Got an alert on my newly installed security camera. Casually checked it thinking it was a cat setting it off. Saw a man trying to open my car door. Ran outside and saw him walking away with two other people. Thought better of approaching him and went back inside.
WWYD?
Will wait for cops response and might ask ozbargain admin about that before doing it!
Your username is not belongswithcops š”
Thatās right, canāt post here first and then ghost on footage.
needs to be ms paint diagram
Too late for anything
Unfortunately Cops wont care anyway.
If you're lucky, they might show up after a few hours.
You'd have a better chance of getting the fkers to come by tell them to not bother coming at all as you've already killed the car thief accidentally.
Yup, Cops dont care unless they are handing out fines. My house got robbed and had proof of who did it, detective was meant to call me back after the cops were done , detective never did. I kept calling up for a few months, never got back to me.
I got involved in a hit and run, i chased the culprit down and cornered them on a cul-de-sac. Got all their details, cops werent interested.
From someone who obviously has been in the police!
Depends if there has been many other attempts and if they are trying to find people. Sometimes a reasonable hot lead is worth following up.
Someone called the cops for some annoying buggers doing illegal stuff around 2am. Cops did a sweep and caught the buggers as they were stealing my bike.
If they failed to break into your car (or even if they succeeded) chances are they aren't done with their misdeeds and the cops might still stop them elsewhere.
Not with that attitude
while carefully hand designing a mandatory custom MSPAINT diagram to illustrate the situation while the theives get away :)
Immediately post on OzBargain.
Nah I've been stewing over it for at least a few hours now
Shotgun…
Shotgun - yes, that's a great song.
'Saw a man trying to open my car door. Ran outside and saw him walking away with two other people'
Maybe, he was CLOSING the car door, after abducting the 'two other people' from your back seat - hmmm, food for thought
Shotgun - yes, that's a great song.
The one by Soccer Mommy? It sure is!
Better use a stain-remover on that back seat.
"shotgun"
…Ah, the great American pastime of their education system!!
Install š„ thrower next.
You didn't catch a car thief, you caught 3 car thieves. If your Jew-Jitsu is up to par you could sort it out, otherwise, take pics and call the cops. Don't get your expectations up though.
Is Jew jitsu just like Ju-jitsu but without bacon?
or the lobster.
Not if you're in the hood
well technically he didn't catch anyone, they all calmly walked away.
Even if you're great, 3v1 is a very tough ask, especially for Jiu-Jitsu/BJJ because you're physically occupying your limbs and attaching yourself to one guy while the other two are free to beat your brains out.
Thai-kwondo roundhouse kick all 3 at once.
Just my 2 cents, I'd rather take the wimpy approach and install an alarm. Be a coward to live another day, lol.
My issue is they've been working the neighbourhood the last few nights and scored at least one person's belongings according to reports.
wake up, you're drunk
They are likely known to the police already. Submit a police report and leave it at that.
You don't know where those thieves live or who their cousins or big brothers are.
Let's say you smash all three of them in a fight and play vigilante, what might happen the next month or two when someone comes wanting revenge?
Be thankful that it's only unlocked cars they are rummaging through.
Up in Townsville (and many other regional parts of Qld) the indigenous juveniles commit several home invasions a night looking for car keys and then terrorise the roads in the stolen cars.
All part of Qld Labor's easy on crime approach…
i'm familiar with townsville's youth crime problem. atrocious how blazen those crims are. unfortunately for my neighbourhood, the same guy i caught was caught trying to enter houses too
Definitely report to the cops.
Police: weāre powerless to stop them
What they should have told the coppers is the guys were driving 5km/h over the limit. There would be choppers in the air and a street full of HWP cars.
That's a good one lol
You're thinking of the wrong state, Qld Police have been rendered quite powerless compared to NSW Police.
Pretty much a case of don't chase up there and even when caught the courts seem to just let them straight back out if they are juveniles.
Not bloody wwrong. The only things the cops are good for is fining people trying to go about their lives. Criminals get to run amok with little to no repercussions. Cops are just a waste of space.
It'd be different if they were going fast when stealing, or if their shoes didn't have enough tread. Police are far from powerless, they just see what lawyers and judges do to make their work a waste of time.
Give him my keys.
Superglue thumb tacks to your door handles for next time
Awesome idea until I stumble out of the house in the morning half asleep and late for work.
At least you'll be woken up quickly
should have hopped in your car then parked it on them so they can get a closer look :D
Was considering following them but didn't want to get stabbed
Can't stab you through the car door or closed window.
Bloke might have a boomerang
Make a police report at the local station.
Take the footage on a USB with you.
Happened to me on early June. I was asleep, saw in camera a guy with hoody touch the front door and flash light the inside of the car then left. Called police then forensic came record the fingerprints. Police came to me to get my statement and the footage. Told me that they had fingerprint match and I may need to go to court for witness.
Unfortunately i already put my grubby fingerprints on the car door as i needed the car today and couldn't wait. Hopefully someone else got fingerprints as he's seemingly been trying every house in a 1km radius
The forensic came two days after - not really expecting it, but I happened not using the car nor touching the door area
years ago there was reported car thieves in my neighbourhood. without knowing I woke and went out to my car to find white powder on my car's door handle. apparently the cops had fingerprinted many cars parked on the street throughout the neighbourhood without telling the owners.
i'm not even sure my car had been broken into. was an old car and easy to break in so might have been. i never left anything in it for thieves to find and it had a kill switch. for all I know the door might have been left open by thieves which prompted cops to fingerprint and they then closed the door.
