Cooler thief hit neighbors house

[erkme73]

Didn't read all four pages, so if someone already brought this up, my apologies... One of the reasons why solvable misdemeanor crimes ought to be processed - especially with such concrete evidence - is often times it's the same people who commit these petty crimes that are responsible for most of the more serious crimes (B&E, assault, etc) and investigating the smaller crimes my lead to a collar of someone with multiple outstanding warrants.

In NYC, after Rudy Giuliani became mayor, one of the things he did (besides computerizing arrest records and crime statistics) was enforcing petty crimes with a heavy hand. Turns out, that fare-jumper at the subway turnstile that no one previously enforced, was responsible for many of the more severe holdups, batteries, and auto thefts in the area. As they began to compile arrest details and suspect info, they developed patterns which helped drop vehicle thefts and other more serious crimes by >70% nearly overnight. It all started with cracking down on minor law breakers.

I can see not wanting to spend resources on unsolvable petty crime... But when it's given to you on a silver platter, there's really no excuse for not following up.

 

[Ookie]

This is correct. As much as Giuliani is a dick (cops detest him because he was the first mayor in recent history to hand out 0 percent raises), he did clean up the city.

Broken windows policing worked. When you printed a pisser or turnstyle jumper, you often found warrants for more serious things such as robbery.

FYI, armed robbery (e.g. stickups, muggings, etc.) is considered by academics as the best metric of violent crime in a city. When stickups are out of control, a city is often our of control. So many bad things can happen when you have crews running around forcibly taking property from people.

As an aside, NYC is heading back to the Dinkins days.

 

[erkme73]

Correct, and what Giuliani proved is that if you can improve citizen safety, you can get dyed-in-the-wool partisans to switch their votes to the other side. It was unthinkable for a republican to be elected as mayor in NYC, but people were so fedup with police inaction during the Dinkins and Koch terms, the other social issues (abortion, gay rights, etc) became irrelevant. When you and everyone you knew had their car broken into or stolen every few weeks (remember "The Club" for the car steering wheel?), a certain "what do we have to lose?" mentality set in.

Dan Bongino had a podcast on this very issue last week that really summed up how the refusal to police adequately lead to such an out-of-control crime problem - and how Giuliani cracked the skulls of precinct captains, holding them to account with computer-aided stats. Lack of law and order got him elected. Keeping the city safe kept him there. Broken windows policing definitely works. It may seem petty to spend resources on a $5 fare jumper, but the resulting drop in all crime is undeniable.

 

[sdkid]

Well, just spoke the the neighbors about their cooler. It turns out that the police ran the plate - and yes it was the person 400 miles from here - so they got his phone # and just called to let them know - but they reached the thiefs father who then apparently called the thief on his cell phone and it was returned about 6 hours later. This means he got about 3 hours down the road and made the return trip and begged the neighbor to make sure the police knew it had been returned.
I'm guessing he and the cops made a deal on the phone.
So when he returned it, he is telling my neighbor that "Oh, I thought it was my buddy's, blah blah blah" and the neighbor just shut him down and he left.
You would think in 3 hours he could come up with a better lie - or maybe just tell the truth - jeez.
It wasn't much but I feel REALLY good about this.
Case Closed.

Hey--- had some questions about this ...

Were you WATCHING while this happened, or did the camera (or your nvr/storage system?) do some kind of object detection automation engaging PTZ to behave that way? Does that cam do object tracking?

 

[StratRider]

Hey--- had some questions about this ...
Were you WATCHING while this happened, or did the camera (or your nvr/storage system?) do some kind of object detection automation engaging PTZ to behave that way? Does that cam do object tracking?

Yes, I had just sat down and when the PTZ swung that direction to get the plate, I saw that the truck stopped in the middle of the road which was very odd and caught my attention.
It doesn't do object tracking but when I saw what was happening, I took control again and had it hit another preset down at the stop sign.
Had I not been sitting here, we likely would have never known as I do not review stuff during the day and had a neighbor noticed it a few days later and asked for a review, well, I find watching that much video too tedious and I likely would only check a few days worth.

