Burglary waiting to happen

Early Monday morning there was a burglary at a charity shop in Eton Wick. I heard about it while visiting my Dad and was interested to discover what had happened as it was the first shop that that I had a full time job. That was in 1969 and it was the village green grocer then.

The events of early Monday are simple to describe, the door was forced open most likely with a crowbar and the lock breeched. The criminals then located the shop’s safe and removed it from the premises. The safe contained the takings from Saturday. As with my own experience of a burglary, the loss of cash or stock isn’t the biggest frustration. That comes from time and cost of getting the business and premises back to normal.

While the manager was relieved that the store had not been vandalised, she was hugely disappointed that the criminals are unlikely to ever be caught as the police found no forensic evidence.

Here are my observations as to why this store was a target.

The store has shutters, but they were not in use. I heard from my former employer that there was a maintenance issue.

The store has CCTV, but the cameras don’t have night time vision and there were no lights left on over night.

The store safe was not bolted to the floor.

The store did not have an intruder alarm.

Have you reviewed your business’s security this year? Let us know your experiences in the comments section below.