# Apartment robbery...steps to take



## Guest (Jan 12, 2012)

Hi all, I'll try and keep this short but its a strange story and I am incredible frustrated.

I live in Lowell with 2 roommates and a landlady who is renting her house to us. she also lives in the apartment. She has a granddaughter who is a drug addict with some sketchy friends.

Yesterday I came home from work and over $1500 of our belongings are missing from the living room (game systems, musical instruments)

There was NO break in and our landlady was home the entire time. She had her granddaugter and her friends help her bring in some boxes to pack things up, then they borrowed her car to "bring stuff home". When i returned I noticed the missing items and she told me "I'm embarrased, it seemed like something fishy was going on"

My mistake was not calling the police right away. The suspects came back to return the car and she confronted them and they denied. But they could not get their story straight and it did not match up with the facts/time my other roommate was home. I head upstairs to call the police with my other roommate and we come downstairs and she had DRIVEN THEM HOME.

We have no proof although it was quite obviously them, and our landlady was not only unaware, but facilitated their "escape" She believes her daughter is telling the truth, which she is not. and from what she originally told me, she obviously knows.

we filed a police report. A box for one of the systems was actually left but the officer did not fingerprint/nor did we think of it.

I am going down to the station tomorrow to pick up the report and add some information.

I realize usually cases like this don't get solved but it is frustrating becuase:

The two friends of her granddaughters have warrants out for their arrest, yet we don't know their names, although we know the name and address of her grand daughter.

One of the items stolen was an invaluable musical instrument that was not even mine.


What can I do? I will not rest until I get this stuff back because I KNOW it was them. Can I bring the box in for finger printing? If they have warrants out they should be in the system? I asked the landlady to get the names of the granddaughters friends but I doubt that will happen.

I know Lowell police have better things to do, but If i continue to bug them, will that help?

Thanks in advance.


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2012)

Pete1 said:


> What can I do?


Moving out of Lowell would be a good start.


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2012)

please, I'm not in the mood. this is a different situation. I've lived her for 4 years and have never experienced a break in.


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## HistoryHound (Aug 30, 2008)

The officers here might have better advice, but from past experience with relatives and neighbors who have been robbed the only way you have any chance of seeing any of that stuff again is to check the pawn shops. If you can't or won't move; then, look for an alarm for your door. I had one in my apartment it was one of those stupid ding dong contact alarms that just sticks to the door and frame. Get one that has a siren setting and let your land lady and her granddaughter know it's there. There's always the option of video cameras, etc but you really want to keep them out not catch them after they've gone in, taken your stuff and sold it.


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2012)

Pete1 said:


> please, I'm not in the mood. this is a different situation. I've lived her for 4 years and have never experienced a break in.


I wasn't kidding.


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2012)

It's just like...if I were to find out their names and they had warrants wouldn't this give them the rights to search their place? Im gonna be keeping an eye and craigslist/pawn shops


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2012)

Pete1 said:


> It's just like...if I were to find out their names and they had warrants wouldn't this give them the rights to search their place? Im gonna be keeping an eye and craigslist/pawn shops


An arrest warrant isn't a search warrant; even if we know someone is inside a residence that has an arrest warrant, we can't make a forced entry (absent exigent circumstances) unless we apply for and are granted a search warrant. And even if we're granted entry to a residence and arrest someone on an arrest warrant, the area we can search is limited to the immediate area where the suspect was located; we can't start searching the bedrooms on another floor, for example.


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## justanotherparatrooper (Aug 27, 2006)

Pete1 said:


> please, I'm not in the mood. this is a different situation. I've lived her for 4 years and have never experienced a break in.


 Dude, youre coming to "our house" with a shitty attitude...guarentee this wont end well


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## mr_happy (May 30, 2010)

shoot the hostage.


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2012)

I fail to see how I have a bad attitude coming into your "house" I'm simply up in arms about the fact that I know its these people and I just can't accept there is nothing I can do about it

what about the possibly fingerprints on the wii box?



mtc said:


> ""DUDE"" - you "know" too much to "know" so little.
> 
> Face it - if half of your "story" is the truth - you didn't have a " break in" you had a "theft of property" - BY YOUR "LANDLADY/ROOMMATE" and her shitbag grandkid !!
> 
> File a police report, let the police handle it... STOP paying your rent to this fucked up woman and get the fuck out of there!


I did file a police report, why would they do anything? they never do for stuff like this. I will not be paying her rent but its gonna be hard to find somewhere to go.

I already said it wasn't a "break in", does theft of property change if they are going to pursue these people? I'm going to pick up the report tomorrow and hopefully someone will talk to me.

and for the record, I don't "not want to move out of lowell", I just can't right now


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## HistoryHound (Aug 30, 2008)

Pete12 said:


> I'm simply up in arms about the fact that I know its these people and I just can't accept there is nothing I can do about it


Don't get snippy. There is something you can do about it.


