My wife and I retained her house after we moved away, and rented it out after her brother and daughter moved out. In order to comply with building code we had to replace the exterior doors, so I had my friend Ronny, who owned the BIG hardware store in the area, install new doors well above code for me.HankB wrote:It always puzzles me why actual bad guys (fences, druggies, etc.) don't have really, really strong doors.
Many years ago I saw news video of a raid police in Chicago made on such a place - sledgehammers barely scuffed the door, and there was an extended conversation through a small window with one of the occupants who - loudly and repeatedly - demanded to SEE the warrant; he flatly refused to open up until the cops a) found the warrant; b) held it up to the window so he could read it.
Whereupon he finally let the cops in.
The ordinary-looking door turned out to have been reinforced by 2x10s or something of the sort on the inside - it was several inches thick - with a couple of 2x4s as crossbars, sort of like you see on castles. Why? "There are a lot of break-ins in this neighborhood, and you guys are never around."
No drugs were found . . .
Most of our tenants were pretty good, the rental agency ran background checks on them for us, but one turned out to be a rotten apple. He was the son of a drug dealer, dealing himself, but had never been caught. When the police raided our house they literally knocked the door out of the framing of the house, causing thousands of dollars in damage which neither they nor the insurance would cover. A cop friend of our was actually on the raid, and when we contacted him later we pointed out that if he had just asked we would have given him the key and he apologized, but that was merely a bitter pill. No drugs were found in the house, but he had them on the property, in the back yard in a locked "utility box."
The rental agency eventually took partial blame, as apparently there were complaints from the other tenant (two family house) about the drug activity that never got acted on, and paid for part of the repairs, but the loss to us used up what little profit we were making and we finally made the decision to sell my wife's beloved little home that she bought and paid for by her self while being a single mom and working as a church secretary.