Caught a burglar in the act on Saturday

Originally posted by tuwood

One of my neighbors down the street was broken into on Saturday and he immediately told the police to come talk to me.  No, not because he thought I did it, but because he knew I had security cameras all over my house.  ;-)

It took me about 5 minutes to find the perp on my cameras, and we've got a really good description of his vehicle and plenty of evidence to show that he was the one doing the burglary.

I was able to email these videos to everyone on the street and we collaboratively began the investigation with the police.  Turns out, several of the neighbors had seen this vehicle parked at the new construction house (2 houses down from the burglary house), so we're pretty confident we'll be arresting this punk.

And you guys thought I was all crazy for having night vision security cameras.  lol
Well, my neighbors don't think I'm crazy, so there.  :-P

Apparently, this punk has been hitting quite a few houses around us, so the police were very appreciative of my nerdyness.

Here's the video's if you're bored.  (btw, this happened at 6:40 PM on Saturday)
(if you click on HD for the videos you can see things a little better)

Video 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHktMTlHqPY)  - Bad guy comes up the street and parks across from burglary house.  Victim house is second one down on the right.
1:38 into video bad guy gets out of his car and runs in between houses to the back yard)
6:26 he starts coming out again, but the neighbor returning spooks him to run back into the yard.
8:00 into video he runs back to his car
8:45 he starts to walk back to the house but gets spooked by our neighbors teenage daughter leaving.  You can see him looking back and pretending like he's just strolling down the street.
9:50 he runs back to car and leaves.  Still hasn't taken anything, we suspect he's just finished breaking in at this point.
10:14 Get a good look at his vehicle driving by.  Appears to be a ford explorer with front right wheel having a black rim on it (great distinguishing feature)

Video 2 ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xkaRyXSo6Y  Bad guy returns but this time parks in front of the new construction house two houses down from victim house.
Tracks in the snow show that he went through the back yards to haul most of his stuff down to the construction house and then loaded it up from there so as to appear that he's just loading stuff up from the construction house.  So sneaky
(Not too much excitement in this video)
18:41 the neighbor next to the construction house returns and notices his car with the door open which she thought was weird.  Apparently so

Video 3 ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnLx8FrRVNg  Bad guy returns for a third time and we get another good look at his car from the left side )
Just leaves the car running and the door open as he runs back into the house to get his last load.
1:15  Believe he's carrying big screen LCD TV out to put in back of SUV.
Then leaves for good

 

Originally posted by jford2309

Wish I was a defense attorney and had access to this site!  LOL

Originally posted by Aarondb4

 That is some serious clarity on those cameras! Do your daughters have trouble maintaining boyfriends?

Originally posted by tuwood

They're decent.  I've got the 2 Megapixel ones on there now, but I'm planning to upgrade them to the 5 Megapixel ones that came out a few months ago.  My company sells them to businesses, so I buy them as wholesale demo units.  (they're still expensive though)

Just uploaded a quick video of me backing out a couple hours before the burglary so you can see the daytime quality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSSWN4JVBHk

These work great for making out license plates in the driveway, but aren't good enough to make them out in the street.  So, I'll be upgrading soon.    

For some reason all my daughters boyfriends over the years think my geek stuff is cool.  Even when I was cleaning my shotgun at the table it didn't have the desired effect.  He just came over and thought it was really cool.  grrr

 

Originally posted by Left Brain

Whoa......if you have clarity that will read plates far enough to catch them on the street in those videos that will be badass.....that's our biggest aggravation, we can't read plates.

Originally posted by tuwood

lol, I'm pretty sure the footage is going to be on the news tonight so they'll get access to it.  

Originally posted by Left Brain

Whoa......if you have clarity that will read plates far enough to catch them on the street in those videos that will be badass.....that's our biggest aggravation, we can't read plates.

Originally posted by Comet

Am I the only one thinking, "the burglar & possible associates will now know which house has expensive electronic surveillance equipment...and probably other cool gadgets too?"

Just seems that it brings attention to you by it being on the news?

The videos are neat though!

Originally posted by Aarondb4

I smell a huge government contract headed Tony's way. Cops can't stand it when the civy's have cooler stuff than they do!

Originally posted by tuwood

There's always that chance, but pretty much any house in my neighborhood is full of very expensive stuff, so I suspect the bad guy's will focus on the path of least resistance and not go for the guy who takes security seriously.  LB could probably comment more on this.

The police may be able to track him down without going to the news, but if they run out of leads they'll run it.  We have a very close neighborhood and I'm more than happy to do my part in catching this dude.  

 

Originally posted by eabeam

Impressed with the quality compared to some of the videos that you see on TV.

Also a great time to remind people of the lessons that I learned the hard way....

Insurance matters...

1 - Get covered.
2 - Check coverage and get riders for anything of value. I learned how low our jewelry limits were the hard way.
3 - Scan all of your receipts and pictures of merchandise with packaging and serial/model numbers. keep in a nice dropbox file or similar.
4 - A Dremel engraver doesn't cost much, but makes it tougher to re-sell and easier to recover metal/wood things of value.... guns, metal bike components, intruments, etc.

Originally posted by eabeam Impressed with the quality compared to some of the videos that you see on TV. Also a great time to remind people of the lessons that I learned the hard way.... Insurance matters... 1 - Get covered. 2 - Check coverage and get riders for anything of value. I learned how low our jewelry limits were the hard way. 3 - Scan all of your receipts and pictures of merchandise with packaging and serial/model numbers. keep in a nice dropbox file or similar. 4 - A Dremel engraver doesn't cost much, but makes it tougher to re-sell and easier to recover metal/wood things of value.... guns, metal bike components, intruments, etc.

Originally posted by ChineseDemocracy I don't know Tony, but if I'm watching surveillance, it had better be narrated by Joey Grecco and culminate with a dramatic confrontation! Seriously, very cool. Video surveillance is great stuff. Nice work!

Originally posted by tuwood

lol, I love playing with the video stuff.  Best witness (or worst) there is.

We caught a Coyote running through our neighborhood on my dashcam in the car the other night.  Everyone thought it was cool and I got to sing "what does the fox say, ding ding ding ding ding" the rest of the night.  For some reason my wife kept yelling "It was a freaking Coyote, not a FOX".  

Originally posted by Kido

Got a feeling on how this guy is targeting his houses?

But I agree with you.  This guy is running when he saw headlights or someone leaving - I'm sure he's not going to hit the house with an elaborate video.

My neighborhood had a rash of break-ins and I started to panic, but realized (even though it's not foolproof) that I don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than my neighbor.  Just meaning, if MY house looks like the most intimidating house (security stickers on the windows, motion lights, rose bushes in front of windows, car parked outside, 2 dogs - ALL of which may not be that big of a deterrent) they may choose to pick on houses that seem like easier targets.