The order of things, then making safe
Repair nothing before the police have seen it. Marks on the leaf, the frame and the keep are part of what they record, and a door already pushed back into line makes that impossible. Photograph it from several angles as soon as you can: the door from the street, the lock area, the frame, splinters on the ground, and the gate if it was forced. In the blocks at Les Alpes, photograph the cellar door too if it was touched.
Report the burglary, then notify your insurer within the period your policy sets. In between, a temporary make-safe closes the place without erasing what matters: a holding lock, a torn keep made good, a lifted leaf blocked, a glazed unit boarded over where entry was made from the garden side, as it so often is at Manissieux and across the eastern plots. The officers will tell you whether the property can be shut before they attend.
Keep every part that is removed, drilled cylinder and pieces of frame included. On the older houses of the Village, where the frame is old timber, it is very often the frame that gave way to a lever rather than the lock: fitting a new lock into split wood deals with half the problem and leaves the rest.
On a plot, the front door is only one way in
At Manissieux and in the plots around it, entry is frequently made from the back: the garage door, a service door, a patio door onto the garden, a shed at the end of the plot. A make-safe that looked only at the front door would leave the important part untouched, and that is what the survey checks first.
In flats, at Les Alpes as in the original Bel Air blocks, the cellar and the basement box deserve the same attention; their locks have sometimes never been changed since the building went up. Tell the landlord or the managing agent if the break-in involved a common part or exposed a weakness in the hall.
If keys disappeared during the break-in, replacing the cylinder is no longer optional, and it covers every opening that was on the same ring: gate, garage, cellar, bike store — rarely a short list on the eastern housing plots. A lock that has been attacked should be treated as compromised even if the key still turns. An itemised invoice is handed over at the end, line by line.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our securing your home after a break-in page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Saint-Priest.