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Not too much, but at least we were able to give the PD an exact time, rough direction of travel, etc.

I'd just come home from running a couple of errands to transfer some photos onto the computer, then was planning to head out for one last errand. Since I was only going to be home maybe fifteen minutes, I left the garage door open. After about ten minutes I heard a noise outside, so I clicked through the video feeds and saw POI#1 looking in one of our cars with a flashlight:

Oddly, he picked the junky '92 Tempo to take such interest in, and barely glanced at the Mazda the whole time he was there, never looked inside it with the light. No apparent interest in the open garage either, though something may have spooked them before they got that far.


He did open the door of the Ford, but never got very far into it before POI#2 apparently convinced him that there wouldn't be anything worthwhile in it and they left a few seconds before I got to the door. I couldn't remember whether I'd flipped the deadbolt on the door to the house, so I wasn't going to just sit and wait for them to walk in, and didn't particularly want them to have time to find anything useful as a weapon in the garage either. I did make sure the DVD I gave the police cut off before it became apparent that I was clearing the garage and driveway with a Blackhawk held against my leg seconds after the BGs left.

I also found that the lightbulb in the fixture just outside the garage (which wasn't on at the time, though I tried to turn it on on my way out) had been unscrewed a half-turn, so they clearly thought this out a bit. It dawned on me afterward that if they'd been just a couple of minutes later or a tiny bit quieter, I'd have walked right out there without the slightest clue anything was going on. Stay alert, even in your own driveway.

I'm glad it turned out ok, I too have cameras overlooking the front, back and driveway, but so far haven't needed them and hope I never do.

when i hear these stories, it always reminds me to never let my guard down. even for a minute.
similar thing happened to me years ago.one night i left garage door up, went inside, came back out 2 minutes later to see some punk riding off with my somewhat expensive bike at the time. jumped in the car to give chase but he was nowhere to be found. I HATE THIEVES !

Tireshred wrote:I'm glad it turned out ok, I too have cameras overlooking the front, back and driveway, but so far haven't needed them and hope I never do.

The other disturbing part is that, since they didn't get anything, (or at least nothing I've noticed - the Ford is full of random junk and they could have gotten in the passenger side without being on camera) I would never have thought to check the video at all, and barring some other reason to go back and check every little motion event, would never have had any idea anything happened.

Oh well, we can keep hoping this will be another useful piece of the puzzle. There were a couple of late-night BMVs on the next street early back in April, and a daytime house burglary there last month. If nothing else, this gives an exact time to add to the pattern.

My question is - you're out running errands at 2:40 in the morning?

Kythas wrote:My question is - you're out running errands at 2:40 in the morning?

I work graveyard shift over the weekends, so that's roughly equivalent to most people's late morning for me.

I'm also stuck at the house on most of the days that I watch the baby, since there's no way we're taking her anywhere in the un-air-conditioned Tempo.

KD5NRH wrote:Stay alert, even in your own driveway.

+1 An open garage door is a big, wide entry point, and often one that provides areas of complete concealment to either side of the garage itself, from the point-of-view of the homeowner inside or entering the garage. You can find numerous news stories of robberies or home invasions that were obviously planned because the bad guys ambushed the homeowner as he or she left for work in the morning, or put the trash out by the curb early in the morning. I have neighbors who routinely leave their garage doors up while they do yard work, and they may be in their backyards for 30 minutes at a time with the garage open and nice hiding places behind the car.

A different matter, and one that I like even less, is presented by detached garages. Unless there is a secured walkway behind a fence or wall to and from the garage and house, BGs who have scoped out your house and decided to hit it can easily intercept you as you leave the house and walk to the garage to go to work. This precise scenario played out a couple of years ago just about a mile from my house.

The homeowner also owned a small business, had a detached garage, and kept very similar movement patterns every day. Pure speculation on my part, but I'll bet the BGs followed him one day from his business--either knowing or assuming he carried significant amount of cash--and then monitored his house for a morning or two. The man's wife didn't work, and they had a 13- or 14-year-old son who walked himself to the corner to catch the school bus. The man headed for work at about 6:30 every morning, leaving his backdoor and walking to his detached garage.