Common occurrence, they walk the streets at night trying every car door in sight. Happens to everyone at some point they just don't know it. Guaranteed to find quite a few unlocked and they'll grab anything inside they want. If you're dumb enough to leave something good/valuable in view inside the car, they'll actually smash, grab and run. If they're that desperate it only has to be a bag or box that has the remote possibility of containing something nice and they'll smash/grab. Jokes on you if it was an empty bag or box because you just had your window smashed for them to find out it was empty and not take anything.
what are they going to charge him with? shining a light in a car and leaving a finger print? and if there was such a law, the progressive woke judge would let him off anyway.
Usually the person doing that has done 100 more the same night and most likely actually entered a car or home so the more evidence to their activity the better.
While it wasn't tamper if he simply touched the vehicle (tamper is testing the handle if the car is unlocked, messing with wipers, aerial, etc), a good lawyer would argue belief on reasonable grounds that the accused had intent to commit an indictable offense i.e. theft of or theft from mv
Is this a trick question?
If OP was a Jedi, could have used the force.
OP need to ask, should I use the force š
Bury them 6ft /s The courts keep letting repeat offenders out on bail unfortunately. Always a wrist slap.
I'd be happy with slave labour as a punishment
My man was taking the bins out. When he came back in he said he thought he saw some people breaking into the hotel down the laneway from us. He asked what I thought we should do and I said āring the cops, weād hope other people would do it for usā. We didnāt see the cops, but a few days later they left us a card in the letter box. We thought it was a courtesy but they did, actually, want a statement from us. They caught the guys and wanted eye witness confirmation. Turns out the āperpsā broke in trying to get a keg. FFS the place was full of spirits and they were taking a keg. They deserved to go down. They mustāve pleaded guilty because we were never contacted again.
@try2bhelpful you picked the right username :)
Person was checking to see if your car door was locked to let you know in case someone tried to steal it
I like this
Thought better of approaching him
Absolutely the right move. I used to think it was cowardly, but for any confrontation you want to be operating on all cylinders. Rarely does a situation happen like that. It usually happens when you're tired and not thinking clearly and unable to weigh up risk vs return
In my case, I'd like to say I'd follow them, but I'd probably just peak around the corner to watch which way they went. Don't want to let them know who is watching them, as after all they know where I live.
My immediate thoughts. They've probably got nothing to lose. Likely has learning disabilities or drug problems. I just want to not be bothered
You made the right decision from any perspective.
These people would likely welcome the offer to retaliation so they can also resort to force as it's really the only control that they have over their miserable lives.
They're born in poverty, live in poverty and will die in poverty.
In my younger days me and a coworker caught two guys trying to steal his car, they were already inside. He absolutely beat the shit outta the one in the drivers side while I kept hold of the other one! He then smacked the snot out of the one I had. No cops just karma.
These days you'd be in gaol and they'd sue you for loss of income
Yeah no doubt, these days Iād just call the cops
i once caught someone breaking into my car.
new years eve. I drove into Melbourne CBD to meet up with friends after working till 10pm. parked my car under train line near cnr flinders and king street. got drunk and slept in car at about 4am. bench front seat, my head against drivers door.
about 5am i awake to drivers door being opened. I yell WTF and they run away. I close the door and relock it and go back to sleep.
You don't know your car properly until you spend a night sleeping in it
Chase them through the city into an abandoned building then throw them out the building because they killed your uncle
This seemed like good advice, but I missed the part where that's my problem.
Release the hounds
My uncle and cousin confronted a bloke trying to break into one of their cars a few years back. The thief turned around and stabbed my uncle in the arm.
when it happened to me I chased the scum for a couple of blocks but they were faster/ had more wind. I called the cops after; not because they'd ever do anything but because there was some damage and I knew I would file an insurance claim and need a report number.
Casually checked it thinking it was a cat setting it off
Checks out
and
sometimes the occasional dog or fox
good luck with the cops, you'd be lucky if they answered the call, they wont be doing jack
they actually called to take fingerprints. i just wish i had a better photo of the perp
Call the cops.
Don't follow as most people are too obvious about.
You may think your safe to follow in a car extemely obvious they could damage your car or worse if you accidentally hurt one with the car in Australia that could be deemed excessive force. They also know where you live there's a lot of psycos out there.
Would I have followed them? One individual maybe but three they could split up most people don't have eyes in the back of their heads.
Vast majority of times in regional Victoria they won't take fingerprints due to lack of Police resources.
Personally, Iām a fan of instilling the fear of god into them by any means necessary.
The problem is half them are meth heads or on some other drug these days, they don't give a crap about anyone else and barely about themselves. Putting fear into them requires some sane thought processes, you have more chance of getting yourself in trouble.
Had a similar experience a few months ago. A thief was trying to steal something from the shed. Alexa warned about motion being detected at the front door. Anyway, decided to check it out. There was this guy trying to open the shed and possibly pinch kids bike or whatever he could lay his hands on. Before opening the door, I grabbed whatever came to my hand first and it happened to be kids school shoe. Anyway, when I opened the door, the guy coolly started walking out of the property. I threw the shoe at him and in the meantime partner called the cops…we showed the security camera footage of that guy to the cops. Don't know whether they were able to catch him or not.
did you call 000 or non emergency?
000
i like your story, if it had been a flip flop that had been thrown instead of said school shoe: 10/10
put the video on all social media pages after police have done nothing.
he's already popped up on social media pages. he managed to steal something and attempted to enter other people's houses.
Perform Citizens arrest
You will be on TV and become a National hero
'Upload footage to ozbargain' option required