Originally Posted by Wise_A

... "criminal attorney"...

Originally Posted by xray97

I don’t know that I’ve ever known any Deputy Sheriff that didn’t have to work the night shift on a Sunday at some point in his/her career.

Originally Posted by VaTom

Glad you are OK! After a time in municipal LE, I was Chief of a campus department for many years. Every few years a drunk student would enter a home in the surrounding neighborhood totally oblivious to where they were. On one occasion a woman woke up in the morning to find one asleep on her couch in the front room. All cases i dealt with doors or windows were not locked.it

Good deadbolt locks are great but don't forget to lock up before going to bed.

Originally Posted by Doug M.

Oh - for those who don't understand this about LE: "Dayshift" is French for "grievance". Darned few real cops willingly work day shift.

Originally Posted by Mzuri

About three months ago my house was broken into while I was present. It was an eye-opening experience. Despite having tried to plan out what I would do in such a situation, when the time came I did none of the things I thought I would do. Most of these plans were built around the use of firearms. My assumption was that were someone to break into my house, my dogs would give me enough warning for me get to the loaded pistol in the gun safe. However, when actually faced with someone in the house I found myself with little warning and no access to a gun. I then proceeded to make a series of astonishingly bad decisions, each of which could have made the situation much worse.

I got lucky. No one was hurt and I got my property back, but I have fundamentally rethought my home security situation.


The Events:

It was about 9:45 on a Monday night. My wife had just gone to bed. I was in the family room reading. My dogs were with me in the family room, which is adjacent to our back door/mudroom.

I heard the flap on the outside dog door move. Because there is a lot of dog traffic through that door, I thought nothing of it. But my rat terrier knew better. She looked up, did a quick check around the room and realized that all the dogs were accounted for. She made the chuffing sound that outraged rat terriers make and went crashing through the inner dog door and into the dark mudroom. I followed as far the door to the mudroom.

I looked through the glass in the mudroom door and saw a dark shape on the floor, which I concluded was a raccoon or an opossum. Then the shape stood up and I was forced to abandon the raccoon hypothesis. At this point my brain seems to have been trying mightily to come up with a “normal” explanation of what was going on. Thus I found myself wondering, “Why did my adult son just come through the dog door? Did he loose his key?”

After a fraction of a second I stopped clutching at that straw and reluctantly conceded that there was someone in my house who was not supposed to be there.

At that point I probably should have locked the door between the family room and the mudroom and retreated to the bedroom, the phone, and the gun safe. I also should have hit the lights in the mudroom and backyard.

Instead, I started yelling in a voice that I did not know I had. It was deep and guttural and in retrospect I recognize it as the voice that high school football players use when they are trying to convince their opponents (and themselves) that they are tough guys.

The intruder reached for a shelf and grabbed a set of car keys. Then he turned away from me, hunched over, and spun back to face me while pantomiming pushing out a gun.

Something in my subconscious told me he did not have a gun, so I continued to stand there and yell at him through the glass door.

After another second or so he got tired of my yelling and the terrier biting his ankles and he bolted out the back door with the dog in hot pursuit.

Once again, I could have retreated to the bedroom. Instead, probably because I did not want to be shown up by a twelve-pound dog, I charged out the door (leaving it wide open) and into the backyard. It was so dark that I could not see a thing, so I went back into the house, turned on the outside lights and headed out again. I came out just in time to see him fleeing across the driveway.

Thinking it would encourage him to keep going, I started yelling at him. To my surprise, it had the opposite effect. He turned around and came toward me. He ran to within about ten feet of me, reached for his waistband and again pantomimed drawing a gun. At this point it did cross my mind that he might have picked up a gun he had stashed outside, but for whatever reason, I stood my ground and kept yelling. This did not discourage him. He came towards me and began to climb over the low fence of the dog pen that separated us.

We were nearly nose-to-nose when my wife appeared in the doorway holding her phone in both hands. She was trying to call the police, but I think he saw an object held in both hands, read it as a gun, and took off like a scalded dog.

My wife then said something to the effect of “Get back in the house you idiot!”

So I did.

We locked up the house and called the police. The intruder went off and broke into another house a couple of blocks away, where he assaulted the homeowner in his kitchen and then hid under a bed for a while before running off again. The police caught him around midnight and I got my car keys back a couple of days later.


What I Learned:

First, a gun in the gun safe, even a loaded gun in the gun safe, is pretty much the same as no gun at all. I had always thought the concept of home carry was absurd, but I no longer feel that way. I was so focused on my intruder that I doubt that I would have taken my eyes off him long enough to even reach into an unlocked drawer for a gun, much less mess around with the safe. I have also realized that I would not want to be in race to the gun safe and have someone catch up just as I opened the safe. I now have a .380 on me virtually all the time. It’s no more inconvenient than a wallet or a phone and as a bonus I don’t have to make a conscious decision to take it with me when I leave the house.

Second, an actual intruder in your house is totally different than training at the range. That may sound blindingly obvious, but I now realize just how different it is. There is a decision making process that occurs in an actual event that is entirely absent at the range. We would all know exactly what to do if our opponent appeared before us wearing an IDPA target and a shot timer went off. But the process of figuring out what’s going on, filtering out the bizarre explanations your brain offers you (raccoons, etc.), and then deciding what to do about it is far more complex than what happens on a range. I can only imagine that the decision making process is even more protracted and difficult if you are half asleep.

Third, you can make plans, but people are too unpredictable for you to imagine every possible boneheaded thing they might do. My guy decided to break into a house with the interior lights on and several cars in the driveway at a time of night when most people are still awake. He entered through a dog door. You would think that someone might expect to find humans in a house with lights on and cars in the drive and dogs in a house with a dog door. People don’t get into the house breaking business because they are geniuses, which makes it difficult to game out the types of choices they will make and to guard against them.

Fourth, I used to be pretty cavalier about gun hygiene. Once my wife got me back in the house I went straight to the gun safe. Then I realized that I could not remember if I had cleaned the GLOCK that been a little balky about going into battery after I put some dirty handloads though it. I selected a revolver instead, but I had to waste time thinking about it. I now make sure that any gun that might play a defensive role is not just loaded, but clean.

Fifth, dogs are not as dependable a source of warning when someone breaks in or support once a threat is identified as I had expected. Of my five dogs, only the rat terrier noticed that something was wrong and took action. The other (much bigger dogs) could not be bothered to get out of their beds to investigate. When the cops came and knocked at the door, all five of them went crazy. I was ready to react to the familiar sound of the shot timer; the dogs were ready for the familiar sound of knocking, but less inclined to react to the sound of the sound of the dog door.

Sixth, I have rethought what I consider a good home defense gun. My default gun was always a GLOCK 22. But I was far closer to my intruder than I would have thought possible. I was easily in contact shot and struggle-for-control-of-the-gun range. I am increasingly thinking that a K-, L- or N-frame snub-nosed revolver might be the best choice (at least for a single intruder). It won’t go out of battery if it’s in contact with the target, the short barrel does not offer much for another person to hold on to, and a three-pound, steel revolver makes a better club than a polymer pistol. But any gun you have with you is better than the perfect gun in the safe.

And finally, I have learned never to underestimate my rat terrier. She is one badass little dog.

Originally Posted by *****-M1A

Don't rely on just dogs. I've been to several burglaries where dogs were present and didn't do anything and didn't deter the burglars. They were just running around barking or just hid and didn't stop anyone.

Originally Posted by Hawker800

Got to love the parole system.

Originally Posted by jimmyj

Consider arming your Rat Terrier and you stay inside your house