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Thursday evening, I finally got the surveillance cameras installed. (I can't really recommend Astak's customer service, but if you don't mind figuring the system out via creative guesswork, it's a good price for 4 cameras and a networkable DVR.) Sunday's paper had this, one street over and a few houses down from mine.

Fortunately, since I work nights, I'm home most mornings. Unfortunately, I'm often asleep at that time on Thursdays, though I do keep a 1911 in reach by my side of the bed and my wife's P32 by her side. I think I'll try to contact the PD this week and see if they will give out information on entry method, etc. If they're willing to give vehicle description info, I'll also review the recordings (Since we're on a corner lot, the garage/driveway camera can clearly see the main intersection for the neighborhood.) and see if the suspect might have been casing the neighborhood again since this incident.

Home burglarized in broad daylight
By AMANDA KIMBLE
Staff Writer
amanda.kimble@empiretribune.com
Published: Sunday, May 10, 2009 4:25 PM CDT
Law enforcement officials are searching for burglars who made off with several pieces of jewelry, rifle ammunition and attempted to loot other items from a home within the city limits sometime Thursday morning.

According to Lt. Don Miller with the Stephenville Police Department, a homeowner in the 1300 block of Kaylock Street, who left for work around 7:30 a.m., returned home for a noon lunch break and realized “things were out of place” and called police.

Miller said the “unique” thing about the burglary was the fact that the perpetrators entered the home in broad daylight on a street where several residents were home to witness a suspicious individual in the neighborhood. The witnesses have provided a description to police. “We are working those leads,” Miller said. “This case is currently under investigation.”

Following the incident, Miller is urging residents to be on alert and advises anyone who notices suspicious persons near their homes to contact the police department immediately.

“We are asking residents to report persons in the neighborhood that are out of place, even during working hours,” Miller said. “People know who does and does not belong in their neighborhoods.”

Miller said the bandits used a pry bar to gain entry through a back door and got away with 14 rings, 25 necklaces, 11 bracelets, 12 pairs of earrings and rifle ammunition. Luckily, Miller said, there were items that were left behind, including rifles and power tools.

“The burglars had stolen firearms and powers tools, which they hid in the backyard,” Miller said.

The police were alerted to the scene before the bandits could return for the stashed items.

Anyone with information should contact police at 918-1200 or Crime Stoppers at 254-965-CASH (2274.) Callers will not be asked to give their names and will remain anonymous. Tipsters can also leave a tip through http://www.stephenvillepolice.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; under the Crime Stoppers heading.

EDIT TO ADD: This is one of the nicer slightly-old (1970s) neighborhoods in town. A cop lives diagonally across the intersection from us, (I think you can actually see the victim house from his backyard) and another one lives on Kaylock in the 1400 block. Both work nights, so were probably home when it happened. Don't ever assume that anything in your neighborhood's demographics make it immune to problems.

Bonus: now I can get the occasional baby photo without leaving the computer


Guess I should go ahead and crank the reolution back up. It can do much better, at the cost of capacity, but for 99% of issues, we'll know something happened within 24 hours.

we need webcams at DPS so we can log in to see them doing nothing

I knew a guy I used to work with that had a system he could access anywhere when he got on a workstation...He'd keep a window open that he could toggle thru some of the cameras he had setup at home...

I kinda thought that was a little over the top, but considering the ability to record, and then report immediately, something going on at his home seemed to me to be a good thing...

stevie_d_64 wrote:I knew a guy I used to work with that had a system he could access anywhere when he got on a workstation...He'd keep a window open that he could toggle thru some of the cameras he had setup at home...

I kinda thought that was a little over the top, but considering the ability to record, and then report immediately, something going on at his home seemed to me to be a good thing...

you can never have enough security.. i use every deterrent i can think of. i even have" beware of dog " signs..one day i'll even get a dog.

stevie_d_64 wrote:I knew a guy I used to work with that had a system he could access anywhere when he got on a workstation...He'd keep a window open that he could toggle thru some of the cameras he had setup at home...

The network capability was important to me so that I could put the DVR itself in a relatively inconspicuous place, and not have to be at it to see who's at the front door. A burglar with some time would find it, but a quick-in-and-out job would likely never spot the DVR or the network equipment, leaving it a simple matter to drag in my laptop and put the video on DVD for the police.

Except for the occasional family outing, with our schedules, the house is rarely empty for more than a couple of hours at a time, so a few standalone squealer alarms guarantee that any home invasion is loud enough to wake whoever's home up so they can make it louder. The cameras provide documentation, and we might be able to catch a vandal or two.

i hope you never have to use it

[quote="usa1
you can never have enough security.. i use every deterrent i can think of. i even have" beware of dog " signs..one day i'll even get a dog.

They really work. I use to live a few miles out of town and I put up a couple of "Beware of dog" signs and I have had people pull in my driveway and honk their horn for me to come out and call of the dog!

