Smart Cameras Captured Burglary. And Saved my House
It happened on Monday afternoon when I was at work. Ring video doorbell notified me about someone at my Phoenix house front door. Probably a neighbor cat, who often likes to walk on the fence or chill on my front-yard. But wait a minute — it is 1:47 pm and the temperature is 105 F. In this heat, I have never seen this cat hanging out outside.
So I am pulling out my phone to see who is actually there. I see a man who looks like a package delivery guy. I also spot the garden spade in his hand. Okay, then he must be a landscaper, who made a mistake and came to the wrong house. Sometimes, this happens.
However, when I see him entering my backyard through the fence gate, I am getting a little nervous. Why he is going there? So I promptly switched from doorbell view to inside Canary security system. And I could not believe what I have seen there! This guy is walking in my living room like he is at his home.
I immediately ran Canary alarm and it worked as intended. Loud siren scared him enough so he was eager to leave. Before he left, he scanned the kitchen peninsula to see if anything valuable is there. Thanks to his greed for old shopping discount batch cards and few random keys, his face was captured on the camera with a great level of detail. Phoenix Police Department is already in possession of these video files along with detailed mugshots.
While I have a few comments and objections towards Wink, Ring and Canary systems, they all proved to work well in this case. Look how Canary siren responded quickly. Also, note the living room temperature rose after a door glass was punctured. Arizona heat spreads fast!
Our North Phoenix neighborhood is always calm, where life flows slowly and not much is happening. Smart home gadgets like sensors, switches, locks, cameras, it was all installed by me just as an interesting side project. Sometimes it worked well, sometimes less well, but either way, it was always a fun thing to do. I never expected the day will come when it would be this useful for me.
Given this, I see how many smart home improvements could be implemented. I would like to share and test my ideas, but I need to call the insurance company and clean up this mess first.
Updates
- July 29: police received raw video files and detailed mugshots
- July 30: full burglary footage was compiled and uploaded on YouTube
- July 31: news channel Fox 10 Phoenix covered the story
- August 1: blog was published in Slovak language
- August 2: ABC15 Arizona uploaded their commentary
- August 5: called with detective; there were few more burglaries on that day in our neighborhood, but there is currently no suspect, no fingerprints, and also no DNA
- August 6: TV coverage did not help as I would wish, so story was shared on Reddit and Instagram; burglar is still unknown
- August 7: non-profit program Silent Witness published this case with a reward up to $1,000
- August 11: news and media portal topky.sk featured the story
- August 19: looks like Phoenix PD is overhelmed with other cases, so we need to run our own investigation; website phxBurglary.com was created
- August 21: for offline information spread, we distribute this paper flyer across the businesses and organizations in our neighborhood
- August 24: so far 30+ flyers were distributed and 2–3 leads received
