Hinge Pin

Dave Mylum from Henrico County (VA) Division of Fire’s Truck Co 6 sent in these photos of a door he recently found. The door originally appears to have the same locking mechanism we spoke about last week in our post titled Indentify and Visualize. However, take a closer look…

From the inside it’s apparent that the locking mechanism is the same one we just spoke about. There are two major differences. The large metal plate behind the door is one difference. It doesn’t appear to be too substantial, it more than likely only adds to the rigidity of the door. It wouldn’t even slow down a rotary saw. Those are alarm contact points above and below the pin locks, nothing to do with the actual locking mechanism.

And on the hinge side…

Below is a close-up photo that shows this door has an additional supplemental mechanism on the hinge side. It’s a simple pin that “prevents” the door from opening on the hinge side. While this particular set-up may be designed to stop the average bad guy, all it will do to us is slow us down a bit. Again, as with every forcible entry situation, we need to slow down and Identify and Visualize what’s keeping the door secure. Something as simple as this little pin could frustrate the hell out of anyone and cause us to loose precious time and energy trying to defeat it.

Well if that wasn’t enough within ten feet of the door shown above, an interior door had a supplemental lock of its own. The door pictured below separated the back storage room from the main business area. Again, nothing we can't deal with, just a simple pain in the @$$.

Good thing we didn’t just drop the tools outside after we forced the first door…That’s a story for a future post.