Neighbours Watched Garden Furniture Get Stolen In Broad Daylight!

It’s not often garden furniture makes the news but, just the other day, an entire set was stolen in broad daylight from a garden in Weymouth – around the Lanehouse Rocks area. It wasn’t a simple operation either; the thief stole a large wooden table and two benches from a front garden! Anybody who has any dealings within the industry knows just how exceptionally heavy decent-quality wood garden furniture is – it must have taken a significant amount of time to nick!
As awful as it is that a 68-year-old has had their garden furniture stolen, I feel the worst part about the whole tale is how police came to discover the details of the crime. According to sources, the neighbours of the elderly victim “saw a heavy-set man…lift the table and chairs over the wall and load them into his van”. That’s right; they SAW the man stealing the furniture…and did nothing! Aparently they thought it was “in connection with building work at the property”. How much more English can you get than that? A large man pulls up in a white van, carries an entire set of garden furniture over the wall and witnesses don’t want to bother him to ask why!
The neighbours went on to say “It’s stealing, however you look at it, in broad daylight. People should be able to leave things in their own front gardens.” Yes, you’re right! People should feel safe to leave their things in the front garden and assume their neighbours won’t sit back and watch as men in white vans pull up and steal it all in broad daylight!

(Reproduced from "Garden Furniture", 24th Feb)

GARDIEN Tip: Use Property Marking on all items of any reasonable value - it is a very cheap method of helping the Police return items to their rightful owner. See http://www.garden-security.co.uk/SelectaMark-Property-Marking.aspx