New Weekly "off Topic" Topic (19/03/12)

[Ludwig Venter]

Most all of the people I know have a story to tell about being burgled or car-hijacked or some other crime related incident that happened to them during the past 2 years and it just seems to be escalating..... especially in the cities..... I also had a good friend who was murdered some 3 years ago in a car hi-jacking incident....

I've recently had my garden hosepipe and some sprayers stolen from my yard.... I am not so much upset about loosing those mediocre items, but what really makes me furious is that someone had the audacity to enter into my domain and blatantly take stuff from me whilst I was asleep.....

I live in a little village where it is still relatively safe to move around in the streets after dark...... in the cities however..... you dare not leave the safety of your securely fenced and burgler alarmed homes after dark.....

What is it like in your area..... do you still feel safe.... can your kids still play cricket in the street or park after dark,(like in the old days) have you been burgled recently..... Tell us about it...

 

[phoenixgsd]

we were a vitim of identity theft, we advertised a laptop in the local paper and the guy who looked at it said he'd come back with his girlfreind, which he did, on the two visits they stole enough (from right under our noses) to comit £75000 worth of fraud in our names, it wasnt untill the police knocked on our door we were even aware of it, they are currently living at her majesties pleasure for alot of years unfortunatly its made our lives hell and we still get the odd bayliff

 

[fluttermoth]

That's terrible, phoenix

I had my dustbin stolen from outside my house a few weeks ago Apart from that it's very good round here.

 

[Noahs ark6]

Got an empty house next door full of squatters, and a home for troubled youth a few doors away, so no, it's not good, but my fish make it ok

 

[CezzaXV]

My town is generally a good place to live in regards to crime. I'd imagine it's a bit safer out here in the outskirts, though I don't have any real knowledge on that.

Inside my house is a different matter though. My sister has been stealing things from me for years. Even with a lock on my door it still happened. In the end I had to leave my webcam on a motion sensor while I was at work and lo and behold, I caught her on cam on my second day, discovering she'd stolen a spare key.

 

[moochy13]

thats not your sisters fault - its your fault for buying a useless lock

kids still play near where i live at all hours of the day and night. in town is a bit rougher, but the villgae i live in, which is more sort of just tagged on rather than a seperate village, is prety nice and quiet. it was the reason we moved here, when me and my bro were about 8, as we used to live on a busy road near the high street, couldnt even ride our bikes.

 

[coldcazzie]

Our home has never been broken into, but we have had things stolen from the backyard at our old house - a washing prop, a hose, several bottles of milk, 2 motorbikes and 2 pet rabbits

 

[dipsydoodlenoodle]

Not from our house but from my boyfriends last house his bike was stolen from inside the house...thankfully the police arrested the *bleep* for something else and noticed the bike there...no idea what condition it is in (it's being held as evidence at the moment).

 

[CezzaXV]

thats not your sisters fault - its your fault for buying a useless lock

The lock is fine, it's my useless parents who left their spare key lying around.

tbh, it really makes me angry that I should have to lock the door at all. I've got less chance of being burgled if I leave the front door unlocked than my bedroom door

 

[onidrase]

Our media does a pretty good #40## job of making everything feel as unsafe and insecure as possible. I used to play after dark and walk to school and all that stuff as a kid, but now because of the news constantly reporting kidnappings and murders and god knows what else, people tend to really smother their children nowadays.

heck, now even the spoonful of cinnamon challenge on youtube is being treated like an epidemic that's killing kids world wide, not to mention all the stuff saying that online gaming is too addicting and even lethal for some people, and internet bullying causes people to commit suicide, cellphones causing cancer, I think they're determined to make everything that comes into existence to look dangerous and murderous

As I grew up, I'd walk home every day from school, in sun, rain, or snow. Even in kindergarten. I was told not to talk to strangers, and I didn't, because strangers never even talked to me. Today as I walk past my elementary school, there are lines of cars all along the road, about 45 minutes worth, all there to pick up their kids. There used to be like 15 cars at best that I saw as a kid. The play grounds have metal gates around them when they used to be open for kids to go out into the field, even.

Our neighborhood is pretty dang save. I don't hear any bad happenings in my town (well aside from the Columbine shooting, which was quite some time ago) but I don't doubt that all these extra precautions and whatnot are just caused from media scares going on every single day. I've never had anything stolen from me, I can even give my cellphone to a total stranger and let him borrow it and get it back afterwords, I can leave my wallet on the counter when I use the restroom and expect it to be there when I get back. but I think everyone and everything is being portrayed as a bad guy to the parents who watch too much fox news, regardless of whether or not you live in a paradise.

 

[micko]

This is something that has only happened to me once, I was actually doing a water change on one of the tanks and had my siphon in my hand, I seen some person in my back garden messing around near my motorbike. He couldn't have got it out of the garden unless he had a small crane but I didn't know whether he was stealing parts or not so I shot out of the back door with my siphon in hand, he tried to climb the fence but I slapped him so hard with the hose of the siphon he fell down rolling about the floor. My girlfriend phoned the police and I was arrested too for assault believe it or not. The mark left on his back was pretty good and all I could do was laugh whilst being interviewed.

