That's pretty crazy when it's dirt cheap to setup and manage a local ip cam nvr station now.
To what end? The cops won't do anything anyway, even for regular offenders. Shit, plenty of major population centers in California have openly declared they literally won't even send a police unit to a big-box retailer for any theft valued at under $1,000, even just to take a report, much less look at CCTV footage or try to investigate. On the rare occasion a cop does show up to make an arrest or investigate properly, DA's routinely refuse to prosecute (which makes me wonder what their fucking job is). It's not even a racial thing -- in a rare display of actual equality under the law, even white thieves are regularly let off the hook.
As ridiculous as it sounds, in places like I described above, you could walk in, grab a cart, scoop $950 worth of merchandise into it, and casually stroll out the door, right past the "security" guy, calmly load it into your car, and drive off. The stores are powerless; they'll never be able to prosecute, and it's not worth commencing a civil suit even assuming they can identify you. It forced the retail industry to make some pretty drastic changes.
I hadn't set foot in a Best Buy for about five years until a couple months ago, and it was an entirely different arrangement than I remembered. The retail space (where people could walk around, look at things, and pick what they wanted) was halved compared to before, with the remaining space housing pretty much everything of any value. There were no checkout lanes, just a customer service desk where you'd take your low-value picks and tickets for high-value items, pay for everything up front, then wait for them to fetch it from the warehouse to bring it to you. Gone are the days you could stroll in and buy a shitty $300 flat panel TV by throwing it on a flatbed cart and going up front to the checkout.
Walmart's upping their game now too. They're not doing "pick ticket, pay, then collect merchandise" thing yet, but the variety of shit they're putting under lock-and-key even in upscale areas is insane. Cosmetics, dyes and shampoo/conditioners are all locked up now (it used to just be the popular nigger brands, but now it's pretty much everything), and beyond that they're also put up little displays hanging over each cosmetics aisle with cameras and motion sensors. The displays show what the cameras see, and whenever they detect someone in the aisle, they blink some really bright lights and make an obnoxious dinging sound to make sure you notice you're being recorded (whether they're recording or not is anybody's guess). It's obnoxious and you can hear it all over the store.
On the Nextdoor group for my community, I easily see a dozen posts every week about people having stuff stolen from their porches, driveways and back yards, and even seeing thieves and burglars march right up to the front door, stare right into those fancy Ring doorbell cameras, and test the door to see whether it's locked or not (casing for later). Plenty of these posts include pretty high-quality stills (or even videos sometimes) of the thieves, including full faces, even license plates on their cars. Every time, a few people post "report that to the police!" I've yet to see a single post in all my years living here saying "hey, the cops finally caught these assholes!"
The cops aren't helping
anyone anymore. They simply don't give a shit. Filing reports does nothing. Calling 911 during a burglary in progress results in a unit arriving maybe an hour later (if you're lucky). Of course they still come pretty quick if you defend yourself. Come to think of it, there's a good term describing this kind of situation. "Anarcho-tyranny" I think?
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