get the yale lock off. I have seen it!
Also. Get a London Bar fitted. When my neighbour had her house burgled last year they literally kicked the door out of the frame but because the mortise lock was locked and there was a London bar over the Yale lock they only succeeded in shattering the door and did not get entry!!!
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Permalink Reply by Jon C on
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Whenever I hear a story such as this I always turn to that great "urban myth de-bunking" site Snopes.com. This is what they had to say about similar theories that have been abounding for many years:
"Targeting homes for illicit purposes by marking them with some exterior symbol is unnecessarily inefficient: it requires time and effort to visit homes and mark them, it risks exposure from onlookers who might notice and call attention to the activity and discover its purpose, and the markings are too easily removed (accidentally or purposely) by residents or eradicated by weather, or overlooked by those supposed to be finding them afterwards. Yet all of these vagaries can be easily avoided in one simple way: just jotting down the addresses of the homes of interest. There's no good reason for bad guys to mark a home with some form of symbol as a method for being able to find and return to it later when they can more easily and safely accomplish the same thing simply by recording its address.
"The marking of homes to identify them as targets for future activity makes sense only if the markings and the activity are being performed by different groups who are prevented by time and distance from communicating with each other between those two steps. But in today's world, where information such as an address list can be communicated almost instantaneously by e-mail or text message, and anyone with a cell phone can be reached virtually anywhere at any time, there are no such barriers. Such markings might be practical if the group creating them were doing so for the benefit of persons unknown to them (as in the case of so-called hobo signs), but that scenario makes little sense within a premise of organized criminal activity: crooks have little motivation to expend effort identifying prime targets for the benefit of other crooks unknown to them. "
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/conspiracy/femastickers.asp#HMS9CceB...
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I think that's fair comment - I read that entry myself, except that the police themselves appear to give some credence to the idea that 'marking' is a technique, as this article states.
So perhaps there are thieves out there that use this method. Maybe quicker to chalk a mark for reference than be seen writing things down or taking photos of building and draw attention to themselves? People do 'scout' for properties to see if people are home or who lives in houses who might be more vulnerable. 'Efficiency' and 'the use of emails and texts' might just be giving them too much credit.
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