I keep the PTZ default Preset on the truck from one side and another cam watching from the other side providing a cross view and then other cams on each side of the house near the back looking forward to see anyone between the houses.
So, with the house facing North - the East side cam has 2 zones set on the street so an object going B>C zones then tells the PTZ to look at the street toward the west and hit a Preset for 10 seconds to grab the plate.
Same with the West side cam which will tell the PTZ to swing to the east side for 10 seconds which gives it time to move, zoom and focus on that preset, catch the plate then go back to watching my truck via a preset.
BI makes this super easy to do. Again, using a PTZ for this was just a test and 2 more dedicated cams for LPR is the better way to go - and when I do that, I will also add even better settings for this PTZ to scan the area.

 

[sdkid]

Yes, I had just sat down and when the PTZ swung that direction to get the plate....

SO it's like BI detects object on another cam, then triggers preset <Z> on the PTZ cam? Another cam might trigger preset <Y> etc???

I am thinking of adding a PTZ.... trying to do my due diligence & research...

 

[StratRider]

SO it's like BI detects object on another cam, then triggers preset <Z> on the PTZ cam? Another cam might trigger preset <Y> etc???

Exactly, and the cam on the far side of the truck has zones on the neighbors vehicles to move the PTZ that way if it detects motion over there (they had a break in before I bought my stuff) and I set a zone near my front door to swing the PTZ there also.
So, yes, I have 3 different cams that do things with the PTZ. They can tell the PTZ to do a lot more than just go to a preset though, but that is all I do with it so far.
Just looking at the commands it can send and make it "auto-cycle" through many presets is an option, change brightness, contrast, turn on/off the LED's, change shutter speed, Snapshot and other controls that I've never looked up yet - LOL.
I'm still new to BI and experimenting, so I do appreciate it when others post interesting things they do with PTZ's too.
I'm just a big fan of PTZ versatility and even though it might be a waste to use them for LPR only - it's nice to know that I can change that at a moments notice.
A good one though is usually bulky and having 3 of them hanging on the front of your house might just look a little odd.
I got hooked by using some inexpensive Indoor Amcrest PTZ's hanging outside to watch my dogs. I sealed any openings, hung them under the eaves and they've been rained on hard with no issues at all for around 6 months.

 

[Ookie]

Correct, and what Giuliani proved is that if you can improve citizen safety, you can get dyed-in-the-wool partisans to switch their votes to the other side. It was unthinkable for a republican to be elected as mayor in NYC, but people were so fedup with police inaction during the Dinkins and Koch terms, the other social issues (abortion, gay rights, etc) became irrelevant. When you and everyone you knew had their car broken into or stolen every few weeks (remember "The Club" for the car steering wheel?), a certain "what do we have to lose?" mentality set in.

Dan Bongino had a podcast on this very issue last week that really summed up how the refusal to police adequately lead to such an out-of-control crime problem - and how Giuliani cracked the skulls of precinct captains, holding them to account with computer-aided stats. Lack of law and order got him elected. Keeping the city safe kept him there. Broken windows policing definitely works. It may seem petty to spend resources on a $5 fare jumper, but the resulting drop in all crime is undeniable.

Agree with you 100%.

Some thoughts:
1. Regrettably, a Republican will never be elected in NYC again. For years, both in the city and across the state, right-leaning people have voted with their feet--and left for other states where there is more freedom yet criminals are controlled. Between COVID and violent crime, tons more have fled the city for the NY suburbs. NYC is lawless, and will be that way for a long time. Last one out, turn out the lights.

2. Although I didn't this podcast, Bongino is generally excellent. That said, while COMPSTAT was great in getting control of crime, in the past 15 years, it has become a liability, not an asset. Policing is not a zero-sum game. You cannot beat last year's crime numbers indefinitely. Yet the idiots in the upper echelons kept ball-squeezing the precinct captains. This led to relentless pressure for "numbers," to the point that it created a tremendous amount of friction with the community.

In the early days, plainclothes Street Crime Unit (SCU) was made up of very experienced detectives. They didn't stop, question, and frisk people randomly. These guys were good at spotting illegal guns. If someone was stopped, it was for a reason they could articulate. Around 15 years ago, you started seeing cops with under 15 years on get into those units. In addition to being less experienced, they were getting pressured to turn in the same number of UF-250s (stop, question, and frisk form) as was expected in the mid 1990s when the city was the crime capital of the free world. They ended up frisking a lot of innocent people.

