For a split second, as Jim Williams stands in the rec room of his condo searching for a way to describe what it felt like to be burglarized, he seems like a stranger in his own home.
It doesn’t matter that police have made an arrest or that he recovered most of the 100 DVDs the burglar made off with. Williams, who lives alone in Schaumburg, still can’t shake the thought of somebody rifling through his things.
“You look around thinking this guy was in here checking out my stuff and deciding which of those things he wanted to take,” Williams said. “He had that power over me. You just can’t express how frustrating that is.”
The man charged with the burglary lives in the same building and is now under house arrest.
The burglar got in by prying open the back door. Now, six weeks after the break-in, Williams wonders whether it can happen again.
To see how secure his home is in the aftermath of the Feb. 7 burglary, Williams, 50, agreed to let RedEye watch as Schaumburg police officer John Nebl conducted a complete home security inspection of Williams’ first-floor condo, as well as the common areas of the complex in which he lives.
The outside
After driving up to the two-story building, Nebl, who specializes in burglary prevention, gets to work immediately.
He quickly notes that the bushes in front of Williams’ condo are trimmed nice and low so his bedroom window is visible.
That’s bad news for a potential burglar, who wouldn’t be able to hide while trying to pry open a window.
“We talk about the 3-6 or 3-7 rule,” Nebl said. “No bushes higher than 3 feet or above the window sills, and no tree canopies hanging lower than 6 or 7 feet. Because you want to have an open area when you look out windows.”
Nebl also notes that the front and back doors are properly secured with a metal sheet placed over the doorknob, which protects the latch from being pried open.
A walk to the back of the building reveals the first problems. There is no lighting anywhere on the side of the building or on the back porch that abuts a man-made pond. In addition, a barbecue at ground level could be used to gain access to a second-floor balcony.
“Pull the barbecue out, grab the balcony, pull yourself up and you’re in business,” Nebl said.
The inside
The inside of the building reveals a few minor problems, but more that has been done properly. The lightbulb in the common area hallway is out, although Nebl points out that the walls are painted a bright white, which makes it harder for anybody to hide.
Williams’ front door has a dead bolt and a peephole, which Nebl applauds. Nebl also gives Williams credit for having a steel rod, known as a “charlie” bar, to secure a sliding glass door leading to his patio.
The windows in his bedroom and a guest bedroom, often used by a visiting daughter, pose a problem. Although windows have locks, they don’t have anything to secure them if the windows have been cracked open slightly.
Why would this matter? For a house on the first floor, a sliding window lock would allow the resident to sleep on a warm summer night with the window open a bit and not worry about somebody quietly opening the window. Nebl said the window lock can be bought at any hardware store for a few bucks.
The back door, where the burglar entered, had a dead bolt at the time of the break-in. The bolt was secured in the door by screws less than an inch in length, though, and the screws gave way when the thief pried the door a bit and then pulled the whole frame off.
“I’ve kicked in several doors as a cop,” Nebl said. “It never took me more than two kicks because they’ve got these little screws.” The solution, he says, is to buy screws at least
2 inches long and replace the small ones.
Insurance covered the replacement of the original door, but Williams wanted something more secure, so he spent an additional $1,058 for a steel door with a dead bolt drilled into the frame. Nebl praised the choice, although he noted the door did not have a peephole.
Williams also is considering an alarm system but hasn’t purchased one yet.
Nebl warns not to rely solely on an alarm. “An alarm system is not going to physically stop a burglar,” he says. “These [other] things will physically stop somebody.”
The verdict
Nebl says the outside common area has some problems but, mostly because of the addition of the steel door, he gives Williams’ unit a grade of B-plus or A-minus, which is a big upgrade from before the burglary.
That’s good news to Williams, who never wants to go through this again.
“You can’t tell somebody how it would feel until it happens,” Williams said. “You feel violated.”
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jgreenfield@tribune.com
