He's taking a chance that when you leave your house, two crucial conditions will exist. First, that your door will not be locked, because, heck, you were just going to the Stop & Shop anyway. And he's also hoping that you were the only one home when you left. He is not someone who enjoys confrontation. Although he may come prepared for it with a weapon or two. You just never know.

What he does next is maybe unusual, if you were expecting something bad. He knocks on your door,  once maybe twice. No answer. So he opens your door if you were careless enough to leave it unlocked.Still, his main focus is on whether the house is empty or not. So he calls out some name he makes up. "Hey Bob are you there" Whatever. If the house is empty, he's got it made. No one is home. You have gone to the store. He only needs maybe 10 or 15 minutes. There goes your flat screen. And silver or other precious metals you might have. Any cash lying around. Jewelery.

You have just been victimized by a very popular method of theft. Simply walking into an unlocked home and stealing whatever you find.

It is all there for the taking behind an unlocked door. This is not even a new type of crime. Most cops have dealt with these. You may have even seen it yourself firsthand. Think about it for a minute. Say your spouse leaves the house to do something and five or ten minutes  later there's a knock on your door and there's this man asking for an address or something. Maybe directions. You just spoiled his reason for being there. But there are other streets and there are other people pulling out of their driveways and not locking the door on their house. He's so busy, he doesn't have time for you. He left so fast, you probably can't even remember his face.

So this isn't the man who "breaks in." You unthinkingly allow him access.

Whole different scenario: Say your ailing mother is staying with you. You drive to the pharmacy to fill her prescriptions but you have forgotten to lock the door. Our up-until-now non-violent criminal walks into your house. Your mother is sleeping and doesn't hear him. He proceeds to steal everything he can and the noise eventually wakes your mother, who appears  from out of nowhere. Now our man panics. He physically assaults her, pushing her into a room, or worse he has knife or a gun. You just don't know.

Perhaps the most pathetic thing about this "no breaking - but entering" is that cops are beginning to see a lot of first-timers using this method. With 9 percent unemployment, 20 percent when you consider the underemployed and those who have stopped looking for jobs, you had to figure that sooner or later a certain percentage of the truly desperate would resort to theft. Cops tell me that some of these people don't even have a criminal record.

There's a big downside to this type of crime, though. You can become awfully well-known to police in a very short period of time. If you are caught just once, it is pretty much over for you. I know a man who had the flu and was lying in his bed. His wife had just exited the house to do some grocery shopping. This time there wasn't even a knock. He just walked right into the kitchen. How was he to know that there were at least a half-dozen bells wrapped around the doorknob on the inside, making it impossible for anyone to enter the house silently. So he called out. ""Bob are you there, Bob, and as he did, he entered the house a little more, so that now he was in the center of the kitchen.

But the man in bed with the flu didn't know any Bobs and, worse yet, he had been a police officer during a period of his life. He confronted the would-be thief, asked for I.D., asked what the hell he was doing. Man said he was obviously at the wrong house and got out of there fast. But not fast enough for the ex-cop to get his plate number, his vehicle description and a description of what he was wearing. He called 911. The cops only had to hear the description and they knew who the man was. Apparently he had been looking for "Bob" at other people's homes too.

Which leads me to a message to those who might want to try this seemingly "easy" crime. There are a lot of fine police officers on Cape Cod. You will only hear about the bad ones, the distinct minority. The good cops don't make a lot of noise. They make arrests. They remember M.O.s, faces, plate numbers, vehicle descriptions. In other words, if you should chose to try this type of house theft, don't count on making it a career.

The other message goes to the homeowner. Keep your doors locked. Keep them locked when you are home, when you go out, even if it's just to pick up a kid at school. We are living in bad times. Everybody wants to make a buck, and some don't care how they make it. Leave your doors unlocked and your house empty, someone is going to make a buck from you. It is very easy. Just lock the damn door. If someone wants to steal from you, make it hard for them, keep some lights on, even at night. Install a security system. Make it hard for him to gain entry without making a lot of noise. Flood any point of entry with light so he has to work where he can be seen and maybe even caught on tape. Don't be such a push over. I guarantee you will feel violated and just plain silly if someone breaks into your house and you have taken no security precautions whatsoever.

The police can't do it all by themselves. Not if you are going to leave your door unlocked. Not if your house has a week of newspaper deliveries in the drive way. Not if your house is so dark at night that it looks like a neighborhood black hole. Not if your yard is so messed up that it looks like your house might be empty for the season.

You have to make your house look like it's lived in, like someone cares about it, and someone will be there right on the heels of anyone stupid enough to ring your doorbell or just walk right in without a perfectly legitimate reason.

But remember that man down the end of the street or the next street over. The opportunist. Keep him in mind. Take the first step and lock your doors.      

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• The Usual Bad Actors »

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