In the middle of this past winter, I was sitting at a desk in a back room in my house. I was writing to a friend. The television was going. It was a perfectly normal day on Cape Cod. Then I heard his voice.

"Are you there Jim," he was calling out from somewhere inside my house. That's right, he was inside of my house. He had not even knocked because I would have heard that.

"We still doing that construction job here today, Jim," he said. And his voice was closer. He had entered the house and was planning to come my way. Well, you don't know me, but I  have been in a lot of situations in my time. I have a temper and I know when it's all or nothing. I can also smell a hustle a mile away. I am not bragging. You have to come up on the losing side of these things before you get better. You have to know what they look like or you won't see them.

This is what I knew. I don't know any Jim's in construction. I was not planning any construction on the house. The man with the voice had entered my house without knocking and was making slow progress into the home as he became more confident that no one was there.

That's when I thought I would introduce myself. I walked out to the kitchen, got a good look at him and told him in a very rude way to get out of my house. He didn't argue. He zipped around so fast in his grab for the door, I thought he would fall over. I saw his pick-up truck in the driveway. I wrote the plate down. One again I noted his description, but this time wrote it down. And then I called the cops.

They had an officer in my living room in about five minutes. I gave him the plate number, the physical description, the model and year of the truck. Within five more minutes they knew who he was. This was his thing. He was well known to police, known for getting busted and known for getting away with it enough to keep doing it. So they busted him, he made bail and they set a date for a pre-trial arraignment.

During that period in between I just had to fill out a victim's witness statement and they could probably get this guy off the street. Who knows, he could kill someone some day. His method of looking for unlocked doors and calling out to the home's inhabitants is a very popular way to go today, if you are a house breaker. Some people just go up to the store for a few minutes and return to find their most precious possessions gone. What could be easier than that?

Plus he probably fools a  number of people who really believe he intended to meet "Jim" at their house and he leaves and they think noting of it. But the police department in my town had him dead to rights. He was caught.

And then I put off writing the victim's witness statement. I put if off and I put if off and it never got to his arraignment in time. I think he had priors, so they might have given him some jail time. But maybe not.

All I can do now is relate this story to you. This is a very popular way of breaking and entering - and that is what it is. He did not have permission to be in the house. You have to lock your doors each and every time you leave the house. Just as important, you have to keep them locked while you are at home - as it should have been in my case.

As for me, all I can say is I apologize for not meeting my responsibilities in getting that victim's statement to the court in time, and helping get someone like this off the streets. Perhaps they got him anyway.

 

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