Ignoramus25244 wrote:

On 2008-08-01, Wes wrote:
Christopher Tidy wrote:

Similar thing happened to some guys my mother knows. They went climbing
somewhere remote, but left some gear and bikes in their van. When they
returned, the gear had been stolen. So the next week they did the same,
but hid near the van. Nothing happened, so they did it the week after,
and the guys broke into the van again, so they grabbed them and took
them to the police.


Years ago when I was in the Marines, I had a Staff Sergeant in my department whose friends
in Laurel bay had been burgled.

He did a bit of sleuthing and realized that other Marines had their homes tossed and the
common point is that they all had contacted the MP detachment asking them to keep an eye
on their homes while they were on deployment or vacation.

So SSGT Doyle, decided to set up a sting. Told the MP's that he had a monster collection
of firearms and other valuables and was worried about them due to the recent burglaries in
Laurel Bay and asked them to keep an eye on his place while he was TAD to where ever.

Doyle let his grass grow long and had some of the other Marines that homes were
burglarized over each night to see if lightning struck again. It was the base MP's that
broke in one night. They were met by some angry Marines with firearms that had way too
many beers while playing poker and waiting. The South Carolina state police were called
in. Score one for the good guys. I liked SSGT Doyle. Sorta like Gunner on steroids.
Urrah!

What happened to the burglars?

Anyway. The police officer said that they stay in touch with the three
local pawn shops. I gave him the serial number of the stolen GPS. I
will keep an eye on ebay myself, I set a perl script watch to look for
any GPSes within 25 miles from me.

I personally think that this is a very stupid thing to do in general
and therefore believe that it is local kids who did it.

I am considering buying a recording camera of some kind with low amp
draw, 12v powered. Any idea?

I've been waiting for the spare funds and boredom to coincide for my to
buy one of the now common 12v powered 4 channel DVR security recorders
and adapt it into a "black box" for my truck. I've seen them down in the
$250 range for a basic unit and a bit more for one with network
connectivity - think WiFi bridge to automatically download and archive
to DVD when you park in your garage so it's ready for morning. Perhaps
one of the cheap little video overlay boards, a microcontroller, a GPS
and an accelerometer to overlay additional data.