Petty, Attempted and Big
I've had some thieving bastards around here over the years.

The car has been done several times. There was a red petrol can, never used, behind the passenger seat that some twat smashed a window to get at. £50 excess for a five quid lump of empty plastic. Someone else cut the fuel line in order to try and drain some petrol off (they failed), and then there was another smashed window as the idiot concerned decided to rummage around in my valuable stash of carrier bags in the glovebox (again, nothing stolen, but a bill for fixing the window).

The (dare I mention it) shed had its lock cut several times. Nothing taken as there was generally nothing of value in there, but I eventually gave up locking it.

A couple of burglaries, the first where they got in through the window by breaking the lock and got nothing. The second time, the locks on the window had been upgraded, so they crowbarred the front door. The loot... a lampshade (although that was new and still in its wrapping).

This particular theft had a knock on effect to the most recent attempt to get into the house. I was sitting listening to music with headphones on when there was a thud. I took the headphones off and went for a wander expecting it just to have been the neighbours being careless again. There was a guy hanging around outside on the pavement looking like he was making notes. "Oh great!" I thought, "another door-to-door seller." He steps onto my path, still taking notes. I figure I don't want to talk to him, so I watch. The fucker only takes a run at the front door. Now it's a good job he didn't get in and didn't push his luck by trying again because I was down the stairs and behind the door with a metre long F clamp in my hands pretty damned sharpish.

And the knock on effect? There's a socking great lump of angle iron embedded in the door to which the strike is bolted, so hopefully this fuckwitt went way bruised when the door didn't budge!

From the petty to the big. There are a couple of tales I've heard over the years of big stuff going missing (I'm not involved in these).

The first I heard from the head of security at a place I'd just started working at. Apparently, someone had nicked an emergency backup generator off the top of a four storey building. The odd thing is, this was a joint military/civilian establishment, so whoever did it got away with something the size of a shipping container under the noses of squaddies and coppers with guns.

The second is rather older and involves a brand new mainframe computer back in the day when they were absolutely huge. The day arrived when the new machine was delivered but the lift to the top floor of the building was too small to take it, and the building was too high for them to crane it up there, so they had to fly it to the roof by helicopter. A while after it was all plumbed in and working, the operators arrived one morning and found the console was not responding. Thinking the system was down, someone got in the lift to go up to the top floor to find out what was up. They found a tuft of cables sticking out of the floor where the brand new mainframe used to be. Quite how they got it out of the building, nobody could work out.
(An eejit passing by in a purple satin skirt with sparkly bits, Wed 13 Nov 2013, 19:49, 4 replies)

My missus Corolla Hatchback got broken into a few years back.
The window was covered as a "no claim" on the insurance and got fixed that day.
Thieving bastards took the centre console ashtray. Had maybe $2 in silver in it. I tried a few wreckers but it was a fairly new model at the time.

$50 fucking dollars later from Toyota we had a new one. Probably more than the dumb bastards got from the dozen or so cars they broke into up and down our street.
(s0ckpuppet logging out to reply to you if you're not careful, Wed 13 Nov 2013, 21:58, closed)

My girlfriend's mini got broken into - they stole the distributor cap
Actually, that's not true - they took it out, but left it on top of the bonnet.

Baffling crime #435
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Thu 14 Nov 2013, 11:00, closed)

Someone smashed the rear quarter light on my Alfa Romeo
If they'd have tried the door handles they would have realised I rarely locked it.
( Piper Alpha is being a grumpy northerm bastard on:, Thu 14 Nov 2013, 11:26, closed)

Being an Alfa
It probably self destructed.
(bad_advice QOTW survivor from the first trollocost!, Thu 14 Nov 2013, 11:28, closed)