Restaurant and bar owners in Houston are sleeping in their establishments, armed, in order to protect them from robbers.
The restaurant owners have resorted to sleeping in their businesses in order to prevent a recent rash of break-ins that have taken place in recent weeks. The owners said that their businesses have been broken into repeatedly, sometimes by the same suspect. They placed the blame on Houston’s bail policies, which have resulted in more criminals out on the streets.
“We’ve been broken into six times now,” Tod Jones, the owner of Glitter, a karaoke bar in Midtown Houston, told local news outlet KHOU. “They’re coming in, grabbing as many bottles as they can, throwing it in a bag and then they’re out. Both my windows are broken, and I’m like, ‘Man, I don’t even want to fix them because they’re going to be broken again in the next few days.’”
Jones said that the thieves have caused more than $20,000 in damages and stolen alcohol. “At this point, you don’t even want to claim it on your insurance, because you don’t want to lose your insurance,” he said. “You just have to fix it yourself.” KHOU reported that Jones now sleeps at the bar from closing until morning to protect the property.
Raul Jacobo, the owner of Cobos Barbecue in the East Downtown neighborhood, is also sleeping in the back office of his restaurant with a gun waiting for burglars. The restaurant was broken into twice in less than two weeks, despite being a block away from a Houston Police Department office.
In one instance, Jacobo and a security guard caught a would-be thief and held him until police arrived. “Police got there, he had his bag with all his tools in it, ski mask,” he said. “Then, next thing I find out, he’s out the next day.”
“We are literally one street away from an [HPD] substation and we have a criminal that is breaking in twice in four days and doesn’t care about any consequence,” he added.
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