Caught a mail thief with LPR camera

[wtimothyholman]

Wonder if reporting to the USPS would help? It is probably a Federal crime and they have Postal Inspectors still, I think.

You should report mail theft both to the local police and the USPS. The USPS may tell you to talk to the police first, but definitely make the effort.

And one other thing you should do if an incident involves damage to your property: call your insurance company, and give THEM the footage of the crime and the license plate. My experience has been that they will take action even if no one else does.

 

[CaliCam]

Finally figured out how to convert .DAV to MP4 using Dahua SmartPSS. Cant say I love the interface, but it works in the end.

Here is the video of the theft from the mailboxes and the licence plate capture.

Not sure what

Finally figured out how to convert .DAV to MP4 using Dahua SmartPSS. Cant say I love the interface, but it works in the end.

Here is the video of the theft from the mailboxes and the licence plate capture.

Thanks for sharing your mailbox break in story I had the something happen in my neighborhood as well and my cameras caught the action. I do NOT have an LPR setup but the police requested a copy of the video as they are pursuing the incident. The local news station here even used the video on the evening and morning news.

I had the same issue with the DAV conversion, since I noticed I'm using the same NVR that you noted in your post the easiset way to fix the issue is the update the firmware on the NVR to this version.

DH_NVR5XXX-4KS2_Multilang_V3.216.0000000.0.R.20180530

Once done your NVR will now have an MPEG setting that you can easily export your video feed and you can watch natively on any PC without the DAV conversion issue.

Here is the video of the thieves breaking into the mailboxes here in our neighbor I now wish I had a LPR active

 

[wtimothyholman]

Here is the video of the thieves breaking into the mailboxes here in our neighbor I now wish I had a LPR active

Yes, that's exactly how you get bitten by the LPR bug. Something happens that makes you swear to yourself that next time you'll get the license plate, and next thing you know you're buying more cameras from @EMPIRETECANDY.

For me, it was having a pick-up truck sideswipe my parked car to the tune of $4500 in damage, recording the truck driving away with my original bullet camera set-up, and then having the cops shrug their shoulders when I showed them the footage. That's how I wound up buying 6 more varifocal / PTZ outdoor cameras.

 

[Rksgrd]

Weird number scheme on the plate. Vanity?

 

[derekkoopowitz]

Weird number scheme on the plate. Vanity?

Commercial plate in California...

 

[Rksgrd]

Ah. Thanks.

 

[CaliCam]

Weird number scheme on the plate. Vanity?

You can actually make out the plate numbers from the video?

 

[rgo_128]

You can actually make out the plate numbers from the video?

You can see the plate in the 2nd video from the dedicated LPR camera. You cant see the plate in the wide view video.

Update: My neighbor reported it to the police but the police said the postal inspectors have jurisdiction, so they will not accept his report either. I will follow up with the postal inspectors to see if they can catch this guy.

 

[carbonita]

Has anyone had success getting residential mail theft (or burglaries) prosecuted using video evidence? Around these parts (SFBay California), porch pirates and burglaries seem rampant, yet there's very few perps apprehended. Elected officials don't help, as they've legislated that it takes a $950 theft minimum to be a felony (only a misdemeanor below that).

 

[wtimothyholman]

Has anyone had success getting residential mail theft (or burglaries) prosecuted using video evidence? Around these parts (SFBay California), porch pirates and burglaries seem rampant, yet there's very few perps apprehended. Legislature doesn't help, since it takes more than a $950 theft to be a felony (misdemeanor below that).

You are not alone. Unfortunately, any time the population of a U.S. city grows past a certain point, law enforcement ceases to treat property crime as a crime anymore. The police won't pursue the perpetrator, and the district attorney will refuse to prosecute. Property crime becomes "small fry" to them. If you've been burglarized, that's what your insurance is for. The police spend their time and effort on violent criminals instead.

We've had numerous burglaries and auto break-ins in the twelve years I've lived on my street. With the exception of one neighbor across the street, I have never heard of anyone who had any of their property recovered. And even in that one case, no one was ever arrested; the pawn shop where the perp sold the stolen items was forced to return them, and that was it.

One guy was arrested last year after having broken into literally dozens of cars all over the midtown area (with people posting videos of him on NextDoor nearly every morning). And people on NextDoor already knew the guy's name from previous arrests! The police caught him with a backpack full of stolen items after a neighbor woke up in the middle of the night and watched him breaking into his car. When the neighbor showed up at court to testify, the perp took a plea bargain with a 1-year sentence. He'll be out later this year, and will almost certainly begin breaking into cars again.

A package thief is currently being tracked on NextDoor. There are multiple images of his car. His license plate has been recorded and broadcast to everyone. Yet he has been stealing packages from front porches for weeks, some just last Friday. The police have to know who he is, but nothing is being done.

It is incredibly frustrating, but it hasn't prevented me from installing my cameras, for two reasons: (1) cameras clearly have some deterrent value, and (2) my insurance company is more likely to take action if I give them the license plate and the video, even if the police won't.

 

[carbonita]

@wtimothyholman -- thanks for the response, at least I'm not alone in my frustration. I'm also hoping that my cameras have deterrent value, but as the perps see no penalties even with imagery, I wonder if they'll stop caring about cams. At least my Sheriff's office provides coffee and pastries (no donuts -- this is California, ya know) after each spate of burglaries, and talk about the supposed value of neighborhood watch programs.

 

[bp2008]

Overall I have been happy with this setup, but I have experienced a lot of camera dropouts that require rebooting the system to recover. I have the NPR set to reboot daily to clear these types of dropouts. On the day the thief came, the camera that views the mailboxes dropped out just an hour later... so got lucky there.

If the dropouts are specific to the PTZ cameras, there are known stability problems with some firmwares. Here is a firmware version which worked for my dad's SD49225T-HN. SD49XXXS-HN (Pal)

 

[DLONG2]

Has anyone had success getting residential mail theft (or burglaries) prosecuted using video evidence? Around these parts (SFBay California), porch pirates and burglaries seem rampant, yet there's very few perps apprehended. Elected officials don't help, as they've legislated that it takes a $950 theft minimum to be a felony (only a misdemeanor below that).

Just to correct, the 'legislation' which considers thievery under $950 as a misdemeanor was a state proposition, passed by the electorate under the guise of criminal justice and prison overcrowding reform. There are efforts now to rescind this bad law because of the unintended consequences (are there ever any other types of consequences from ideologue-initiated political work?) of rampant thievery.