“This could be an ’80s comedy movie but it’s real life,” 3 Burglars Try Stealing A TV, It Doesn’t End Well

One modern Christmas tradition in some families is to spend the holidays watching all of the Home Alone films. (Well, the good ones, at least.) But few of us consider that the premise of Home Alone could happen in real life, even without the help of smart and tenacious kids to stop the evildoers.

Not all criminals are as capable as the characters in Ocean’s Eleven or as confident as the villains in James Bond films. Some criminals are clumsy, incompetent, and hilarious.

A video of thieves trying to steal a widescreen television from someone’s home is making the rounds online. The keyword here is trying because even three grown criminals weren’t able to accomplish this task and they hurt themselves several times in the process like they were in a Home Alone spinoff without Kevin. The trio looks like it belongs in an old-timey comedy film. Or a jail cell. Either works.

Bored Panda spoke about protecting our homes from thieves and burglars to security specialist Andrew Tierney who is based in London and goes by the nickname Cybergibbons. Scroll down for the full informative video.

Someone decided to put some hilarious sounds over it and it made the video even funnier

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When the video was posted on Reddit, internet users were quick to poke fun at the thieves who broke into the home and caused a lot of damage this way, but ended up with nothing. Some Redditors even gave potential thieves tips on how to draw less attention to themselves while doing a ‘job’ (that’s a big no-no). While other people noticed that the thieves weren’t even wearing gloves, so they must have left their fingerprints and DNA everywhere.

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After watching the video, Cybergibbons had this to say: “So you can see that this is a commercial property, and that is tempered glass—the stuff that breaks into a lot of small pieces. That’s quite hard to secure. You can break them using an automatic center punch, and most of the time just knock the pieces out.”

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“There are a few ways you can make windows better. Window films can be retrofitted, and come in a range of thicknesses and strengths. They will slow down an attacker from 10 seconds to maybe 20 seconds to 1 minute. That can be enough.”

Image credits: GoTime

Cybergibbons continued: “Laminate reinforced glass would be the next step, you are up to several minutes for the stuff that is meant to stop people. Then plastics, which are very difficult to break. Security screens or bars as well. The problem with commercial properties is that if you have a massive glass frontage, these all cost a lot.”

Image credits: GoTime

He also noted that it’s unlikely that the thieves would get caught because “Fingerprints need someone to take the fingerprints and do something, [but] most burglary doesn’t meet the threshold for police to do this anymore due to [lack of resources].

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In a previous interview with security specialist Tierney, Bored Panda learned that we can’t generalize that mechanical locks are safer than electronic locks, for instance. However, “you don’t need to spend as much to get a decent mechanical lock. Many of the electronic ones are bad, though.”

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Here’s the original video of how the three thieves hurt themselves while trying to steal a TV

Image credits: FocusOn News Agency

“A typical burglar isn’t advanced. Really you are looking at lock-snapping being the most advanced attack. It is often just force. There are not the same kind of electronic attacks as against cars, because there is no money in it and you can’t trivially tell from the outside.”

Tierney said that it’s not worth bolting things down in your home, “unless it’s your safe or a lock point for a bike, motorbike, or caravan.”