Same goes for minor crimes/quality of life enforcement. When you no longer have turnstyle jumpers, the c-summonses (criminal summonses) had to come from somewhere. This led to hammering the working man for drinking a beer on his front steps, writing construction workers or tourists for having tiny pocketknives, etc.

COMPSTAT was great to get it under control That said, it hit a point around 2005 or so where they needed to get away from it and start sending officers to neighborhood cookouts and block parties instead.

Full disclosure: like Bongino, I am a former NY cop.

 

[J Sigmo]

Hey. What if that cooler belonged to the truck guy. Maybe he was over partying with the folks who live there, brought beer for everyone, and then left the cooler there when he left so everyone could finish off the beer. Then, the friend called and said "Hey, I left your cooler over by the side of my house. Thanks!" And the "perp" dropped by and picked it up. He seems pretty nonchalant about it all!

 

[J Sigmo]

Correct, and what Giuliani proved is that if you can improve citizen safety, you can get dyed-in-the-wool partisans to switch their votes to the other side. It was unthinkable for a republican to be elected as mayor in NYC, but people were so fedup with police inaction during the Dinkins and Koch terms, the other social issues (abortion, gay rights, etc) became irrelevant. When you and everyone you knew had their car broken into or stolen every few weeks (remember "The Club" for the car steering wheel?), a certain "what do we have to lose?" mentality set in.

Dan Bongino had a podcast on this very issue last week that really summed up how the refusal to police adequately lead to such an out-of-control crime problem - and how Giuliani cracked the skulls of precinct captains, holding them to account with computer-aided stats. Lack of law and order got him elected. Keeping the city safe kept him there. Broken windows policing definitely works. It may seem petty to spend resources on a $5 fare jumper, but the resulting drop in all crime is undeniable.

Glad I'm not the only one who watches/listens to Bongino's podcasts! He's been about 2 years ahead of the more mainstream reporters at figuring out how a lot of the chicanery has gone down as regards trying to frame Trump, etc.

 

[erkme73]

If there is one thing I could change about Bongino, it is his volume. The difference between his normal talking voice and his excited "make a point" voice is so dramatic, that no single volume setting is sufficient. I can handle it if I'm listening on my own (i.e. driving by myself, running the tractor, etc), but if wife/kids are in the car, I get the constant "why is he yelling?!" interference.

That said, the guy strikes me as incredibly smart, perceptive, and well sourced. He seems to have some very reliable behind-the-scenes sources, and he tends not to make predictions without having a near-certain degree of confidence. Plus, he's entertaining. Seems very down to earth, as well. Net worth is somewhere north of $5m, so he's also very successful in everything he does. One of his recent comments was that his wife told him early on, "You're a do-er". Just recently he bought into, and is now part owner of Parler - which seems to have tremendous backing to compete with other social media platforms. He does seem to have the Midas touch...

 

[J Sigmo]

I agree with all of that. It used to be even worse. There was some adjustment they had wrong, and when he got close to the mic, or raised his volume, there was nasty, harsh, annoying clipping (hard limiting) somewhere in the audio chain, and this went on and on forever. Just recently, they seem to have made the appropriate adjustments to keep that from happening as much, but really, for talk, there's no reason not to use a rather inexpensive compressor to mellow out the levels. This is especially important for people who are listening in their car, where you already have road noise at 70+dB, and need to have the soft parts be above that level to hear it well.

DBX makes some pretty cheap, and excellent little compressor units.

Amazon.com: dbx 266xs Professional Audio Compressor/Gate Dynamic Processor: Musical Instruments

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That thing would solve all of their problems if used correctly.

The other thing that bugs me about him is that he does tend to drag things out for a long time. But I've found the cure for that. If you watch his podcasts on YouTube, you can go into the settings and set the "playback speed". I often listen to him at 2X, and it's perfectly intelligible. My wife prefers 1.5X, but you have choices. I like the good info we get from his sources. It does keep one ahead of the usual outlets for a lot of the stuff.

I did sign up for Parler, but I have yet to fully figure out how to make it all work to get the most from it. Lots of (us) rednecks on there.

 

[erkme73]

Ha... Agreed on parler. In fact I don't even know how to use the other platforms either.

