Neighborhood Security
Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 3:45 pm
We've had a wave of home break-ins in our stake recently. The neighbor behind me got hit last week, and now the alarm companies are going door-to-door, selling their systems, and security signs are popping up on front porches.
Last winter there was a strange pickup truck roaming the neighborhood taking snowblowers off front porches. They even hooked up and drove off with an unlocked cargo trailer.
The policeman that worked with my neighbor said that there are so many burglaries going on now that it is unlikely that they would catch the thieves in the act, even if your alarm service auto-dialed the police at the moment that your alarm went off.
The person who robbed my neighbor showed up on video camera at a convenience store, trying to use a canceled credit card. Even though the cashier recognized the person caught on tape as a regular customer, the police still haven't been able to find the person.
We haven't instituted a neighborhood watch in our area, but my in-laws who do neighborhood watch say that thieves are so bold now that they do their crimes in broad daylight, in plain sight, and even taunt the watchers coming and going.
I wonder if there is anything outside of prayer that can be done to deter crooks. It's pretty depressing to think how helpless we are. Perhaps there is a tech answer to protecting our neighborhoods.
I've thought about putting up an infrared illuminated camera to capture all traffic in and out of the neighborhood. There are probably privacy issues that would require permission from all the neighbors who might have their actions recorded. And even with a face or license plate on video, I don't know what the police could do with that information. And there's not enough time on the evening news to show everyone's robbery videos and beg for leads. Video systems can get quite expensive, and I wonder if it would be possible to get a number of neighbors to cooperate in a video surveillance project.
Another idea that might work is to simply have a very noisy alarm that makes it painful to be inside your house and maybe have it be noisy enough to wake up the retired couple next door.
Any tech ideas?
Last winter there was a strange pickup truck roaming the neighborhood taking snowblowers off front porches. They even hooked up and drove off with an unlocked cargo trailer.
The policeman that worked with my neighbor said that there are so many burglaries going on now that it is unlikely that they would catch the thieves in the act, even if your alarm service auto-dialed the police at the moment that your alarm went off.
The person who robbed my neighbor showed up on video camera at a convenience store, trying to use a canceled credit card. Even though the cashier recognized the person caught on tape as a regular customer, the police still haven't been able to find the person.
We haven't instituted a neighborhood watch in our area, but my in-laws who do neighborhood watch say that thieves are so bold now that they do their crimes in broad daylight, in plain sight, and even taunt the watchers coming and going.
I wonder if there is anything outside of prayer that can be done to deter crooks. It's pretty depressing to think how helpless we are. Perhaps there is a tech answer to protecting our neighborhoods.
I've thought about putting up an infrared illuminated camera to capture all traffic in and out of the neighborhood. There are probably privacy issues that would require permission from all the neighbors who might have their actions recorded. And even with a face or license plate on video, I don't know what the police could do with that information. And there's not enough time on the evening news to show everyone's robbery videos and beg for leads. Video systems can get quite expensive, and I wonder if it would be possible to get a number of neighbors to cooperate in a video surveillance project.
Another idea that might work is to simply have a very noisy alarm that makes it painful to be inside your house and maybe have it be noisy enough to wake up the retired couple next door.
Any tech ideas?