35 Years a Locksmith: The Knock That Isn't a Neighbor

Every one of the 86 inmates who answered a KGW survey said the same thing about how a burglary starts: they knocked on the front door first. The knock is not the polite part. It is the test. This is what that minute looks like from the other side of the door, and the three sentences that end it without being rude to anybody. WHAT IS IN THIS ONE 0:00 The knock, and why it is the beginning 2:20 Three confessions, word for word, from the Oregon survey 5:40 Judge the errand, not the person: the four questions 10:30 The three sentences you can say through a closed door 13:00 The chalk marks on your kerb: why I do not believe it 16:40 Daytime, not night - what the numbers actually say 19:00 The morning after: the lock was fine, the wood broke 21:20 Three dollars of screws, and your weekend THE ONE REPAIR, IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE Open your front door and look at the little metal plate in the frame that the deadbolt goes into. It is held by two screws about three quarters of an inch long, into a strip of trim. Take them out, throw them away, and drive three inch wood screws through the same holes. About three dollars. Now the bolt is anchored to the framing of the house instead of a piece of pine. Do the hinges while the screwdriver is out. SOURCES - KGW-TV (Portland, Oregon) surveyed 86 inmates serving time for burglary in the Oregon Department of Corrections, 17 anonymous questions. All who answered said they knock first. - Kuhns, Blevins and Lee, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (2013): 422 incarcerated burglars in North Carolina, Kentucky and Ohio. 83% check for an alarm, 60% go elsewhere if there is one, about 1 in 8 picked a lock or used a key they already had. - FBI Uniform Crime Report, 2024: 216,601 daytime residential burglaries against 174,053 at night. - Snopes lists the burglar chalk-mark code as unproven. A survey of convicted house robbers found 80% had never heard of it. THE GUIDES Three of them, 99 pages, 27 dollars, at raykessler.vercel.app - the afternoon door job with the screw lengths and the shopping list, the phone call when you are locked out at eleven at night, and 37 repairs with nothing to buy for people who rent. It is not free and I say so in the video. I was a locksmith for 35 years. I never caught a burglar. I changed about four thousand of the doors they came through, always the morning after. #homesecurity #locksmith #burglary #homedefense #diy