 

[wtimothyholman]

Most police departments in larger U.S. cities will not bother. Nine days ago a guy in a pickup truck drove into the alleyway behind a neighbor's house one block over, and stole a quarter pipe skateboard ramp (worth about $450) from the backyard in the middle of the day. One of my other neighbors with a camera pointed at the alleyway recorded the truck driving off with the ramp, but didn't record the license plate. He contacted me, and as it turned out the thief drove by my house to get to the alleyway, and my LPR cameras recorded the plate number. I also got an excellent shot of half the thief's face that was not blocked by the windshield.

I turned all of this information over to the police. The result? Nothing. The victimized neighbor has never been contacted by the detective assigned to the case. This is as open-and-shut an identification of the perpetrator as you could hope for. If the police got a search warrant, they'd probably find quite a few stolen items at the thief's residence. But the value of the ramp isn't enough to make it qualify as a felony, only as a misdemeanor. The police have better things to do.

What is especially frustrating is that I live in an area with fairly high property values. Collectively we pay a substantial chunk of revenue to the city in the form of property taxes. There's a precinct station about a mile and a half away. It might as well be on the Moon for all the police presence we typically see in our neighborhood.

Well, it looks as if having faith in the local PD is not completely unjustified. My neighbor just told me that the detective assigned to his case may have arrested the thief. He's waiting to hear back from the police, but apparently the very nice shots that my cameras got of half the thief's face made the difference. They had to be able to confirm who the driver actually was (so that the owner of the truck couldn't claim he loaned it to someone).

 

[SyconsciousAu]

I'm relatively new to this stuff, but I'm amazed at the clarity of the number plate when it is zoomed in. I have a Dahua 8MP camera in the driveway and I have never been able to get an image as sharp as what Ive seen in the attached video. Just wondering why?

It's all about pixels per metre. You can't reliably human read plates below about 250 pixels per metre, which is the identification standard on a DORI scale.

Pixel Density, PPM and PPF in Video Surveillance

Man I really wanted the police to stop those looters in Long Beach who were running through the police with stolen goods...

You spelt peaceful protesters wrong.

 

[StratRider]

Hey. What if that cooler belonged to the truck guy. Maybe he was over partying with the folks who live there, brought beer for everyone, and then left the cooler there when he left so everyone could finish off the beer. Then, the friend called and said "Hey, I left your cooler over by the side of my house. Thanks!" And the "perp" dropped by and picked it up. He seems pretty nonchalant about it all!

Line #6 of Post #1 - I went and talked to the neighbor.
That thought crossed my mind too so I had to go ask them if they set something out to be picked up.
I'm no "cooler Karen" LOL
I gave him information and a CD to do with as they pleased.

 

[wtimothyholman]

Well, it looks as if having faith in the local PD is not completely unjustified. My neighbor just told me that the detective assigned to his case may have arrested the thief. He's waiting to hear back from the police, but apparently the very nice shots that my cameras got of half the thief's face made the difference. They had to be able to confirm who the driver actually was (so that the owner of the truck couldn't claim he loaned it to someone).

The latest update: the police went to the residence of the owner of the truck. No one was home, or else they refused to answer the door, but the police spotted the quarter-pipe skateboard ramp on the property and confiscated it. It has been returned to my neighbor. The truck owner now has a warrant for his arrest.

It's a shame the police didn't search his premises (I bet they would have found some more stolen items), but I can only assume they couldn't justify a search warrant. So it's not an entirely satisfactory conclusion, but at least my neighbor has his property back.

 

[MrSurly]

This is a good outcome, and to be honest, a very surprising one. The owner must have had really good pics of the ramp for them to be confident enough to take the thing from the guy's yard. I mean, it's not like there's a serial number.
There's no doubt that quality security cam video made ALL the difference in this success.
I wonder if the perp will call the police to report it's theft...

 

[wtimothyholman]

There's no doubt that quality security cam video made ALL the difference in this success.

That is definitely true. I’ve had neighbors who have had their homes burglarized, and they never got a callback from the detective. One of my neighbors even had a home invasion ... nothing.

But give them a positive ID with good cameras, and keep calling to check on the status of your case, and eventually the police will take action even with a petty burglary.

 

[wittaj]

Here is why the police should go after the "petty" theft....it usually leads to a much larger operation

Cleves police bust complex theft ring, recover $100k in items

Police recovered around $100,000 in stolen items as well as narcotics and firearms Wednesday.

www.fox19.com