Quite a few years ago (and fortunately the only time I've been burgled), I had a guy hop in through my bathroom window of the house, because our rubbish bins we

Quite a few years ago (and fortunately the only time I've been burgled), I had a guy hop in through my bathroom window of the house, because our rubbish bins were outside the window/we left the window open for the cats to jump in & out of. My flatmates and I were all sound asleep in our rooms. I remember half-waking a few times and seeing a shadowy figure in my room, but being half-asleep remember thinking "ah just my flatmate probably doing something" and went back to sleep. Awoke a short time later and realised what had happened with the charging cables for my laptop/phone pulled towards the doorway and a few things strewn here and there. Got up and went to the hallway and found the rest of the house in disarray and banged on my flatmates doors to panic/get them to call the police. This was at about 4am. They hadn't hit up my flatmates rooms, only mine (closest to the front door/road) and the main areas of the house. While the police were on their way, I realised my desktop was still there (it was a full-tower) and turned it on to see if I could locate the phone: success! It showed my phone as being in a carpark near a Macca's a few areas over. My flatmate was still on the phone to the police so we relayed that and they said they'd take a look, but a separate team was coming to see if we were okay. That second team arrived and we made 'em some tea and all sat around being reassured by 'em until the first team had reported in; they got the stuff back! (Well, most of it). Turns out the guy had: stolen a car, burgled about a half dozen places before ours, then burgled our place and driven to get get Macca's to celebrate. Apparently he was the only car in the carpark and the police walked up seeing that the car was chock full of people's stuff. My stuff was returned and so was the car and the police were apparently trying to get the other stuff back to their owners, too. I got a follow up call a couple months later "we can't tell you who he is, but for your information he'd already been pulled up on this before and this time he's going to prison". There's nothing quite like the feeling of justice, like "yeah FUCK you for entering my house and taking my stuff". The scariest thing of the entire scenario was me realising that my phone/laptop were charging on my bed, next to me. Which meant he'd leant over me while I slept to take my stuff. After moving to the UK, unfortunately after a few years with getting away with walking around London at night, I got mugged. These guys clearly did this stuff all the time because my phone had clearly been turned off, so was not able to be located. But it really shows the importance of technology helping mitigate/prevent these sorts of things; we should really be holding companies to higher standards and have universal ways to make theft of anything like phones/laptops essentially impossible. Another thing was the reaction of NZ police; fast, efficient, caring and really eager to just help out someone who had been wronged. Whereas the response I got in London/Met police was basically "ya we can't do anything and there's no CCTV of it" (the most surveilled city in all of Europe, apparently.