What to do, and in which order
Touch nothing before the police have looked. Marks on the frame, splinters around the keep and the attacked cylinder are all part of their findings. Photograph from several angles as soon as you can: that is often the only evidence available to an owner told from abroad that a Cap-Martin house has been opened. Note the time you found it and the state of the shutters, because those details come back in the file.
File the report, then declare the claim to your insurer within the deadline set by your policy. Keep every part removed: drilled cylinder, torn keep, pieces of frame. In a Le Cabbé co-ownership, tell the managing agent as well, because entry through the hall or the car park concerns the whole building. In the village, a house reached through a shared lane concerns the immediate neighbours too.
In the meantime, temporary securing lets you close up without erasing useful traces: a provisional lock, a repaired frame, a boarded glazed panel. Permanent repairs come afterwards, once the file is complete and parts suited to that particular door are available. On an off-standard village door, that wait is often the longest part of all.
The way in is rarely the front door
On Cap-Martin, attention goes to the gate while the service gate, the laundry door or a window onto the pine wood stay the weak link. A property closed for months shows simple signs: shutters permanently down, post piling up, a garden that is visibly no longer being tended. Telling a neighbour when you are away remains the simplest measure there is.
In the village, the terrain does the rest: terraces stack up, and a high window of one house can sit level with the next lane along. So we look at every opening reachable from a public stairway before strengthening the front door on its own. The steps between two lanes are public, and they run past private windows.
A lock that has been attacked must be treated as compromised even if the key still turns. And when the frame has split at the keep, the usual outcome on the old joinery of the village, fitting a new lock into cracked timber repairs only half of the problem. So the timber is repaired before anything is refitted.
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 Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.