Think it was two years ago, maybe more that some rough ones started renting up the hill. Things were stolen but we got them back.

Its a quiet town and a quiet street we live on. Nothing much happens and that's how I like it.

 

[Baccus]

The town I live in used to be relatively crime free, mostly it was just petty kid sort of stuff and the police station was not manned 24/7. But now in the spate of 6 short years the town has gone through a boom with hundreds of investment houses being made and wanne be mine workers (the mines are a few hours away but this town is one of the closest community hubs with access to good shops/ medical and what have you), with all the extra houses has come a hell of a lot of crime. Thankfully the crime is not usually in my area but its in the odd street close to my place. Just one of the reasons I have two dogs.
All the crime that I know has been happening in my town I haven't heard on the news or in the paper with their biased media slant, nope its all come from the desk of the local police as they write reports for the Neighborhood Watch newsletters which get dropped into everyones letterboxes once a month.


I think the closest I came to having something stolen from my house/ yard was the morning that I got up and discovered somebodies jumper tankled up in the top of the fence. I think I know what happened. 1. A Person for whatever reason was in my yard and happened to pass the back door to the laundry/ car shed where my dogs slept. 2. My dog Sam saw the person watched them, then growled (this dog can make your blood freeze in your viens her growl is so chilling), and if the person had tried to speak to her, because Sam didn't know the person she went on the attack. 3 Hence the hasty retreat as the intruder tried to clear the fence to escape her and got their jumper tankled up in the sharp bit of fence.


And even though I complain about so many mothers collecting their kids from the school gate each day in their huge flash 4wd that never leaves the bitumen I can understand one of the reasons they might be so over protective. Just on the outside of Rockhampton we have a huge maximum security prison, there are a lot of long termers locked up there, locked away for some pretty depraved things they have done. And since so many sentences for life only equates to 25years and then people can also be released early for good behaviour, these individauls get released into the nearest community... Rockhampton, they generally have no money and no fear of the prison system, so its just repeat crimes waiting to happen.

 

[Cazgar]

I live in a very small village/ town & always felt safe until a couple of years ago when while shopping for my mother, someone watched me enter the Pin.
In the car park I was approached by a very polite well dressed young man asking for change, somehow he managed to get the card out ofmy purse
Luckily a sixth sense told me something was wrong, but in the 5 mins it took to get to the bank, they'd withdrawn over £800.
It's made me extra careful since, I won't use Atm's, always look over my shoulder when using my card.
I always thought it wouldn't happen to me, but none of us is immune, next time you go to the supermarket, be aware of who's standing behind you.
On another note, my daughter has recently been the victim of card cloning, like me she is super careful, but somehow her card details were taken.
Luckily for both of us, I got the money back, & my daughters card company picked up on the attempted theft.
It has made me more cautious, I always thought where I lived was safe, but nowhere is

 

[HannahBear77]

the city i live is safe i feel comfortable walking around it at 1 in the morning even laying in the big lawn for the outdoor concerts with my friends but idk thats just me i lived in a small town that i can walk down to the store and back in the middle of night and not worry bout any thing so that kinda carried over into the big city i live in now..the street i live on thats a different story we are always having kids looking through our cars while were all asleep if feel the need to do that fine whatever but please do me a favor make sure you close the door all the way so my battery doesnt drain and so it doesnt look so obvious i mean really what are you going to do with gum wrappers my school homework a tuba mouth piece (other than knock some one out with it) nothing so instead throwing it all over the car you could put it back in the same spot so its not so obvious, it amazes me how dumb they are and that they havent been caught yet cus their so careless

so ya of course i dont feel safe to lay in the middle of my street and look at the stars (its dead end street so no traffic at all) cus i dont know whether their gonna kill me the next time or whatever, its what makes me mad is that is a really nice street no violence or any thing unless all the old people and hermits joined together to do a mass murder and kill every one on the street
it makes me mad that people take advantage of it and it makes it look bad cus we're constantly having stuff stolen

 

[Ps3Steveo]

It's on the opposite scale for us here, we live in a quiet village called horton kirby, theres 70 houses in a triangle with a green out front with a park in it. Surrounded by feilds and woods with a stream just down the road, everyone knows everyone and looks out for everyone, there's a few settled travellers here and a lot of people who know any travellers will tell you that their community matters to them so we're quite safe here. It's funny as we leave our doors unlocked and so do our neighbours sometimes, it's prob because everyone can see who comes in and out and where ever you are there's a window looking at you some where. Don't get me wrong, we're not overlooked out back, all you can see is fields but it just feels quite safe.

I used to live in new ash green when I was younger and there it was a different story. When I first moved there it was the same as here but after about 8 years it went downhill as the next generation grew up, there were no local jobs so they all decided to get into drugs. One of my friends was pulled into a car and a shotgun was pointed in his face through mistaken identity, imagine if they really had it in for him! It got a lot worse too, drugs, guns, knives, curfews in certain areas. Funny as it's only 5 miles from where we are now. Times change I suppose, generations move on and different people move in and places change.