08/13/2007
Lock Your Doors: Burglary on Fire Island
Fire Island, perhaps because of its distance from the mainland (a 25-minute ferry ride) and perhaps because of the sense of camaraderie that pervades the summer season, is not the sort of place where you hear about a lot of crime.
Sometimes houses are rented out for the summer to large groups of people. Because of this, properties are sometimes left unlocked for ease of entry during long weekends. Some housemates stay out late, while others head home early, etc. There's also a sense of trust that pervades the place (at least from my experience), and it's not often that you hear about incidents like the one that happened to a group of my friends last weekend.
And it happened while all 12 of the housemates were in the house, asleep.
At about 4:30 am on Sunday, someone entered the house, which had been left unlocked. The intruder then proceeded to enter each of the rooms where they were sleeping. The thief/thieves grabbed a backpack of clothes and filled it with nine cell phones, 4 wallets, six iPods, three cameras, and one laptop computer.
The total value of the items stolen was $7,600. Nobody saw a thing. And there were no outside guests in the house — nobody had gone out and brought a "friend" home for the night.
The police said that they had heard similar stories from Cherry Grove, but not the Pines, although there was a burglary reported during the recent Pines Party and another report of BlackBerrys being stolen from a house last weekend as well.
So, a piece of advice for those of you spending any time in the Pines for the remainder of the summer: be vigilant, and lock up your valuables.
Sphere: Related ContentPosted 11:56 AM EST by Andy in Crime, Fire Island, News | Permalink
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It's sad, but you just can't leave the door unlocked like that anymore. It's not just Fire Island, it's true everywhere.
An ounce of prevention....
Posted by: Brian | Aug 13, 2007 12:09:10 PM
12 housemates? Wow, that was either one quiet thief or one of those housemates just posted a helluva lot of stuff on eBay.
Posted by: chrisb | Aug 13, 2007 12:22:01 PM
I hate to nit pick but the incidences described above were "burglaries" and not a "robberies".
There is a significant difference between the two acts.
Posted by: Zeke | Aug 13, 2007 12:29:51 PM
I hate to nit pick but the incidences described above were "burglaries" and not a "robberies".
There is a significant difference between the two acts.
Posted by: Zeke | Aug 13, 2007 12:30:19 PM
I hate to nit pick but the incidences described above were "burglaries" and not a "robberies".
There is a significant difference between the two acts.
Posted by: Zeke | Aug 13, 2007 12:30:28 PM
Fire Island isn't as safe as you think. I woke up on not one, but two occasions to find complete strangers climbing into bed with me early in the morning. While that may sound appealing to some of the more whorish of our persuasion, the idea of some tweaked out mess I have never laid eyes in walking into my house and into my bed after they have just been out snorting whatever all night isn't my idea of a fun time. if that was in NYC, they would have been arrested. On Fire Island it was laughed off by everyone except me.
Posted by: MT | Aug 13, 2007 12:40:36 PM
Either way Zeke...it was a brazen act that could have turned very harmful had one of the housemates awakened to find a "burglar" or a "robber" in their room. Let's not focus on the wording here...It's great that Andy is posting this type of warning to protect others.
Posted by: chris | Aug 13, 2007 12:41:18 PM
MT you are clearly in the right on that one. It's not funny... cracked-out people will do the strangest things sometimes, and those things are occasionally violent. Others might have laughed it off, but you were right in being freaked out.
Posted by: Brian | Aug 13, 2007 1:05:40 PM
andy could know it happened around 4:30 because as one of the victims, that is the time we estimated it to have happened.
just be careful people. xx
Posted by: iwasrobbed | Aug 13, 2007 1:25:37 PM
CHRIS- Zeke has a good point. This is the wrong word (people with legal background cringe when we hear someone use the terms interchangeably)
Good description of the difference:
"Robbery" is a crime against a person. You rob a person for property by putting them in fear or using force against them. Burglary, on the other hand, is a property crime. You burglarize a car, house, or barn. You can not put a car in fear or use force against it to obtain property, therefore, you cannot "rob" a car.
Posted by: JLS | Aug 13, 2007 1:27:12 PM
Correction noted, guys. Trust me, I get enough corrections to know my grammar is not always perfect.
Posted by: andy | Aug 13, 2007 1:33:33 PM
I kinda look at as the thief wanted to make DAMN sure that what happened on Fire Island stayed on Fire Island. Those camera phones in the bramble... bad idea.
Posted by: Rad | Aug 13, 2007 1:34:38 PM
As a born and bred New Yorker, I always found it odd that my housemates felt comfortable leaving everything open at night. I have always felt uneasy about being there alone after house mates left on a Sunday night. add a horror movie to the mix and Fire island is down right scarry!
Posted by: RJ | Aug 13, 2007 1:49:16 PM
I didn't mean to make that big a deal out of it and I didn't expect a correction. I know that burglary is a terrible crime and I appreciate Andy's reporting on it. I just wanted to make sure that what happened wasn't unintentionally blown out of proportion to look as if it was a crime of VIOLENCE, which robberies are, as opposed to a property crime, which burglaries are.
Andy just repeated the word that was used in the report. No big deal.
