Video Shows How To Break Into Home Through Garage

State police have discovered a video that teaches thieves how to break into your home (watch it) and local detectives say it may have inspired a series of crimes in Central Florida.

CONTROVERSIAL VIDEO: Breaking Into A Garage In 6 Seconds SAFETY TIPS: Protecting Your Home From Garage Burglars

With 28 years experience between them, Jim Helton and Dave Spore make garage doors safe and secure, but any system can be beaten.

"They can get in there and clean out the house easy," Spore told WFTV.

The prisons are packed with people who sometimes learn how to become better criminals. Inmates learn the tricks of the trade from each other, but they don't have to go to jail anymore; they can go to YouTube.

"These web companies are facilitating how to break the law," said Det. Stephen Osborne, Marion County Sheriff's Office.

Detectives throughout Central Florida say the video may have inspired a series of recent break-ins from Orlando to Marion County.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is so concerned about the video, which shows how to disable an electric garage door opener, that it sent an alert to police and sheriffs across the state.

"We should be able to regulate it or get it pulled off," Osborne said.

But the law is not on Osborne's side.

"It is absolutely protected by free speech," WFTV legal analyst Bill Sheaffer said.

Sheaffer compares it to the Anarchist's Cookbook from the 1960s, which legally instructed people how to make bombs.

"And this was the publication before there was YouTube and the computer," Sheaffer said.

It's a touchy subject. Orlando police and other agencies won't give numbers or discuss specific burglaries where the method in the video may have been used. Helton and Spore says there's a simple way to protect your home, but it comes with a catch.

You can use a plastic tie to bind the manual release hatch of your garage door opener to the track, but you'd need to remember to cut it if you lose power and need to open your garage. But it's still a way to stop a YouTube user who has the wrong intentions.

"Just like any other criminal, somebody looking at how it's done," Helton said.

The controversial video has nearly 1 million views.