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TwitThisIt Takes a Thief
Norm and Sherry pulled into the driveway of their home in suburban New Jersey, feeling exhausted. It had been a brutal day, one of the hottest on record, and a few hours earlier, they had been involved in a fender bender. Finally they could relax, maybe cool down in the pool. They didn't know their bad day was far from over.
As they got out of the car, a thief was swiftly moving through their house. Seconds after they walked in, he slid open the rear door and slipped away.Later Norm and Sherry watched a playback of the break-in, unnerved by the sight of a stranger rifling through their things, grabbing cash, a son's guitar, even stopping to gulp juice from the refrigerator.
"This is freaking me out," said Norm. "It's scary. Very scary."
And totally expected. This was another well-organized crime on It Takes a Thief, a cunning Discovery Channel program that, depending on your point of view, is either a makeover show with an edge or every paranoid homeowner's nightmare.
Its premise is deceptively simple. You get a complete security makeover in exchange for giving two reformed burglars the chance to try to break into your house. A crew sets up cameras inside and out. Sometime in the next few days, Jon Douglas Rainey, the show's designated burglar, breaks in. Afterward co-host Matt Johnston helps the family figure out what went wrong.
Part of the fun is watching to see if Rainey can pull it off. Of nearly 60 burglaries attempted on the show, he has gotten in every time. He does a very Hollywood version of trashing a place -- flipping mattresses, dumping dresser drawers, even emptying a kid's piggy bank to underscore how cold-blooded a thief can be. It's all to dramatize a bigger point, he says. "You can be too comfortable for your own good." Consider these dismal statistics: According to the FBI, a burglary is committed every 15 seconds in the United States. Most of the two million-plus targets are residences.
It's a pricey crime -- the average loss is a little over $1,600 -- and the stolen goods are rarely recovered. Want justice? Good luck. Arrests are made in only 13 percent of cases.
Even creepier is how bold thieves can be. Most residential burglaries occur in broad daylight. July and August, when kids are home on summer vacation, are the busiest months.
And everyone is vulnerable. In one Thief episode, A.J., a police officer, watched in shock as Rainey busted in through a small basement window. The officer's wife glared at the TV.
"'Nobody can go through that window,' my husband said. 'Nobody.' "
The "burglars" made off with the couple's TiVo recorder, their crystal and china, passports and the officer's uniforms. Total take: about $60,000, including two guns and ammunition, from a safe in the bedroom closet.
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