Years ago, it was becoming a common practice for burglars to read the obituaries, and time their burglaries when they knew the family was either at "the viewing" or the funeral itself.
We actually got a tipoff from one of our informants that there would be a break-in related to the funeral of a man who had a rather impressive gun collection. The detective, myself, and one other cop arranged to have ourselves hidden in the house during the viewing, as that was the supposed target window of time.
I was in the living room behind a large set of drapes covering the back sliding glass door. Detective was in the garage, just outside the kitchen, and the other officer was standing in the bathtub of the master bedroom, behind the shower curtain.
Sure enough, we heard the back door glass break, and two guys came in. I couldn't see them, but I could hear them moving about.
We could hear them opening and closing doors, and bumbling around, but they couldn't seem to find the guns, which were in a normally locked closet that we had arranged to leave unlocked.
We could already get them for breaking and entering, but we wanted to get them with the weapons, especially a fully operational machine gun for which the owner possessed the proper licensing. That was their goal.
One of the guys was at one end of the house, and the other was at the other end, and I heard one of them yell "I can't find it!"
I took a big risk, and yelled in a muffled voice "check the master bedroom closet".
One of the guys yelled, "what did you say", but the other guy yelled, "never mind - I found them!"
We all appeared, guns drawn, and not surprisingly, the bad guys quickly pointed their guns (the ones they picked up from the closet) at us, including the Mac 10 machine gun.
The detective asked, "do you guys really believe we'd leave loaded weapons for you to find and use against us?"
They lowered "their" weapons, surrendered, and were taken into custody. Subsequently it was discovered that they had been involved in no less than 7 other burglaries.
(They never figured out that it was "somebody else" who yelled "check the master bedroom closet" )
We actually got a tipoff from one of our informants that there would be a break-in related to the funeral of a man who had a rather impressive gun collection. The detective, myself, and one other cop arranged to have ourselves hidden in the house during the viewing, as that was the supposed target window of time.
I was in the living room behind a large set of drapes covering the back sliding glass door. Detective was in the garage, just outside the kitchen, and the other officer was standing in the bathtub of the master bedroom, behind the shower curtain.
Sure enough, we heard the back door glass break, and two guys came in. I couldn't see them, but I could hear them moving about.
We could hear them opening and closing doors, and bumbling around, but they couldn't seem to find the guns, which were in a normally locked closet that we had arranged to leave unlocked.
We could already get them for breaking and entering, but we wanted to get them with the weapons, especially a fully operational machine gun for which the owner possessed the proper licensing. That was their goal.
One of the guys was at one end of the house, and the other was at the other end, and I heard one of them yell "I can't find it!"
I took a big risk, and yelled in a muffled voice "check the master bedroom closet".
One of the guys yelled, "what did you say", but the other guy yelled, "never mind - I found them!"
We all appeared, guns drawn, and not surprisingly, the bad guys quickly pointed their guns (the ones they picked up from the closet) at us, including the Mac 10 machine gun.
The detective asked, "do you guys really believe we'd leave loaded weapons for you to find and use against us?"
They lowered "their" weapons, surrendered, and were taken into custody. Subsequently it was discovered that they had been involved in no less than 7 other burglaries.
(They never figured out that it was "somebody else" who yelled "check the master bedroom closet" )
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