Porch Pirate snatch and run

We had an incident yesterday afternoon at 2:20 pm. Per our typical practice, we had the packages out in their designated location for UPS pick up. About 30 feet back from the street beside the camper on a small pallet. The camera video shows a white Nissan Xterra go by at normal speed. About 1 minute later they come back after running up the street and turning around. They whip into the driveway, rear door opens, big ole boy hops out, snatches 4 packages 1 at a time and heaves them into the back seat. Hops in, rear door slams, they back out of the driveway and haul ass.

Windows are tinted heavily with a decent tint on the windshield so you can not see into the vehicle.
Thief dressed in black with a bandana up to just under his eyes.
2 of the packages were 50 lbs. and he tossed them all the way across the seat to the other door without moving from the spot where they were packed.
We were 35 feet away on the other side of the closed gate.

Length of time it took them according to the time stamp on the video was 18 seconds from the time the Nissan's front tires crossed the street to driveway boundary to back out into the street fully.

The video shows they are a crew. 1 minute before, a silver Toyota wagon with a mangled front fender went by fairly slow, 1 minute later the Nissan went up the street. Silver Toyota came back down the street faster than normal, Nissan was right behind them.

Fortunately we were able to get the brake kit and hydro assist repacked, new address labels generated, originals cancelled, and get it back out for our UPS driver to pick up.

Nothing packed for shipment goes outside the gate now.

InOmaha said:

I hate thieves and people who vandalize.

They were getting rather brazen here for a while until half the neighborhoods got ring cameras. Then there were too many angles and the people on the next-door neighbor app started flagging strange cars and sharing them. Now that everyone is working from home, it's almost impossible to go unnoticed.

Years ago, the guy across the street had someone walk into his garage and grab some of his power tools in their plastic boxes and walk out. Nobody saw a thing. My kids were so bad at leaving the garage door open, I put a opener on it that I could control remotely from my phone.

There were several incidents where people would be working in their yards with the garage or front door open, and a team would go in, steal the easy stuff like jewelry or electronics, and get out before the homeowners came back inside. Like a mini home invasion.

I have cameras front and back and one that points from the inside garage door out. So if they come into the garage, the motion light turns on and I get a good look. The garage is such a mess, I doubt they'd notice the camera on the shelf. I can set the camera up to notify me on my phone and shut the garage door remotely.

My dogs bark a lot too.

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My issue with cameras is they suck for anything important. I could put this video (and a 100 others just like it that get posted) up in court and the only thing you would be able to really prove is the Xterra is white, there is someone driving it, and the thief is dressed in black with a blue bandana over his face.

That and the proximity of people meant nothing to these folks. They were in and out before we could react since we were not expecting what happened.

InOmaha said:

That's the biggest issue with cameras. They basically only let you know when something happened after you spend an hour or two to review the scrolling footage; unless you get lucky and they get close enough and look at it while breaking in. For the house I aim several at each door so I'm more likely to catch and angle if they look around.

You have to hope someone else sees the cars you mentioned and calls the police on them while they do a string of robberies one day. Because the cars are likely stolen and they'll swap them out with new stolen cars.

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Police have been notified, report filed, license plate # given. I've racked my brain trying to figure out a way to make a camera do something worthy with utter failure so far.

In this case, they would have had to run over the camera, have it pop up behind them, and then have another on top of the packages. The thief never looked up, the driver was well obscured by the tint, and no front license plate.

Chris said:

My guess is you'll never see them again.

However, given the nature of the parts you're shipping, it may be somewhat easy to find the stolen goods posted for sale online...maybe?

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All correct. No hopes though, but the good news is this value puts it in felony range and we did not decline to prosecute.

Apparition said:

Probably just wanted the hat and chapstick, everything else gets tossed.

@mrblaine your video worked but only if you link it as a URL, thinking you can’t embed it

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I did that, 5 fucking times and it kept converting it to VIDEO even after I edited the post with URL tags.

In case someone else wants to try.

Apparition said:

I just tried, preview works great but once submitted no worky. @Chris needs to fix his shit

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Yep, same problem I had. Works fine on preview, no worky after.

InOmaha said:

You got lucky there. If they had a mini van, they may have snatched the scooter too.

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There is a YT video of that happening with a motorcycle.