Hamilton jewellery store owner fed up after repeated break-ins

Daniel Upsdell has owned Westdale jewellers for 25 years.  He says he’s had nearly $100 000 worth of jewellery stolen in the last 5 years alone and insurance only covered just over half of it.

If he wasn’t at his store early in the morning on December 7th, thieves would have made away with thousands of dollars more in merchandise.

“It’s frustrating and expensive, those doors are $1000 bucks a crack and all you have to do is give a good swift kick and like a car window it gets all shattery. Even if they catch them, they don’t recover anything, the insurance premiums go up and the courts slap them on the hand and say bad girl, bad boy and they’re out again.”

Upsdell wants to create a network among jewellers where they can share video and information of robberies and attempted break-ins.

“Tie it together in a database so we can all send in our footage and everybody can see…oh that guys here, here, and here.”

The store owner says the only reason the crooks didn’t get anything the last time, is because he started work early that day and managed to scare them away, but he still had to pay for the shattered window.