On Sunday 21 December I received the following e-mail from one of our neighbors:

Thanks for your email on mail tampering. It appears that someone went through all the Sunrise Terrace additions after Saturday’s mail delivery. Today, My husband and I were out walking and found mail from 5 households. Most of the mail had already been opened and tossed in the street,
We found mail along Military that belonged to a house just below 138th St. We also found mail scattered along the streets in the 5th addition (south side of 122nd) that belonged to 3 houses near the intersection of 136th and 122nd. We also found mail on Shawnee Rd that belonged to a house on 136th Ave.
We returned everything we found and noticed that the homes did not have locking boxes, with the exception of one. Thanks for getting the word out. My hope is that the more locking boxes we have the less tempting our neighborhood will be.

This morning Val Okazaki wrote me to say that she had found mail addressed to the Dalys (11711) on the ground in front of the Helmers (11701) on 136^th Ave. E. .  Further south on 136^th she found more mail addressed to 11739 and 11712.  She is getting it to its intended recipients.  She said there were additional signs of mail tampering but she did not go north of 117^th on 136^th, so there may be more.

If you suspect that your mail has been tampered with please send me an e-mail to kahalljr@comcast.net. If your house is in range of any of our cameras I will attempt to check for strange cars/people stopping at your mailboxes.

I was informed today that outgoing mail had apparently been stolen from several boxes on 136th Ave. E.

The mailman told one of the homeowners that there had been several mail thefts lately.  If you have had mail stolen please contact Kirk Hall at  kahalljr@comcast.net or leave a comment.

On 15 Dec 2014 at 2:04 PM our cameras captured dangerous activity on 136th Ave. E.

The danger to the girl is great and notice in the last pictures she is edging into the oncoming lane just at the curve.  A driver coming the other way would not see her until he was on her.  She might be killed or the oncoming car wrecked when they tried to avoid her.  Bad business all around.

Dav Eide and I have been discussing our current camera problems and making an inventory of support actions required to keep the Neighborhood camera systems functioning.  As you may recall we replaced the system server in July 2013.  The cameras are much older. The License Camera has been out of service since the 21th of last month.  In addition to the License Camera, the north facing web camera (DCS7110) is also in need of replacement.

At this time we find ourselves needing to replace the License Plate Camera, which was the only camera capable of reliably recording license plates on vehicles entering or exiting our Neighborhood.  This camera in conjunction with the other cameras in our system allowed positive identification of vehicles. In addition several of the cameras and support equipment are nearing the end of their operational lives and should be replaced within the next year or so.

The above brings me to the reason for this message.  We still have some money in the kitty for maintenance of our camera system, but it is only enough to replace the License Plate Camera, (Dav and I are searching for a replacement camera that will give us the most bang for the buck spent), with perhaps a small amount left over.

We are going to require a new infusion of cash.  The last time we asked for money was 2011.  A few of you have given money since then, which is the reason we have just enough money to purchase the replacement License Plate Camera.  I have the intake and outgo of funds recorded on an Excel Spreadsheet and anyone who is interested may stop by my house and I will be glad to go over it with them.

We are asking everyone in the area served by our cameras to make a donation of $100 per family to the Neighborhood Security Fund. The last time we asked, most of you gave. A few said they were unable to give at that time, but would consider it in the future.  Well the future is here and we are again asking for donations. We are asking you to send a check for $100.00, or if $100.00 is not possible, then any amount you feel you can afford, payable to Kirk A. Hall, Jr. at 11701 138^th Avenue Court East, 97374.  Please mark the checks at the bottom Neighborhood Camera Fund, and make certain that you include a slip on which you have written your name, address, phone number and e-mail address.  You will receive an e-mail confirmation of our receipt of the check.

Neighbors, it’s your choice.  If you would like to maintain the Sunrise Terrace Camera System at its current level of surveillance then please contribute to the Neighborhood Camera Fund.  If you would like to improve surveillance coverage please become a host camera participant.  Without donations we can maintain the current camera coverage, Snapshot access, and BLOG until the next server event (hardware, software, for security intervention) or camera problem, at which time we will inform you of the action plan.

UPS verified delivery of the package to my front door at 1451hrs. Only problem – – it wasn’t there. So I checked the camera which shows anyone at my front door. I was shown leaving the house at 0954hrs and returning at 1525hrs., but of the UPS man – nothing.

So I checked my street camera and did indeed see the UPS truck – pass my house at 1449hrs going further up the cul-de-sac, and returning past my house at 1451:43hrs. Just enough time to drop off a package somewhere.

Since there are only three houses past my house, I started by going to the Gulbransen’ s. They were not home, but my package was snuggled against their front door. I would have eventually gotten my package, when one of the Gulbransens arrived home, found it and brought it over, but it was nice that I was able to track the UPS man, and have an idea of where my package must have been delivered.

It’s nice to have cameras. If someone had stolen the package from my front door I would have had a pictorial record of them, from several cameras, all time stamped and everything, to show police.

This was a far cry from the time several years ago BC (before cameras) when the USPS said it had delivered a package with some important papers, but then could not tell me where they were and I had no proof that they had not delivered the package.

These are confirmed pictures, taken off my home security cameras, of the German Shepherds that several of the people in the Neighborhood have had run-ins with.

