And a YouTube favorite of J. Kb’s has another video out.
Contrary to the “experts” Hotel room safes are good for the job they are intended to do: Fast grab-and-run jobs.
I may have mentioned a couple of times before (yeah, just a couple) that I worked hotel security and the majority of the problems we had with room safes was when the guest forgot the code followed far away by when batteries died. Theft from them? In 5 years I never logged a case nor knew of one in my hotel.
If you want to break into a room safe, the first thing you need to know is if the reward is high enough that will justify the risk. Again, have to know if there is a worthy loot. An attack on a safe is a direct and conscious decision and an affair that can land you in prison for a decent amount of time. Getting caught for breaking in a safe full of Legos is simply not worth it.
Then it comes the realization that unless you have an inside person, you need to bypass two safety devices: The room’s door lock and then the safe. Here is where the real violations of safety begin. Housekeepers are supposed to clean a room with a door closed for their own security. Unfortunately some will keep the damn door open and even leave the room to get something they forgot or ran out of. The time it takes her to go and come back will be the time you would have to go into the room, break into the safe and then make an escape.
The other violation of security is done by the guest him/herself who does not make sure the door is properly closed or leaves it open because “they are just going down the hall to check on the folks and will be right back.” The number one call in our daily patrol logs was doors found open in occupied rooms. You know what never failed to amaze me? How people would leave a door propped open, be gone from the room and leave all their valuables a top of the effing dresser in full view of anybody walking by.
J Kb said something like he doubted he was going to be attacked by a Ocean’s 11 type crew and that goes the same for your hotel safe. The purpose of the room safe is for when you develop that unexpected brain fart and leave the room door unsecured. And please, please, I beg you: Do not be “smart” and hide stuff in the room in places you think nobody will ever find. First, we know the room better than you and second (and mark my words) you will forget about it and go home without the hidden item.
And finally, I always like to quote from the movie “The Accidental Tourist,” a tear-jerker, but it hits one important point
“And most importantly, never take along anything on your journey so valuable or dear, that it’s loss would devastate you.”
And use the gorramed room safe.
From some other people I know who managed a hotel, often the leading cause of hotel theft was the housekeeping staff themselves, when they are not hotel employees but contract workers.
These safes are “keep the maid from taking your wife’s extra jewelry out of your suitcase.”
They are not intended to be anything more that a little more difficult than unzipping a bag.
For the budget person who wants a nightstand handgun with enough security to keep it out of the hands of a 5 year old, it will do that.
That’s one of the reasons I hate this fuck. He has no sense of proportion.
If I lived in the same shitty apartment I had in grad school, at the same income level, but with kids, a $50 safe like this would be next to my bed with my $200 Bersa Thunder Plus in it. Enough to keep toddler fingers off the gun at a price that I won’t get too pissed it if it stolen.
Keep yer stuff on ya, just like you should keep yer gun on ya
Electronics do not do well underwater
No excuse for the gun, though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPP-1_underwater_pistol
I work remote sites.bEvery room in our camp has one of these. When the camp 1st opened one of the housekeepers realized they all had a slip of paper in them that had the override code which was the same for all of them.
One day as she did her rooms she checked them all and stole money from everones wallets – we can’t have them in the units.
She got caught but people need to know the hotels ones can be less secure depending on staff.
In hotels I’m more concerned over the (pre-Covid) tendency to put dispensers instead of bars of soap. It took me five minutes to find a universal key for the dispensers, and no time to think of ways people could tamper with the contents.
I’m pretty sure that trend has reversed now. I hope so.
In other words, the locksmith equivalent of the gun guy that tells you unless you carry multiple guns & mags on a fully stocked war belt, you’ll be kilt on da streetz!
EXACTLY!!! He’s that prick.
Could not agree more with the hiding stuff point.
Quick! Think of 10 spots around the room that would make a great hiding spot.
Got em? Cool, chances are everyone has more than half of em on their own list and dollars to donuts people on team good guy and team bad guy have all of them if they’ve been in the business for any length of time.
Consider that a lot of crooks have spent time incarcerated. One of the things learned there is how to be creative in hiding contraband, a skill that can translate into finding it.
I read an article about buying cars a number of years ago. The author said: You are the hottest hardest wheeling dealing SOB to ever cross the dealerships threshold. And you wheel and deal and feel happy with the price you get as you sign on the dotted line. You lost.
You do car buys maybe once every 3 years. That guy sitting across the table from you does 2 or 3 a day in a busy dealership and the guy in the backroom that signs off on the deal has been doing it for years and years. There isn’t a trick or tool that you have that they haven’t seen already.
The only “safe” hiding places are ones you can’t actually get too. On modern houses for example, you can put something in the walls and then put up your sheet rock. So your AR15 with 1000 rounds is sitting in the wall beside your bathroom. No thief is going to find it. You’ll be able to get to it in seconds in SHTF because you’ll break the sheetrock to get to it.
And it doesn’t work for a federal search team as they come in with density scanners and other neato tools that allows them to map what’s in walls and they know to look there.
Overseas, housekeeping routinely steals from the hotel safes. They all use the same override code, which the staff generally all know.