The Breitling Watch Source Forums

I'll second this from a detective's perspective.

This is what I do for a living, I'm a burglary detective. The problem with burglary is that they are very hard cases to solve. The national clearance rate in the US is around 15%. About 99% of the time we have no witnesses as opposed to crimes against persons. Also we have little in the way of forensic evidence. What people don't understand is that a fingerprint collected at the scene usually doesn't have enough "points" to use for comparison. Also DNA takes forever and a day to get back from lab and the person has to be in the data base. Another "known" sample is then taken to compare after the initial hit. Further every detective usually caries 30 burglaries a month, we have eight detectives is the squad, along with other special assignments.

Now don't get to discouraged. What usually happens with us is that the dbags get picked up doing something else stupid and we can connect them to other burglaries in the same area. Having good records and serial numbers helps us tremendously if we recover property.

Sorry about the break in , it does rattle the nerves when some unknown person is rummaging through your home. Hopefully they can find who broke into your house.

Time for a dumb thief story to brighten your day: Long ago my dad had a customer that had a small manufacturing business that was broken into, one of the items stolen was the company switchboard console (this was long ago). The thief attempted to pawn it, the pawn shop owner asked him to wait for a minute - and went to a back room, called the phone number on the console, where of course they said it was stolen. Brilliant - they call the cops and keep the guy there until they arrive. Gotta love it.

Cheers for the kind words of moral support guys.

Well, just a quick update on the situation, police came to my house at 1245am, more than 3 hours after I reported the incident.
UK police are quick to dish out speeding fines or minor car offences, but when you actually need them, it seems like they aren't bothered. Typical.

Forensics came, but unfortunately couldn't find any prints, well that's expected... What burglar would rob a house without gloves?

As with the SA, I called up the AD I bought it from, and asked them if they keep any customer records with with serial numbers etc but to no avail.

So the long and arduous process of dealing with the insurance company begins... The interrogation made me feel like I was the criminal, I mean some of the questions they asked me seemed strange, like "why do you think they took the watch and papers but left the box behind?"
How am I supposed to know? Maybe because he/she didn't want to jump fences lugging a heavy box with him?!

Good luck with the insurance. Forget the police, they can never be of any help unless you have a motoring offence.

All police forces worldwide are corrupt & greedy, simply designed
to generate revenue. They are trained to distrust the public @
large. They might suspect you engineered the robbery a la in-
surance fraud. Have your barrister(s) act as a liaison between
you, the police, & your insurance company (Lloyds?). This will
prevent the cops from browbeating you again. I hope your pre-
sent situation is resolved shortly, with the least painful, but with
a positive disposition.