My youngest son had a JD Bug scooter for his 11th birthday a few weeks ago, it's his pride & joy, bless him. It was stolen from our garden last night - while we were home

We've established it was definately in the garden (and not left down the road by him), as 2 friends also remember seeing it in our garden at 9pm last night.
At 11:30pm OH & I had a ciggy in the garden & noticed sons bike was there, so put it in the shed - no scooter in the garden at that time, but as he usually keeps it in the house we thought nothing of it.
The door to the garden opens off the livingroom, it's usually left open untill we go to bed, with the light in the garden turned on. Last night we had the garden light off & the door shut as we were watching a film.
I remember at about 10pm hearing a noise & thinking to my self 'that's the cat - she'll have to wait for the film to finish before I let her in'. But I never saw her on the windowsill, which I thought a little strange at the time, but gave it no more thought. That must have been when the scooter was nicked

The dog has been told he's useless, LOL. He was out for the count all evening. Our last dog would always alert us to anything going on in our garden or within 10ft of the side/front of the house - even a strange cat prowling around would cause him to dart to the door & alert us of the 'threat'. Buster - no way, he has sleeping to do!!!!

I am so very angry, some scumbag has obviously watched us, seen our door shut & garden light off & nipped over the fence. The fence is only 3ft high at the bottom of the garden and you can see where some leaves on a plant have been freshly trampled. That part of the garden backs straight onto a neighbours garden.
There is a person in our street that has CCTV rigged up to cover his car, he's out at the moment, but will check through his footage on the off-chance that we can see somebody going past with the scooter.
We have our suspicions but there is no proof

It has taught us a lesson, as we never keep our shed door locked, let alone shut (even though the scooter was left on the patio, 6ft infront of the front door), so we were lucky that the bikes weren't stolen.
My poor little lad has shed some tears, but we've told him we will replace it when we can (it was £50 & money is very tight, so he may have a long wait :( ) & from now on all bikes/scooters have to be locked away, even when we are awake.

Thieving scum, I hope one day they develope a conscience and the guilt of what they do chokes them

What a heartless excuse for a human being.  No wonder you're fuming. 

I feel your pain - I keep kicking myself over something that happened to our car that could so easily have been prevented by us. 

Hope your wee one is ok, and that the cctv has caught and can identify the theiving so and so.

> I keep kicking myself over something that happened to our car that could so easily have been prevented by us.

That's whats so annoying isn't it, that little word 'IF'. 'If' I had done this...'If' I had done that....
It keeps playing on your mind how you could have prevented it.
Grrrr, I'm having to try to just ignore it today as I was getting myself rather aggitated yesterday - enraged how somebody could have the cheek to think it's OK to steal other peopls stuff

Oh well, it's done. Doesn't matter how many different ways it could have been prevented, that wasn't the case. So we're just going to have to take it as a lesson - don't leave things in the garden.

No luck with the CCTV - thought that was a bit of a long-shot anyway!

I hope one day they develope a conscience and the guilt of what they do chokes them

Your poor son, what a shame for him. I know how you  feel. I spent over £200 on a bike when money was very tight as a 13th birthday present for my son--he'd never owned a bike from new, and he'd just got a paper round so he needed the bike to cover the distance and hills in our rural area. It took 3 weeks for someone to steal it from our backyard, exactly the same scenario--watching the place to make sure it wasn't chained up. This was before we got the dogs, of course, they'd have eaten the beggar.

I was never able to replace it for him and ended up driving him on his paper round for 2 years, 6.00am six days a week :)

Really sorry to hear about your son's scooter. It is so wrong that we can't leave things in our garden for fear of them being stolen.

> I spent over £200 on a bike when money was very tight as a 13th birthday present for my son--he'd never owned a bike from new, and he'd just got a paper round so he needed the bike to cover the distance and hills in our rural area. It took 3 weeks for someone to steal it from our backyard,

Oh no, how awfull :( :(

What's really anoying is that the scum that do this DO appreciate how hard it is to save up and buy things or they wouldn't need to steal it
I wonder what makes people do it, the rest of us will struggle to make ends meet and never even dream of stealing.

Some of us have morals.....
The theives don't..............

We are dealing with this with my OH's family member yong lad of 16..
bad enough he's has fallen in with the wrong crowd and has been cautioned
for stealing from shops, plus been caught with knives etc :(

Now he's also stealing from other family members, bad enough from his own home.
But now he turned his attention to his nan's house.
He stole some controllers for a PS2/3 that were for all the family's use when visiting nannies.
As a result he's now been banned from all the family homes as he's not welcome to steal.

The mum doesn't appear to have any control over him, he's had countless talks from family and
official peeps such as social workers, and the Police.

Sadly I think he's a lost case and he's on the rocky road to YOI or prison or both :(
His mum tries her hardest with providing for the kids (she has 4) and buying secondhand stuff for presents
but even the middle two don't appear to respect their stuff nor their mum.
Although do seem to respect the other family members who do tell off and expect respect
and do not let them get away with bad behaviour.

It's so hard to know what to do.
I hate what society has become now.
This isn't 'Robin Hood' either if anyone has something that the theives want - they go for it regardless if
that family has worked hard, saved long and hard to get it. They don't care, they do it because they can.

