Keeping It Safe
by If a crime occurs, I hope to help people handle themselves better. We live in a world where criminals are smart and the police simply can’t be everywhere all of the time.
Topic for this week—loud noise makers!
Most people have had this experience. You hear loud music and think where’s the party? Or you live in an apartment complex and the guy living above you likes to make the walls shake with the heavy base tunes or ones that have the most annoying guitar riffs. The thing you may not realize is that they might not be simple jerks. Noise polluters can be criminals who are trying to drive you out of your living space. Once they know you are gone, they can intrude unencumbered.
That’s right, the noise maker may be planning to rob you! Actually, this is a very old ploy—using obnoxious stimulus to affect a person’s behavior in a specific manner. I first came in contact with this ploy when I had an apartment in Baltimore back in the 80’s. Like now it was a time of high unemployment and theft was on the rise.
In that case the person playing the loud music was probably also the lookout. He would be sitting outside the apartment complex when the loud music would suddenly start playing (timed stereo blast). Instead of calling the police many people simply left the building giving his accomplice plenty of time to go into their units, look over their belongings and steal what they wanted. Even when the police were called, the only thing they would find is an apartment with the stereo blasting with no one at home. They’d turn off the stereo, then leave. “It was probably just a mistake,” and the police would think nothing of it.
Oh contraire! This was no mistake. In fact it may have been the perfect distraction. The police might be investigating a noisy apartment a few doors away from the planned heist. The criminal(s) have the officers right where they want them—occupied and not paying any attention to the other apartments. I believe this is how my apartment was robbed.
The funny thing is that I didn’t even know this had occurred until some of my blank checks were bought to me for identification. I won’t go into the details except to say that I thought I was safe in this swank apartment highrise. I even had an alarm system.
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