One problem...I didn't have one either.

-geo

KD5NRH wrote:Guess I should go ahead and crank the reolution back up. It can do much better, at the cost of capacity, but for 99% of issues, we'll know something happened within 24 hours.

1TB drives are cheaper than ever now -- as low as $80 on Newegg. This sounds like a perfect excuse to pick some up. ;)

sss wrote:

KD5NRH wrote:Guess I should go ahead and crank the reolution back up. It can do much better, at the cost of capacity, but for 99% of issues, we'll know something happened within 24 hours.

1TB drives are cheaper than ever now -- as low as $80 on Newegg. This sounds like a perfect excuse to pick some up. ;)

Unfortunately, it won't handle anything over 250G, but with the motion sensing activated, it runs at 5fps normally, and 30fps (split among the cameras - we've had pretty good results from the system at work running an even lower rate on the "active" times) when there's motion in a set area. Combined with a pretty good compression algorithm, I should be able to get at least a week on 250G at high res, and if we go on vacation, I can drop the resolution back to low and get a month.

usa1 wrote:i hope you never have to use it

On the contrary; like my PT-99 or the fire extinguisher I sometimes use to crack nuts, I just hope I never have to use it for what I bought it for. There are lots of other fun things to do with it. It was great seeing the look on my lawyer's face when I handed him the pic of him collecting his campaign sign (city council - he won) from my yard at a little after 2300 Sunday night.

this is interesting. I'd like to get a basic system but need to learn a bit more about them including cost, functionality, etc. I don't have much for a deterant when not home, but the dogs make a bit of noise and I'm armed...

my neighbor 2 houses down has the "beware of dog" sign sans the dog, and the fake, cheap harbor freight 'survalence' cameras.... its quite obvious its all fake

KD5NRH wrote: .... it runs at 5fps normally, and 30fps (split among the cameras - we've had pretty good results from the system at work running an even lower rate on the "active" times) when there's motion in a set area.

I normally run mine at the highest resolution available in motion detection mode and at 30fps with a 30 second clip once triggered. If I am going to be gone for a few days I back it down to 5-10 FPS and that saves a lot of room on the hard drive.

Unless you run it at the higher resolution, facial details and things like damage on cars is hard to make out. Besides, the police prefer a clear still image that they can send out to other agencies and the media.

usa1 wrote:we need webcams at DPS so we can log in to see them doing nothing

This post is full of WIN!

Unless you run it at the higher resolution, facial details and things like damage on cars is hard to make out. Besides, the police prefer a clear still image that they can send out to other agencies and the media.

+1 to that

I've seen a lot of surveillance camera footage on youtube and other places, mostly from robberies, and the resolution is usually so low that all you can tell about the robber is height, skin color, and hair color-pretty useless for ID purposes.

T3hK1w1 wrote:I've seen a lot of surveillance camera footage on youtube and other places, mostly from robberies, and the resolution is usually so low that all you can tell about the robber is height, skin color, and hair color-pretty useless for ID purposes.

This, IMO, is one of the worst plagues of electronic security; poor selection and management of the system.

Selection should keep in mind the most likely, significant single event it is intended to catch, weighted by the possibility of more important events, and the commonality of lesser events. For example, in my case, the most likely event that the cameras would catch is someone stealing the lawnmower, breaking into the shed, or messing with the cars. Those events would generally result in losses ranging from $100-$2,000, with the most likely amounts being around $500 in damage and theft. Thus a $400 system was pretty much right on target. If you stand to lose $20,000 to a bank robbery in a single incident, or have a company vehicle stolen from the lot overnight, there's no excuse for spending less than $5,000-$10,000 on a decent system to help prevent that and/or recover the property.

Robberies are relatively obvious events, and by the nature of the crime, somebody will know about it and be able to save the recordings within 24 hours, yet the businesses tend to set everything for the longest possible retention rather than good quality. Even recording at maximum quality and framerate 24x7, this little unit can get a few days on the disk. That's plenty of time to let the police do the initial once-over and call in a manager to back up the video. Using it to watch for employee theft at low quality and/or low framerate would be counterproductive, since any fast or subtle movement would be either between frames or too blurry to confirm. Also, long duration recordings tend to be wasted, since it's unlikely that anyone will sit and review even a couple of days, much less a full month of video to see why the cigarette inventory came up a few packs short.

Businesses are also notorious for putting the cameras up high, which means they can't see a face if the suspect is wearing a hat. At least a couple of companies make cameras mounted in various items to put on the counter for just this reason, but they're rarely used. I have seen one business that set a camera low behind the counter, looking at the main counter area past the cash drawer, specifically because that is one place a robber will definitely look straight at the camera. Given the amount of junk behind the typical quick-stop counter, one could almost hide a Panaflex and full film crew without much creativity, so it always bugs me to see one cheap camera and a VCR in plain view in these setups.