Criminal-Catching Landscape

August 16th, 2011

Here’s one more reason to invest in a plant-filled landscape – catching crooks.

Entrance to the rat's maze if you're a drunken burglar.

That’s what my well-endowed back yard did last week.

While we were in Pittsburgh (visiting our son, daughter-in-law and four granddogs), a drunken miscreant tried to break into one of our neighbor’s houses.

Another neighbor was walking her dog around 2 a.m. and saw this guy trying to force open the front door of the house three doors down.

She called the police, and when they got there, the guy bolted into our back yard in an attempt to get away.

Bad choice.

For one thing, a combination of neighbor’s fences and evergreen screen plantings pretty much enclose the back borders.

For another, my back yard is a network of winding paths and garden beds instead of the more familiar sea of grass with a few burning bushes around the edges.

Apparently, the drunken fellow got in there and got disoriented.

He was trapped like a rat in a maze.

Or if you don’t like rat analogies, he was like a sitting duck helplessly surrounded by our garden-path-nimble Hampden Twp. police.

The take-away lesson is that if you’re going to break into houses and use a gardener’s yard as your get-away route, you shouldn’t get drunk first.

This little episode was ironic because sometimes landscaping gets a bad rap as being a hiding place for criminals.

Once in awhile people say they purposely keep their foundation plantings low and/or sparse to discourage lurking crooks.

I heard Messiah College was even removing foundation plants a few years ago after an incident in which some deranged pervert jumped a student.

Other people discourage hoodlums by planting thorny stuff. They figure if someone wants to lurk among their barberries, pyracantha, roses, raspberries and hardy cactuses, at least they’re going to pay for it.

That strategy actually seemed to work in stopping delinquents from spray-painting a big white wall at my former church. After we planted a hedge of barberries in front, it never got graffiti-ed again.

In thorn-protected home landscapes, though, the odds are much greater that you’ll be the one shedding blood instead of any burglar.

Overgrown bushes certainly can be used as a criminal asset, but someone who’s intent on breaking into your house or jumping you has a gazillion other options even if you stick with 6-inch petunias.

Back in my consumer-reporter days with the Patriot-News, I did an article on the most effective ways to burglar-proof your home.

I figured the best source for that would be veteran burglars, so I lined up some interviews at the State Correctional Institute at Camp Hill.

What an enlightening experience that was.

Anti-burglar device.

These experienced house-breakers said one thing that discouraged them more than anything was a dog in the house. Especially a big one that barked and probably bit.

“I avoided houses that had a dog,” said one guy who had committed hundreds of burglaries before getting finally getting caught.

The second thing the convicts told me was that they usually didn’t mess with houses protected by alarms. Fake alarms (i.e. a mounted old school bell) and signs for alarm companies that don’t really exist usually didn’t work because serious burglars know the difference.

But the third and most surprising thing to me was the method of operation.

I always assumed that burglars lurk around at night, breaking windows or picking locks to get into dark houses in which the owners aren’t home.

Rookie crooks and addicts doing spur-of-the-moment break-ins to steal drug money might go that route. But “professional” burglars who steal the most on a more regular basis apparently do most of their work during daylight by blending in.

One convict told me he dressed in a suit, drove a Cadillac and went into neighborhoods acting like he was some kind of insurance agent or contractor calling on a client.

He’d look for signs of an unoccupied house (easier these days because of so many two-income couples) and maybe even do some homework by scouting out a neighborhood a few days in advance.

Then he’d just go knock on the front door.

If someone answered, he’d act like he mistakenly got the wrong house. When no one answered, he’d try opening the front door. If that was locked, he’d go around to the side and back doors.

“You’d be surprised how many people let at least one of their doors open,” he told me. “Most of the time, I just walked right in.”

So there are your anti-burglar tips of the day: 1.) Lock your doors, 2.) Get a dog, 3.) Get an alarm system.

To that you can add, 4.) Build a winding network of garden beds.

At least that’s effective against burglars of the drunken-stupor kind.