Break in

[Frank Cox]

We live in the theatre, in an apartment behind the screen.

I woke up at 3:10am last night and heard something hammering in the lobby.

Thinking that a fan was stuck or something I went up the stairs to the lobby, turned on the light and opened the door to go and see what's banging and make it stop.

And was just about bowled over by someone racing past me!

He ran into the auditorium and I saw a flashlight go on (since it's pitch black in there with the lights off) and he ran to the fire exit door and outside.

Holy crap!

I phoned the police and started looking around. I haven't seen anything missing (yet) and I absolutely don't see how he got in. The windows are not broken, the front doors were still locked and the fire exit door looks pretty much like it always does.

And I don't see what he was pounding on either. It sounded like a metallic hammering "bang bang bang pause bang bang bang", not super loud more like, as I said, a fan banging on the housing or something.

My only guess is that when I took some garbage out the front door at about 12:30am I had my back to that door for maybe thirty seconds while I carried it over to the bin. Maybe he snuck in then and hid when I came back in? But then he waited for about two hours or more before doing anything that made noise? I don't know if these guys are patient enough to do that.

Anyway, the police came last night and looked around and told me that they know of some other places that have security cameras in this area (which I don't have) so they'll be checking them.

Meanwhile, I guess there's nothing more that I can do.

I got the impression of bulk, so it wasn't a kid or a teenage girl, and maybe he was wearing a grey jacket and had some kind of a black carrying bag or knapsack, but it's just an impression. I think I was so shocked that he could have ridden by on an elephant and I might not have noticed.

[Lyle Romer]

Wow. Quite scary. Glad you are OK. Unless he picked the lock and then locked the door behind him it seems the only way he could have gotten in was to sneak in when you took out the trash. Do you have a safe he could have been banging on to try and open?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Any possibility he hid in the theater at the end of the last show? I've had customers that has happened to. Glad you were safe though!

[Frank Angel]

Wow, could have had a different ending...so glad you are OK, Frank. There must have been something the guy was interested in getting at. What 1-sheets do you have up -- those Marvel Universe and Spidy fans sill sometimes go to great length to get posters. I had a bunch of college kids once begging me for weeks to give them the Dark Knight for their dorm. But al least you have a good theatre story to tell the grandkids.

But wait, you you had me at, you have an apartment IN THE THEARE! Freakin AWESOME! When we were doing work in the Loew's Kings in Brooklyn, trying to get the city to renovate it, I set up house in the manager's office for almost a month and LOVED it. The Kings was one of Loew's "wonder theatres" -- a super ornate, 4000 seater and simply a breath-taking beauty. If I could have, I would have rented living quarters in that great lady and I would have been one perfectly happy pup (my lady at the time would hear none of it).

image.png
Loew's Kings in Brooklyn NY after the restoration.

[Randy Stankey]

Check the till. That's often the first place crooks will go.

When I was a kid, my father (who owned a bar) taught me to leave the till open at the end of the night with a $20 bill on the bottom of the empty drawer. I asked him why and his answer was that it keeps them from trying to break into the till just to find nothing.

If you leave the drawer open, thieves will be more likely to take the money and skedaddle.

[Frank Cox]

There were only two people at last night's show, they both left at the end and I swept up the auditorium and checked the bathrooms afterward so I don't think this guy was here then.

I can't see anything that's marked up or scarred. If he had done whatever he was doing and left without doing all of that banging I wouldn't have known anything had happened at all.

I check the fire exit door at the end of the night to be sure it's latched and I've been trying to remember if I did that last night for sure but it's something that I just do on autopilot along with the other shutting-down-for-the-night stuff and I couldn't swear that I did that. I'm sure I did that because I always do that, but...

I don't actually have tills, just cash drawers. There's no money left in them other than some nickels and dimes that I allow to accumulate until I have enough for a roll, and the nickels and dimes are still there too.

The door between the lobby and the basement is just a cheap interior hollow core door. It has a lock on it but that's mostly just to keep kids from opening that door and falling down the stairs; actual security wasn't ever a factor.

I have now made arrangements for that door to be replaced with a steel security door. The back of this building is pretty much a fort (barred windows, etc) but the front is just a storefront. So I guess that door is the weak spot in terms of waking up some night with someone standing over us and I'll be getting that fixed.

It just never crossed my mind that this would be something I needed to do.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Sorry to hear but glad you are okay. Break ins where you live are a whole other beast to emotionally process than just work places. Have had to deal with that once.

is this a former grand theatre with an attached apartment? Lots of theatres used to do that for housing talent and designer types, hell way back in the day “room and board” might have been a perk of the projectionist’s position,

[Frank Cox]

No, my theatre was a paint and wallpaper store before I bought it and made it into a theatre. The rooms at the back were used for paint mixing and sewing curtains, that's now my apartment. The rest of the building was just a big empty space.