That being said, I hope they find the jerks/jerkesses that are doing this and put a stop to it.
Posted by: Zeke | Aug 13, 2007 1:57:34 PM
By the way, I have no idea why my original comment is multiplying. I didn't post it three times.
I may be annoying but I try not to be intentionally so.
Posted by: Zeke | Aug 13, 2007 2:05:12 PM
RJ is correct. As NY'er's you have to be pretty stupid to not lock-up each nite. You don't go to tea or the sip 'n twirl or the woods without stowing your cash and id someplace safe. How do you then go to tea or the woods or the beach and leave the house open.
Years ago, I and several other commuter's where robbed in the parking lot after leaving the ferry to return to NY. The Cops and Island Politico's got involved and warnings where issued on eash ferry ride and at the ticket booth(s). Now it's moving across the water. Lock up tight 'n Smarten Up Bois.
Posted by: lexxicuss | Aug 13, 2007 2:19:16 PM
[[comment deleted]]
Posted by: belonb | Aug 13, 2007 5:12:12 PM
Can you seriously just delete that comment? It's just beyond ridiculous and offensive.
Posted by: MT | Aug 13, 2007 5:36:05 PM
BelonB--
Uh, no. Stop trying to incite a racist flame war on this site. There was no such insinuation either in the report or in the post, so take your divisive dialogue elsewhere .
Posted by: andy | Aug 13, 2007 5:39:01 PM
The cracked out stranger entering the bedroom happened to me once at Gay Disney when the maid came in and left the door open. This high as a kite naked guy bounded into the hotel room and threw himself on my bed. The maid was terrified. I thought it was funny but I understood her discomfort. My question with this Pines event is why no one woke up. I'm in a house of eight people and I know at least one of us would have heard something. If they all were wearing earplugs, as a lot of people I know out there do, I could understand other than that they were all hammered.
Posted by: Paul hawryluk | Aug 13, 2007 8:32:41 PM
12 people in a house and not one person heard a thing. Smells fishy to me...and its not the dykes. Sounds like an inside job!
This Fire Island Virgin is disappointed, why go now "if" this sort of thing is happening.
Posted by: Robert Alan | Aug 13, 2007 10:45:46 PM
Not all 12 of the roommates were home at that time but I was one of them that was. Whoever it was felt comfortable enough to come into the room that I was sleeping in and took an iPhone off the table. I am normally a very light sleeper but of the people that were home and in the bedrooms sleeping, 4 of us had been up for about 22 hours by the time we went to bed. (We took at train out there at 7:50am Saturday morning) Sadly, I have to agree that I think it was an inside job but I think it had to be someone that had been there as a guest another week or a friend that had spent time in the house. They would have had to think that if one of us woke up or someone had seen them that they would not have seemed out of place. Scary!
Posted by: Sleepy | Aug 13, 2007 11:06:28 PM
here's an idea: throw all your BlackBerrys and Ipods into the ocean! It's the beach - unplug for crissakes! Oh, and "sense of cameraderie that pervades the summer season"????....c'mon....
Posted by: JoeMama | Aug 14, 2007 5:00:53 AM
Now, Tony! I think Andy Towle can be left-slanted, in the articles he chooses to include here, almost to the point of dishonesty, (though I think a lot of that is the fault of some of his sources), but I've never seen/heard anything that would make me think he edits like a Stalin or Mao.
Posted by: Joe T. | Aug 14, 2007 5:20:50 AM
No surprise given the number of "rent boys" out there.
Posted by: shane | Aug 14, 2007 7:21:44 AM
tho some believe it's Fantasy Island, there's no way doors should not be locked and bolted in such a place so privileged and obvious.
Posted by: A.J. | Aug 14, 2007 8:28:26 AM
Twelve in one house? I'd never sign on for a summer with a mob like that. And I agree totally with JOEMAMA: unplug and enjoy the beach and everything else the island has. And if it means skipping tea dance, or the club, consider it time well spent.
Posted by: Michael Safdiah | Aug 14, 2007 10:00:27 AM
Twelve in one house? I'd never sign on for a summer with a mob like that. And I agree totally with JOEMAMA: unplug and enjoy the beach and everything else the island has. And if it means skipping tea dance, or the club, consider it time well spent.
Posted by: Michael Safdiah | Aug 14, 2007 10:02:11 AM
Michael Safdiah : Parts of Fire Island can be pretty, nature-wise, but it's really a small place where the intention is for a group of gay guys to cluster (at least the Cherry Grove and Pines sections are like that). It's not really a get-away-from-it-all spot. It's just transplanting the same Manhattan guys to a different setting (with even more drugs). Not that there's anything wrong with all that, if one likes it.
Posted by: Joe T. | Aug 14, 2007 10:54:40 AM
CRAZY! Last night, all the way over here in Viet Nam, OUR house was burgled while we slept! I can't believe that two days after reading this, the same thing happens to my roommate and me: they came through her second story balcony door which was open while she slept. I mean, they're like monkeys here [and that is not a racist comment, it's the truth - you would have to be able to climb LIKE A MONKEY to reach the second story balcony] crazy... but these are things that do happen...
Posted by: JoeMama | Aug 16, 2007 3:35:55 AM