I live in a small town in the south. It's a place that I would consider to be safe. Nothing really bad ever happens here, yadda yadda. However
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Get renter's insurance, notify the landlord so the property can be secured with better locks, and move when the lease is up. For now, keep stuff in the house. Forget your fantasies of vigilantism. It's not worth it.
My guess is that the property is being stolen to be sold for drug money. Is there a meth problem in the area?
You know, I've had renter's insurance in the past and never needed it for anything. I don't know why it never occurred to me that it would cover this kind of thing
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You were planning to bait thieves and booby-trap the bait. Why are you trying to attract more thieves to the property. If these people are so bold as to come into your house while you're there and are probably stealing your belongings for drug money, why would you want to increase your chances of interacting with them?
Yes, it's terrible you have to deal with this, but you're not going to catch anyone and be any safer. These games you want to play are only going to escalate the issue and put you in more danger.
$200 is out of my price range. $100 is the absolute maximum I could do, and that would be pushing it. And I know that really really limits my options, but the total value of the items stolen from me personally is less than $100. It's just the principle. And I (hopefully) won't need it after they get caught, so I can't really justify spending that much money on it.
I only paid $60-ish for my cam setup, but have it broadcasting online so I can check it at any point, and it has options to record pictures and/or video when it detects motion (and auto send them to your email, or you can just save them locally to a computer).
I'd suggest making it inconvenient for people to take stuff of your porch. Perhaps a bicycle lock attached to the house? Locked gate to the porch? Motion operated lights are cheap. Lock your car and take stuff that you don't want stolen into the house. Perhaps attach a bracket to the rear of the house that you can attach and lock the tools to - if the items are out of sight they are less likely to be taken. Fix the latch on the shed and attach a noise maker/light - I'm sure you can find something - far better than loading up on ammo.
As for 'poor folks' living nearby, we lived in a neighborhood with similar demographics and never had anything stolen - mind you we are in Canada. I think shooting someone who took your weedwacker overkill - ditto trying to get them arrested.
It's far more likely that someone on your street snagged the stuff. Not many drug dealer take chain link fence as currency. Anyone nearby have a shiny new chain link fence?
The bicycles are in the house; we knew they'd be stolen in a heartbeat. There is a truck that drives by my house nearly every day with (different) bicycles in the back, and we've reported them to the police, but there's no way to prove they're stealing these bikes, so they don't do anything about it. Like I said, there isn't anything left to be stolen from me at this point. The latch on the shed isn't fixable, unfortunately. And I never said that I was going to load up on ammo. In fact, I said that I don't have a gun and wouldn't use one if I did
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Again, I am well aware of how things get stolen, and I'm not looking for "lock your stuff up" advice. I think that's pretty obvious. And like I said, all that's left outside is gardening stuff that they are more than welcome to if they really want it. Nothing that I've had stolen was valuable, which is why I wasn't terribly concerned about leaving it outside where I knew there was a possibility of it being stolen
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You also need to work out what to do with them once you've "caught" them, which is possibly a significant problem, especially if they actually are drug users and/or are armed. Frankly, I wouldn't recommend this strategy. It's normal to feel a need to get back at or catch thieves after a burglary, but actually trying to do so can put you in serious danger.
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My guess is that the property is being stolen to be sold for drug money. Is there a meth problem in the area?
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Yes, it's terrible you have to deal with this, but you're not going to catch anyone and be any safer. These games you want to play are only going to escalate the issue and put you in more danger.
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I only paid $60-ish for my cam setup, but have it broadcasting online so I can check it at any point, and it has options to record pictures and/or video when it detects motion (and auto send them to your email, or you can just save them locally to a computer).
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As for 'poor folks' living nearby, we lived in a neighborhood with similar demographics and never had anything stolen - mind you we are in Canada.
I think shooting someone who took your weedwacker overkill - ditto trying to get them arrested.
It's far more likely that someone on your street snagged the stuff. Not many drug dealer take chain link fence as currency. Anyone nearby have a shiny new chain link fence?
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