The owners of the dogs have been located. They said they knew the dogs had gotten out, but did not know of the trouble they were causing. They have taken steps to insure that the dog’s enclosure is more secure. If you see the dogs out in the future please refer to the Alert Notification we sent out to Neighborhood members for the owners phone numbers or call Kirk Hall at 253-840-0411.

This is a good example of why we need to let people know of problems in the Neighborhood. Without communications between neighbors, things might have gone along until serious problems occurred, and Animal Control was called. We will send out Alert Notifications when we have information about Neighborhood problems, and post the information on the Neighborhood Blog. When you write Dav ( daveide@comcast.net ) or Kirk ( kahalljr@comcast.net ) please include as much information you can (date, time, location, description, etc.).

I just received this report from Don DeVries. We suspect that these Shepherds are full-grown, and recently started roaming the Neighborhood. Their actions so far are threatening. If anyone knows where these Shepherds live perhaps they could have a talk with the owner.
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Several incidents have occurred with 1-2 German shepherds in our neighborhood. Last week Rod told me that 2 shepherds were in his yard, and went after a visitor in their driveway, and the visitor had to run, as they were threatening towards him.
This past Monday, our dog went crazy, barking and scratching at the house door, and when Rietta opened the door to find 2 large dark brown/ black shepherds in our garage going after our dog. Rietta yelled at them and Lilly then felt she had reinforcements and chased them out of our garage. Lilly is on a radio collar and cannot leave our yard, and is apparently not safe in our garage.
This morning I saw 1 shepherd leaving Rod’s driveway walking up the street, and blew my horn, and it took off thru Scott’s yard heading towards 136th Ave, where I suspect it lives.

I just received a report that car windows had been smashed in Heather Hills (11817 132^nd Ave. Ct. E. and 13117 116^th St. Ct. E.).  The vandalism took place on the night of 22-23 July.  One of the people reporting the vandalism said that she had noticed at least one other vehicle in the neighborhood with a tarp over the window.

I have written before about the need to be able to see events in every part of our Neighborhood.  The unfortunate fact is that when things happen in places not covered by one of our cameras, we struggle to find the vehicles/persons involved, if we can find them at all.  Several months ago one of the homes in the Neighborhood was broken into. The break-in was observed and using descriptions of the vehicle and the time the incident happened, we were able to pinpoint the vehicle and pass the information to the police.  Unfortunately, since we did not have CCTV coverage which could place the vehicle at the home which was broken into, that was all we could do.

Since we put up cameras several years ago I have been asked many times to look for cars or people because of incidents which happened in areas where I know our CCTV coverage is non-existent.  Much of the time the requester was unable to give me a reasonable time frame for the occurrence, and all I could do was plow through hours of pictures in the hopes that something would stand out.  Most of the times it did not. Below is part of an article which I shamelessly copied. It addresses combatting crime in real-time because of professional minute to minute monitoring of a CCTV network, but it is also applicable to us because we can keep images for several weeks (longer for our Neighborhood Camera System).  Therefore when something happens we can look back and check for any clues.

“There’s ample evidence that CCTVs combat more routine crime. According to a study by the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, when surveillance networks are installed and competently manned by trained personnel, they reduce many types of criminal activity by a significant margin, and they do so cost-effectively. After cameras were installed in downtown Baltimore in 2005, the study says, violent crime fell by 23 percent and all crime fell by 25 percent. In one area of Chicago, crime fell by 38 percent after CCTVs were installed. The study showed a smaller impact in other places—in Washington, D.C., for instance, researchers found that a surveillance system had no discernable impact on crime. But the reason for D.C.’s surveillance failure won’t please civil libertarians: Researchers argued that the cameras likely didn’t work because their use was too tightly regulated as a result of privacy fears. After getting input from the ACLU, D.C. instituted rules that severely limit who can look at the cameras and whom they can follow. The rules also prevent operators from saving surveillance footage routinely. In practice, the regulations mean that few people are monitoring D.C.’s cameras and responding to crimes that are caught on tape. The report suggests that if the rules were relaxed, the cameras might prove far more effective.”

In New Orleans there is a network of privately owned CCTV cameras which are registered with the police. When crime happens, the police check their registration for cameras in that area and send out a request for pictures.  See:

http://www.wwltv.com/news/eyewitness/katiemoore/crimesurveillancealiveandwelldespitecitysdeadefforts-245454901.html .  If the people in our Neighborhood whose cameras show the exterior of their house would register with Dav Eide or me, we could probably increase the coverage of our Neighborhood quite a bit.

While I’m on the subject of cameras, let me make some suggestions.  If your CCTV system is over four years old, unless you bought a professional high definition system, it probably is time to think about replacing it. Look at your recordings, if you see only blurs where you can’t recognize people or vehicles, it is time to replace your system.  The clarity of the cameras and recorders available today are much better than they were several years ago.  If you do replace your aged system, let me hope that you decide to have a camera which looks out on any cars you park in your driveway, and another one which looks down the street. The cost for a municipality to place a camera on a pole is around $15,000 to $30,000, but it would cost only a couple of hundred dollars for an individual to add a camera to an existing set up.  It would be great if one day we have the ability to track a vehicle from the time it enters our Neighborhood until it reaches its destination.  That way if mischief happens, we can be on it as soon as it is reported.