Thief arrested

bigredfish

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Happy to report we were able to provide a tag and vehicle description that helped catch another dirtbag thief. He hit two homes on our street and at least 13 others nearby (Burglaries crossed two counties so complicated the effort for LE). I coordinated with a few other area homeowners and we were able to provide LE with enough to help arrest him last night.

Word we got was that he has 10 prior Felony theft convictions, and apparently the Judge ordered $2500 bail per incident for a total of $35,000+

(As usual switch the youtube player to 1080p)


tagcloseup.jpg


IMG_1215.JPG
 

bigredfish

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By the way, we have 3 tag cameras. This tag was very dirty/old and I didnt get a good read with our main camera, but was able to pick it up as you see above with the culdesac tag cam. Even in the best conditions, you're not going to get 100% plate reads at night.

Our third tag cam only catches vehicles leaving that turn right due to the angle, which is the one that caught the dark face shot.
 
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Parley

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That is what I am going to do. I have 16 cameras around the house but none specifically designated for license plates. So I am going to add 3 cameras to specifically get license plate numbers. I live on a 4 way corner so I need to cover those areas and 3 cameras will do it. The cameras I do have will get license plate numbers during the day, but only sometimes at night.

By the way, good job on your part. ;)
 
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bigredfish

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Thanks,
Honestly there must have been a dozen folks on Nextdoor.com that had some type of video of this perp, most bad B&W, none with anything close to positive ID. Without us having the vehicle color and tag#, then running the tag to match a 2004 Blue Chevy Trailblazer, its hard to say how long he may have kept going.

When you contact LE with video evidence, you really need to have either good facial ID and/or a license plate number.
 

Parley

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Thanks,
Honestly there must have been a dozen folks on Nextdoor.com that had some type of video of this perp, most bad B&W, none with anything close to positive ID. Without us having the vehicle color and tag#, then running the tag to match a 2004 Blue Chevy Trailblazer, its hard to say how long he may have kept going.

When you contact LE with video evidence, you really need to have either good facial ID and/or a license plate number.
You are correct and that is why I am going to be stepping up my game over the coming months. My existing cameras are good for facial ID and car description including color. It is the license plate area at night that I am lacking.
 

gordo

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There is, or used to be, a three strikes and your out penalty for violent felonies with a resulting life sentence. Maybe a 8 or 10 strikes and your out penalty would get these people off the streets.
 
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Cameraguy

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Happy to report we were able to provide a tag and vehicle description that helped catch another dirtbag thief. He hit two homes on our street and at least 13 others nearby (Burglaries crossed two counties so complicated the effort for LE). I coordinated with a few other area homeowners and we were able to provide LE with enough to help arrest him last night.

Word we got was that he has 10 prior Felony theft convictions, and apparently the Judge ordered $2500 bail per incident for a total of $35,000+

(As usual switch the youtube player to 1080p)


View attachment 43429


View attachment 43430
Atta boy!!
 
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Great work, @bigredfish!

Speaking of the limitations of Ring cameras, I wonder if a company like Ring or Nest or Wyze will ever market a camera with optical zoom that is capable of LPR. They could make a mint selling the same type of cloud service that OpenALPR provides.
 

dragan11

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@bigredfish are you willing to share camera settings you are using in your second video "Thieves - another angle"? I have similarly placed 5231r ze(which should be pretty much equivalent to yours from what i read) that i am struggling to get anywhere close to your quality.

I know there are lots of factors at play and i need to figure that out on my own through testing, but was wondering if you can share your settings for comparison? Including how much zoomed your camera is?
 
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bigredfish

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Those 3231 HDCVI bullets are great cameras. Image quality is every bit as good as the 5231 IP versions.

Very little to tell, they are both (one forced color the other seen here B&W) running 1/30 shutter and about 40% DNR. I run max fps, 30 and max bitrate, on this XVR its 6144. Zoom is probably like 4mm? The car Jeep door is probably only 10-12ft.

I think mostly its the light. I have two 1600 lumen coach lights and sit between 2 street lights. Also many neighbors like me leave coach/driveway lights on all night.

Here's the same camera at Mom's. The dock is 30ft to the front edge
 

dragan11

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Thanks for the info, much appreciated. That is very crisp image for 1/30 shutter, I've been running mine at 1/100 to help with clarity. I even added two of these: 2200 lumen flood lights above garage doors to try and improve image clarity but it's still not where i think it could be. One of the cars is white so i think the contrast is making it hard for camera to deal with the scene but I'll try your settings and see how it works out.
 

bigredfish

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Dont try to run WDR or SSA at night, and try to keep DNR below 50. All 3 create blur
 

dragan11

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Got it, pretty sure i have backlight off and ndr configured well bellow 50 but I'll have to confirm after trying out so many different options.
 

bigredfish

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The only other commonly overlooked thing is height. Mine are 7.5 ft. No soffit or anything to reflect or inhibit the IR. I'm not smart enough to know the technical reason for why, but at about 7ft in a driveway, you get better depth of view also
 

dragan11

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Mine is higher, right under soffit above garage doors but i run it in forced color mode so it should not be affected by IR. I suppose height/DOF could have something to do with it but it will depend whether aperture is fixed or variable on this camera, something i still didn't figure/find out. Given enough time at hand i might have to reposition camera and see how it works out after i exhaust all the reasonable setting.
 
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