Hi Boxacrazy, I'm so sorry to hear this. Parents have a very challenging time these days for all kinds of reasons and even the best sometimes won't be enough for some kids who have a their self-destruct button firmly switched to "on." Whenever it has been tough for me as a lone parent (one of my sons went off the rails in spectacular style, regularly putting his life at risk) I remember how I was--so far from "no angel" I think I fell off the scale at times, but I just felt physically unable to discuss any of it with my family. Luckily for them they were able to send me several thousand miles away to a boarding school. Different financial circumstances could have easily meant a YOI instead.

I work in the voluntary sector and there are some really excellent programmes out there that can help--not in a "doing good" way, but by putting the most difficult kids into real situations where they will need all their energy and brain to survive their environment. I don't know where you are, but have a look at Fairbridge at http://www.fairbridge.org.uk. They work with 13-25s across the country. I also came across a fantastic, hard hitting charity the other day called the Criminal Information Bureau, run by ex-prisoners exactly to prevent kids from ending up the same way--have a look at http://www.cib-uk.com/bangedup.php for some of the innovative work they are doing.

I hope things improve--it's very frightening for parents to see kids out of control. I've been one and one of the hardest things is that my parents still loved and forgave me long before I could ever do the same for myself.

Hi mastifflover, I was less annoyed about the bike being stolen or what it cost than the impact it had on my son, who felt so guilty about losing it because all he could think of was that the money would have fed us for a month. I could forgive the thief for stealing a bike but not for stealing a child's innocence or happiness.

Boxacrazy,

In respect to this young family member has anyone thought about speaking with the young offenders team in the area and getting them to set up a visit to a prison? Its been done in parts of our area and does work. They get to see the inside and meet and speak to some of the prisoners, who will teach them that its not the way to go, basically scares them..

Not much help MastiffLover, but how about securing your property more, not implying its your fault,quite the opposite, but start putting measures in place to protect your property can help. The easier it is to steal things the more likely it is to happen. If you make if difficult for them, then its less likely they will come back for anything else..

> the impact it had on my son, who felt so guilty about losing it because all he could think of was that the money would have fed us for a month

:( Ahhh, bless him. :( That makes it so much worse, to know the light-fingered toe-rag has caused so much upset for your boy :(

Luckily my youngest son is still very much a child, in the sense that he tends to just think about playing and kid things (if you know what I mean), so he has no guilt or bad feelings about the money aspect, just upset that somebody stole his scooter.
What a difference in maturity levels between my 11 year old and my 12 year old. The 12 year old gave his scooter to his younger brother becasue he felt bad for him, he said he knows it's not as good as the one that got stolen, but as least it can be used for learning tricks and playing on, bless :)
Allthough, maybe it wasn't such a grand gesture as my eldest son broke his leg on that scooter 6 weeks ago (1 week left in the cast still) and now thinks scooters are 'evil' LOL.

> Not much help MastiffLover, but how about securing your property more, not implying its your fault,quite the opposite, but start putting measures in place to protect your property can help. The easier it is to steal things the more likely it is to happen. If you make if difficult for them, then its less likely they will come back for anything else..

Defiantely. It's been a wake-up call, as we've lived here for 10 years and always been rather lax with keeping things secure in the garden. Often going out for the evening & leaving the shed doors swinging open, or with bikes left on the patio. We've been living in a false sense of security!
I think our last dog helped get us in this bad habbit as nobody could get near the house without him barking, he was the perfect deterrant for thieves. Buster on the other hand is silent.

We've got 6ft panel fencing around 2 sides of the garden, apart from a gap at the bottom, where it is only 3ft high (did have bamboo there, but recently moved it to another part of the garden). The other side of the garden, between us & the next-door neighbours is only 3ft high, as thier garden is lower than ours (the street slopes downwards), which means the top of our 3ft fence is actually 6ft high from the neighbours garden (if that makes sense?).
A friend has a fence panel we can have for free (yay - free is my favorite price :) ), so that will fill the gap at the bottom of the garden.

Apart from that we are making sure that things get locked in the shed and not left in the garden :)

We're very luckily that it was just the scooter that got nicked. Next to the scooter was a £500 trials bike (the peddling sort, not motor), the shed was also unlocked with 2 mountain bikes in, gardening stuff & OHs tools. We could have been cleared out I think the thief thought we were out (all lightes in & outside were off as we were watching a horror film), but once on the patio heard that we were in so only took the easiest item to nab.

It's very frustrating, we all should be able to leave things out in our gardens without them getting nicked, but obviously thieves don't share the same set of principles!!

THIS
http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/police_to_give_free_bikes_to_offenders_1_582347

was the front of local paper yesterday
Chris

> Buster on the other hand is silent.

I will happily lend you oberon who barks on a hair trigger.  A couple of well timed woofs at anything that crosses his path and plenty things that think better of it.  The trade off is that he is still a horrible hormonal teen, has a few issues, will eat you out of house and home and has a thing about chasing buses.  But hey if that doesn't put you off, he's all yours ;)