Police in Independence, Missouri said they have seen an uptick in the amount of people investing in home security cameras, and they said it is worth every penny.
“If someone sees a camera on a house I think they are much less likely to target that home,” said Officer John Syme with the Independence Police Department.
For that reason Syme suggested putting the camera in plain sight, but in a hard to reach area where the camera will not be tampered with. He also suggested putting a camera at the back door and windows because crooks are most likely to target those areas.
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He also said if police have video of a crime occurring it means the crime will have a greater chance of being solved.
“A lot of times if we don’t have any evidence to assist us in them they are not, they may not be assigned to a detective so having some sort of surveillance footage leaves more evidence for our detectives to work with,” said Syme.
Syme said they first distribute the video to detectives and other agencies within the metro. If they cannot get any hits that way, then they will put the footage on social media to get tips from the public.
Just last week in Mission, Kansas, a woman was caught on camera stealing a package from a homeowner’s doorstep. She was caught the day after the Mission Police Department distributed the video to the media and put the video on social media.
At the very least it can give homeowners a sense of security.
“I just feel safe with it being there,” said Kansas City resident Missouri Collins.
Collins bought her security system for her home a year ago and suggested other people do the same.
“People kind of stray away, breaking into homes when they know that they got security cameras and stuff like that,” said Collins.
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Ali Hoxie can be reached at ali.hoxie@kshb.com