Living in the theatre is very convenient in almost every way. Short commute to work! And we work nights and the rest of the world works days so it works out well for things like deliveries.

It's a sad commentary on the way things are when you have to live in a fort.

[Harold Hallikainen]

That's really too bad! Ideally, someone else's security camera caught something. There are a LOT of cameras around now. It might be worthwhile for you to have one or two. I don't have any, and we have not had any issues. I run a web site ( https://neighborhood.w6iwi.org/ ) that reports all the police and code enforcement activity in Tucson. In our neighborhood, almost all the police incidents are on the commercial streets around the neighborhood. Very little activity within the residential area.

Harold

[Ryan Gallagher]

It's a sad commentary on the way things are when you have to live in a fort.

Indeed. The oldest still working member of our local lives in a apartment nook in the corner of his warehouse that he used to run his lighting business out of. He's still welcome on any spotlight he can get to, which still includes 7 flights of stairs in some venues. A real inspiration for aging well that one is (health and mental acuity more so than retiring with suitable finances).

[Leo Enticknap]

Once again, I'm relieved that you're safe, and sorry that you're having to be distracted by security issues.

There must have been something the guy was interested in getting at.

And/or the guy (or maybe gal?) is someone with a significant mental health issue.

From what I've just read about Melville, I would have thought that, rather than trawl through security camera footage, the local police should only need to consult their list of known petty criminals and other troublemakers, eliminate those who don't have an alibi, and thereby find the perp. The city only has a population of around 5,000, and is difficult to get to from any major metro (90 miles from Regina). If, as I would guess, burglary in Melville hardly ever happens, surely they should be able to figure out this one by a process of elimination without too much trouble.

On the subject of apartments in theaters, this didn't just happen in the opulent picture palaces. Roughly once every couple of years, I do a service visit to the Fallon Theatre in Fallon, NV, which was originally a regular cinema but is now operated as a nonprofit by the group that saved it from closure. It has a manager's apartment above the lobby, which is now in use as an artist's studio.

[Frank Cox]

I suspect that's exactly what they're doing. The cop who was here said he just arrested a guy for breaking into one of the local bars a few weeks ago and he's out on bail so the next step is they're going to be checking on his whereabouts at the relevant time. So we'll see what happens. I haven't heard anything more about it yet.

He also said, "This theatre is one of the iconic businesses in Melville and people aren't supposed to be messing with it." Maybe that means they'll be taking some actual action. As Leo said, this isn't a big city with an actual crime rate. At least not as far I've ever known about it.

My wife said tonight that he was probably banging the cash drawers, trying to take them out. Which makes sense since there isn't much else around there that would make that kind of metallic banging. I don't know why he would have wanted to take them out, though. They're just empty drawers.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Scary stuff... really. I'm really glad you're OK. Also glad he/she apparently didn't get off with anything of value. And, like other's commented, this could've ended worse. My last break-in experience has been a while and I hope I can keep it that way, it left quite some traumatic traces for some family members.

I'm not sure what the procedure is around your neck of the woods, but usually, when there was a break-in, the police around here sends a small "forensics team" to check if they can identify the source of the break in. That's important for multiple reasons, like securing evidence, an eventual insurance claim and also to ensure that this route can be eliminated for future break-ins. Eliminating the uncertainty of how he got in may also help you feel safe again in the place.

As for the noise, I guess the cash drawers obviously make sense. Those kind of guys are almost always after money or stuff that can be easily converted into money. Around here, there was a pandemic of armed robberies on soft targets like convenient stores, gas stations and even supermarkets. Targets were always cash drawers and stuff like cigarettes. While I generally love the rather open borders here in Europe, it also makes for a rather easy getaway of a certain type of criminal.

This might be a bit to soon yet, but are you considering to install some mitigating measures like a motion-based alarm and/or CCTV?

[Frank Cox]

I actually did phone an alarm company this afternoon (who is supposed to have someone call me back sometime next week) because I'm thinking that some kind of motion detector(s) that will turn on a buzzer in my living room and bedroom when there's activity in the lobby would not be a bad thing to have.

And I've already talked to a guy who does handyman-type work for me about putting in that security door.

So I guess I'm hardening the target.

But it truly saddens me that this sort of thing has now become necessary.

My wife tried to be mad at me, "Why would you go and confront someone like that? You're not twenty years old any more!"

I pointed out that I hadn't gone to confront anyone. My objective was to make a noisy fan or something stop banging. I guess I'll think about burglars after this, but nothing like that crossed my mind at the time.

[Randy Stankey]

Well... Cash drawer? Till? Same thing, basically.

Anyhow, leave it open like I said. Put a $20 on the bottom of the drawer... Underneath that is a handwritten sign that says: "Don't turn around! I have a gun!"