PIN-UP DOORS

     Having two excuses not to do much--being retired and morbidly lazy--I don't do manual labor unless I can find an industrious illegal alien. But, I install door pins on my sliding glass doors. With good reason.

  Being a cop you see things routinely that normal folks would think are impossible. One that caused me to do the extra work of installing door pins--really an easy job--happened in the Coquina Sands area.

  An enraged man was locked out of the house by a young woman. The house had two sliding glass doors installed which the woman had locked. No problem! The crazed man, adrenaline pumping, just lifted the sliding glass doors out of their frame, came in the house, and killed the woman. 

  He did what? Just as I said, he lifted the doors up, over the bottom sliding track, then out of the frame. Just like they are installed. And if you don't pin them together, any burglar or intruder can do that to yours. But spending a few minutes with a drill and a screwdriver, installing the simple device pictured above, can prevent that.

  The pins are available at any hardware store or locksmith and aren't expensive--just a few bucks. Installing them is no trouble if you follow the instructions and don't drill into the glass.

  The best method is to pin the two or three doors together, then pin one to the door frame. That way, when they try to pry them up the doors aren't going anywhere vertically because they're locked to the door frame. They're not, of course, going anywhere horizontally, either.

  We have two sliding glass doors, and just use one. The other is never open. So, the pin in it--to the frame--is never removed. Except, maybe, in some sort of emergency.

  So pick up a couple pins, get out your tools, and start screwing.

PS I remember this homicide so well because we had a family vacation planned and I knew we couldn't--in good conscience--leave town until it was solved. I didn't say anything about it because it was a given: the Chief doesn't leave town when there's a lunatic on the prow. I'd probably have to cancel the trip. One of my Detectives, unasked, worked day and night until he caught the murdering scumbag. He gave me a call in the middle of the night saying, "Go ahead on vacation, Chief, we got him." The Detective's name was Irv Stoddard.