There were four BGs: the driver stayed with the car and the other three, at least two of whom were armed with handguns, waited beside the house and intercepted the homeowner as he closed the backdoor. The man, woman, and son were tied-up with duct tape, the man pistol-whipped. What the BGs didn't know was that an older daughter was home visiting from college. She hid under a bed, was not discovered, and called 911. Harris County Deputies arrived promptly, and two of the BGs were apprehended. The driver got away, as did one home invader who fled through the backyard and started hopping fences. Out of sheer luck, no one was shot or killed. If the daughter had been discovered or the deputies responded more slowly, who knows what the outcome might have been?

There have been some mixed opinions among home security experts about whether or not to use surveillance cameras at a residence. The basic rejoinder against has run something like this: Don't advertise any security measures that seem inappropriate for your home because the advertisement may tell the BGs that there's something inside worth stealing. In other words, on a 12,000 sq. ft. mini-mansion you'd expect to see security cameras monitoring the place; on a 3,000 sq. ft. suburban tract house, you wouldn't...so it raises a flag to the BGs.

My personal opinion is that may have well been true in 1990, when the average surveillance camera was about the size of a shoebox, clearly visible from the street, and a complement of several cost a couple of grand to install. Today, good CCITT cameras with low-light capability are tiny by comparison, and can be mounted unobtrusively in places that aren't going to be obvious until walk right up on them. And wireless or wired, they're pretty affordable.

A setup like KD5NRH's could allow you to check those otherwise invisible spots before you open the garage door or leave the house for your detached garage. I think the opportunity for awareness overweighs the idea that you may advertise something unusually valuable in the house. And as the price of CCITT surveillance systems comes down, it's far more likely to see them in common use on more modest residences. If the homeowner in my little story had had the habit of checking a video feed of the side of his house before walking to the garage at sunrise, he could have called 911 himself and may have avoided trauma to himself and his family.

Just some random thoughts following KD5NRH's graphic example of the fact that things can be goin' on outside your front door that you may be unaware of.

Skiprr wrote:My personal opinion is that may have well been true in 1990, when the average surveillance camera was about the size of a shoebox, clearly visible from the street, and a complement of several cost a couple of grand to install. Today, good CCITT cameras with low-light capability are tiny by comparison, and can be mounted unobtrusively in places that aren't going to be obvious until walk right up on them. And wireless or wired, they're pretty affordable.

I thought about repainting the black housings on these so they would blend with the cream-colored eaves, but the light that was unscrewed was about 3ft from that camera, so either they didn't notice the camera at all, or assumed the light was motion sensing (two of the neighbors have "normal looking" motion sensor fixtures on their garages) and the camera wouldn't work without it.

I've had plenty of people come to the front door and not notice the camera there, and the officer who responded this morning took a few seconds to find the camera even after seeing the video.

Something else you could do, to enhance your camera systems, Put one of these babies out there:

http://www.thespystore.com/infraredilluminator.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Invisible floodlight that only your cameras can see :)

BG's won't know the area is very illuminated, and won't try to hide their faces or anything, but the cameras will get every detail :)

You can find more options by googling http://www.google.com/search?q=infrared+illuminator" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Glad everything worked out without too much excitement.

Wouldn't have mattered much in this case, but I recommend outside lights that are too high to reach easily &/or require some disassembly to get to the bulb.

Enjoy!

Boxerrider wrote:Wouldn't have mattered much in this case, but I recommend outside lights that are too high to reach easily &/or require some disassembly to get to the bulb.

We've been discussing that. Unfortunately, this one's mounted to the stone facade, so I don't even want to think about the patching if we move it.

dicion wrote:Something else you could do, to enhance your camera systems, Put one of these babies out there:

"Starting at $129." I've been thinking about building something similar to mount along the roof line and provide general IR illumination for certain areas. Since I also have a night-vision monocular, it's got a lot of potential.