ORRINGTON, Maine — In my time as a reporter, I’ve covered dozens of break-ins and home burglaries. They’re usually short, “quick-hit” pieces aimed at letting people in town know that someone’s going around taking what isn’t theirs.
I always thought that, for the victims, the worst part would be losing their stuff.
I was way off.
While I was asleep in a first-floor room sometime during the early morning hours of April 12, a burglar or burglars shoved a pry bar into the latch and popped the door open to my family’s home.
I never woke up. The culprits were just feet away from me, separated only by a closed bedroom door and a few feet of hallway, and I never even knew it. That’s the part that angers me the most.
We didn’t realize our home had been hit until the next morning when we found the doors to our house wide open. My mother’s pocketbook was gone from the kitchen table, which sits just a couple feet from the entrance. Interestingly, nothing else was missing or misplaced in the house. The culprits likely didn’t spend more than a few seconds inside. But they were there. Unexpected. Uninvited. Unwelcome.
This is how I’ve come to realize that being the victim of a burglary is not about losing items. I didn’t lose any “stuff” in this crime — no televisions, computers or money. My family and I, however, lost our ability to feel secure in our house and close our eyes at night.
Every strange noise puts us on the defensive. We feel the need to announce ourselves when walking through the door of our own home.
A few days after the break-in, a group of three teenage boys came to my door. I hesitated and watched out the window before convincing myself to answer. They said they were Boy Scouts on a bottle drive. I felt ashamed that I still didn’t trust them.
The knowledge that I didn’t wake up to the sound of that opening door haunts me. I feel my family and I were at the mercy of the intruders for those few minutes that night because I was a sound sleeper.
We aren’t alone. Several other homes on our street were hit that morning. In some instances, residents were home and in at least one case, one woman a few doors down woke up to the sounds of people in her home and shouted, which scared them off. Others didn’t find out they were victims until morning.
Veazie and Bangor have both been hit by home burglaries in recent weeks.
Bangor police had issued a warning for people to lock their homes and vehicles when home and vehicle invasions were reported on the east side of Bangor earlier that same week my home was burglarized.
Our home was locked. It didn’t matter. Neither did the fact that we were home. Brazen.
A week after the break-in, police arrested two young men and one young woman, charging them in connection with the string of burglaries along my street, as well as the ones in Veazie. I’m relieved the alleged perpetrators were caught before one of their brazen burglaries ended in confrontation or violence. More arrests are expected, according to the sheriff’s department. Still, the damage is done.
While I kick myself for sleeping through a break-in, I wonder, what would I have done had I woken up? What should I have done? Truthfully, I don’t know the “right” answer.
Bangor police Chief Mark Hathaway said he’s bothered by the fact that several of these recent burglaries have occurred while victims are home. It’s an almost inevitable setup to a dangerous altercation at some point. He said there will need to be collaboration among agencies to address all these break-ins, whether they’re related or not, in order to stem future incidents.
Bangor police Lt. Paul Edwards appeared on a morning radio show Thursday to discuss the recent burglaries in and around Bangor. Several people called in to say that if any intruder walked into their home, they’d “leave in a bodybag.”
Edwards and Brewer police Lt. Christopher Martin said that was bold, dangerous talk.
Martin called that sort of talk “machoism,” and stressed the importance of assessing the situation before confronting a potential burglar. The appropriate action depends on the situation. Is it dark? Can you see who they are and what they’re holding? Are you sure this person isn’t a family member or an intoxicated stranger accidentally ambling into the wrong house? Is it a 13-year-old child after a game system or a few bucks? In those situations, do you really want to kill someone?
Based on the situation it may be better to stay put and call for help or wait for the person to leave, police say. The first step should be to make sure that your family members are safe and that help is on the way, Martin said.
In other situations, a shout to let the person know you know he or she is there, and that you’ve called police, could scare off the intruder. However, that gives away your location.
If you or another member of your household is in direct danger — an intruder is coming at you with a weapon or trying to break down a door to get into a room he or she knows you’re in — that’s a situation in which you’ll likely need to defend yourself. It’s also a rare scenario, police say.
“The ultimate goal is to survive, not to inflict punishment,” Martin said.
Unfortunately, the simple answer is that there is no simple answer, and it’s up to residents to decide what, if anything, they need to do to ensure their safety and the safety of their families.
As a result of the break-in, neighbors, friends and total strangers have offered my family advice — get a dog or noisy bird, install motion-sensor flood lights and deadbolts, keep your car keys close by your bed and set off your alarm if you hear anything strange. We’ve taken several of these steps to try to prevent future break-ins.
Police officials say those are all good suggestions, but add that you should keep easy-to-access valuables out of sight through windows and doors and be sure to do a walkthrough of your home each night to check every window lock and deadbolt.
Even then, it’s still hard to fall asleep after something like this.
“They don’t realize the amount of fear and terror they place in someone,” Edwards said.
Nick McCrea is a BDN reporter.