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## sdb29 (Jul 17, 2002)

Well here's my take on this. I don't work in Lowell, btw but my place is a s-hole, maybe even more so than Lowell. 
Our detectives have overflowing inbaskets that never go down. 
Most of them involve murders, or rapes, or armed robberies, or street robberies with serious injury to the victim. 
We've got a four man team doing several armed robberies a night and it's only a matter of time until these guys shoot somebody. 
Got a gang who uses machetes to rob people and chop the victim with the machete just for fun as they leave.
We've got gangs who shoot each other because simply because they're caught in the wrong end of town. 
In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter whether you call it a burglary, or a theft from a person. A non violent theft is not going to be high on their radar screen. 
It's not right, but lots of things aren't. I wish I lived in a world where I could devote time to property crime cases like yours. It just isn't the way things are anymore. 
It's not we don't care but there are 8 hours in a day.


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## Deuce (Sep 27, 2003)

Look, as long as someone opened your door, w/o your permission, it's a B&E. You didn't state the time but my guess it's going to be a B&E, daytime, of a building, no person lawfully therein placed in fear.. Then you have a larceny from a building, or if LPD prefers, a larceny over $250. All felonies. Detectives will get involved. To you, and understandably so, this is a big kick in the nuts. We empathize. Your stuff got stolen. We get it. And the police want to help. Unfortunately you have to get in line with all of the others. Thanks to your elected officials, police department resources have been decimated. So in short: it's a looong line.. The Wii box? If you moved it from the scene, after the initial investigation, it would probably be considered tainted evidence therefore unusable.
You don't even know the savages names, so how do you know they have warrants? And as Delta said, an arrest warrant does not allow police to search for evidence of a crime in a dwelling. Unless the evidence was in plain view when the subject was being arrested, we can't go snooping around. Hell, we can't even bend down and move a stereo to look at serial numbers if we think it's stolen.

Like you said, check the pawn shops and watch Craigs List.. And give the cops some time...


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## Hush (Feb 1, 2009)

Lure the granddaughter or her friend over to your apt with the promise of free drugs, then waterboard them untill they give up the info.
http://waterboarding.org/how-to

While it seems like an easy solution to fingerprint the box, real-life ain't CSI, even if you could obtain a print you have chain-of-custody issues (wont stant up in court).


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## 263FPD (Oct 29, 2004)

First and foremost, this is not a Robbery. It is a Burglary. Search warrants require a lot more then a bunch. A BS arrest warrant, doesn't give us the right to toss a person's residence as was already mentioned. I understand why you are not in the mood. Being a victim sucks, plain and simple. Had my car broken in to a couple of times and my wife had her car broken in to once. Not a good feeling when someone screws with your stuff. As far as getting the persons responsible...

This isn't CSI. We can't come in to your home and by waving a UV light, solve every crime. It never happens that way. I have rarely witnessed our crime scene guy lift a usable print. When they do rarely accomplish this, they really need to have a suspect in mind to make the match. Once again, it is not CSI, and it's highly doubtful that unless it is a crime of violence, FBI crime lab in Quantico, will be willing to examine the physical evidence in your otherwise insignificant B&E. I hate to tell you this but while, to you its a devastating event, to the rest of the world, and to the Police and Law Enforcement community, it's not even a blip on the radar. Oh I'm sure it will be followed up in by a detective. They may even be lucky enough to find one of your items in the Pawn List. But don't expect miracles. Don't bother with heavy duty locks. Locks keep honest people honest. Get renter's insurance because if it is your landlady's shitbag junky kid, you will suffer this again. You can always move. If moving out of the city isn't an option, move to another apartment elsewhere in town. Good luck with all this. But if you think that your little bit of misfortune, a property crime, will be moved to the top of the pile of reports and investigations, you have another thing coming.


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## Hush (Feb 1, 2009)

You know what you have to do in order to resolve this properly. You came here looking for a quick-fix feel good answer. You've gotten the right advice, but it doesnt seem satisfactory. You want the real answer? The only way you will get your shit back and feel better, is to find the people responsible and beat the crap out of them. You already have some solid leads. You start choking these bitches, and you will have your WII and xbox and whatever back before the sun rises. Unfortunately, in this state, by laying you hands on the person who unlawfully entered your house and stole your property, you have comitted a worse offense than the person who originally stole your stuff. You must understand, MA is a state which takes a harder look at a trooper who fires his weapon at someone trying to run him/her down in a car, as opposed to someone who fires a rifle at what looks like a deer tail in the woods and hits a civillian. File a report and hope for the best. Thats all you're allowed to do here. There are some damn good people working on it, and when they get a chance to get around to it they will give it their best effort, guarenteed. Other than that, your best bet is to move as suggested above. Its not fair, we understand. Hey, welcome to the peoples republic of Massachusetts. Deval Patrick, Govenor elected "by the people".


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## justanotherparatrooper (Aug 27, 2006)




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