GreekPT

A good buddy of mine has had his/his g/f's cars vandalized, multiple times right in front of his house. He does sub 2:00 in his blown and gutted S2K, so he's one of us even though he's not one of US.

He thinks it might be locals and wants to set up a surveillance cam.
He could kill 2 birds or more with one stone if a GoPro HD cam, for instance, could record nonstop, i.e. if it were plugged into a power source. I told him my GoPro has batteries so that one wouldn't work.

Is there a cam out there that will record while plugged into its power source? Even better if this cam could be used for HPDE too.

Thanks.

0Randy@DRM

I know this story too well.

Car gets trashed, you called the cops. They said "we will up patrol". Car gets trashed again, you call the cops. They say "buy a video camera" Wife spends 1000 bucks on a video camera.
Car gets trashed again, two minutes after the battery goes dead. Don't call the cops
Car gets trashed again, you get them on tape. Call the cops and they say "well there isn't too much we can do with a video shot in the dark" But make sure you call us everytime something happens.
You borrow a really trick 6 camera with night vision, a couple spot light thingys. All hooked up to a computer.
They don't trash the car for 6 monthes. Then you let down your guard and they come back. Cops start to blame you and the 80 year old guy that lived down the street.

Replace car above with house and neighborhood. Add two years and 50 more nights of trashed stuff for my personal story.

One thing that works is to put a bill board size "$$$1,000 Reward" sign in the yard. Pay a couple kids a 100 bucks to put up a couple hundred flyers. It bought our neighborhood into a safe zone for about 5 monthes during the rebuilding process, painting, roof, windows, front door, shed doors, Garage door, selling two damaged cars (egg marks)

Things to do
My best advise is to have your friend move, I did and have been super happy!!!
Get a couple cameras set up on the computer they are pretty cheap, lots of memory.
Sign is kinda a iffy one, but you will find more people are having the same problem. Being a quieter guy, I was in the dark alone for a long time. Ask neighbors also, go door to door. If it's somebodies kid they will hopefully kick the kids azz.

Things not to do,
High speed chase the kids that were throwing full water bottles at your wife at 9:00pm on a side street walking the dog.
Don't attempt to grab one, because you will end up in the hospital or jail. Neither one is worth it.
Don't ask the local school anything, they protect their own.
Don't send a letter into the cheif of police about the problems with their services.
Don't stay up all night waiting for them, you will lose a ton of sleep.

Good luck to your friend, hopefully it's nothing personal and just happened to be in the wrong house at the wrong time.

Sorry my blood pressure doubled when I read your post.
Randy

sperkins

Geez Randy. Sounds like you should have bought a rottweiler.

0Randy@DRM

Here is my beast of a 40 pound female lab. She is the wrong tool for the job.


In MN stuff like this always ends up turning out bad. One of my life long goals in life is to not end up in jail. MN is home to the fox **** spray vigltane. He sprayed some fox pee on the guys that trashed his house weekly. They put a 55 year old man in jail for this

Randy

mgarfias

Don't build a suppressor and shoot at em. That's 10 years in jail for just the NFA item.

mgarfias

Randy, my GSD let me know about about a 'coon goin after my chickens sunday morning.

I love living where I'm at: instead of calling the cops over the gunshot, my neighbor across the road called me later that afternoon "was that you shooting at 5am? you scared the hell out of me! Did you kill it?"

0Randy@DRM

The first night in my new house. I was outside late unloading the moving van, I heard what sounded like a rabbit dying. 30 minutes later I was finishing up and the rabbit sound was still there. About an hour later we heard a high power rifle crack. My wife asked if we should call the cops. I had to explain coyote hunting to her. It's not uncommon to hear rifles in the middle of night in the hills by my house

Randy

MySR71

Although a bit expensive, you might want to check out the products by Chase Cam. Their PDR100 and I believe Diva can record continuously. I'm pretty sure that because Windows has a 4GB file limit, they will either overwrite the original file or start a new file. It is user selectable as I recall. They can be run off the car's electrical system so it should run for quite awhile using the car's 12V battery.

GreekPT

Thanks Randy for that writeup and SR71 for the cam info, I already forwarded it to my bud.

And coincidentally, this story popped up online today - you get email alerts telling you when you need to lock and load!

http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_16769952

ramairws6

Wow, i remember coming up to the shop and you telling me about this everytime i was up! Are you still having a hard time getting over this!?? Just kiddin' bro....... wouldn't wish that on anyone.