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... because my car got trashed by some mindless ASBO in the early hours of sunday morning.

I got home from a gig at 2am. When I woke up at 8am to get ready for that days gigs, I woke up to find a large dent in the wheel arch of my brand new car, 13 deep keys scratches, and the start of an obscene word scrawed into the paint.

Police are questioning people as we speak. Went today to price up the damage - £450. One problem - My excess is £500.

I am now investng in a series of security cameras around my house exterior.

Why cant anything be sacred in this life any more?

Its the 4th time ive had this sort of thing happen within 12 months, on 2 different cars.




Ho hum.

Rant over

Yes, they are very annoying and need castrating. Anyone can have a kid. It's crazy. There should be an interview process.

If you are going to go down the CCTV route, then bear in mind that most "off the shelf" cameras work very poorly at night. Unless placed in areas that have a constant light source, images will come out muddy and prone to digital noise.

Also take in to consideration the media you are going to record on to, will it be video tape? If so bear in mind that tapes stretch and are also prone to noise. Will it be via your computer? If so bear in mind that you will need to invest in some really good hard drives, ones that will be constantly spinning. With the hard drive (DVR) you will need plenty of storage space dependant on the frame rate and compression used. Also bear in mind you will also need an MPEG capture card, I recommend MPEG 4.

Also bear in mind you can only keep footage for a maximum of 31 days.

I recommend at least 12.5 frames per second, I have known certain footage to be thrown out of court due to very low frame rates. Unless you can explicitly prove that the video has not been tampered with, 1 frame per second will definately not be considered evidence.

Storage is cheap, very cheap. You can get 500Gb of storage and that will give you plenty of storage, with 25fps and high bitrate (compression), but searching through all that video is time consuming, so if you are going to get DVR software, get some that has retrospective VMD (Video motion detection) or VMD based capture.

Any questions feel free to PM me

John

Magic Mark wrote:Police are questioning people as we speak.

Any... um... names or addresses?

I've had my car messed with before, nothing as bad as that though, but I sympathise nonetheless.

It actually makes you want to stay up all night clutching a tyre iron and watching through your curtains. Luckily I live in a ground floor front room, so if I park my car outside our house I will hear any significant disturbance and I can throw on a pair of jeans and grab a cricket bat.

You can see why people form vigilante groups

I feel for you, Mark. I've had my property vandalised before and it is both heartbreaking and rage-inducing.

I take comfort in the revenge mindset of Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction - "It would be worth him keyin' my car just for me to catch him doin' it"

Grrrrr!

the latest news on how the police will combat vandalism, just ignore it, its not worth the paper work to take an underage kid to court to get a weeks free holliday at a spaciouse accomodation of there choosing with all mod cons laid on.
bring in breading licenses and don't pay child benefit after the first child or multiple birth unless you have a job and have a partner living in.
if you shave a swearword into a dogs hair you will be prosecuted and go to prison as animals have more rights to justice than human beings.

and what is the govenment doing about it.... shakling the police and watering down the sentances so that they can get payed to discuss were they whent wrong and sugest another half baked idea, i know why not put hardened criminals in open prisons on the honor syatem thats bound to make them reform.
people hate to see you suceed, they hate to see you graft for a living and fall over themselves to bring you down to there leval, what they fail to realise is you need workers to pay taxes for them to sit on there backsides and get paid to do crime and mindless vandalism.

Tomo wrote:Any... um... names or addresses?

They are questioning my ex girlfriend and her mates.

Thanks for the advice on cameras. Luckily a family mate owns a security firm in Skipton, so ill be giving him a call at some point soon.

My car is currently in hiding. I actually spent sunday night awake in the living room, with curtains open and lights on and a deterrent.

Im so annoyed, I have had such a good weekend working a festival, and had just come back from doing an extremely successful caberet show the night it happened.

Oh well, at least nobody got hurt... for now

Things like this are really horrible, I've never understood what people get out of doing it.

Magic Mark wrote:They are questioning my ex girlfriend and her mates.

It looks like you were right to part company if she goes psycho like that

Mind you, a conviction for criminal damage should be quite unpleasant for her.

I really do feel for you mate. I myself came out of work late last week (unpaid over-time, just trying to be nice) and some numb skull had hit my windscreen with a brick. I pretty much know the punch of kids that did it but in this lovely PC country we all now live I am pretty much powerless. I'd love to do something myself but whats the use. I'd only end up with a load of court fees and bother. They'd also have everything of their's paid for by the government as the poor souls don't like to work for a living......... I can feel my anger starting to rise again........ nurse where's my medication.

Anyway sorry about the car.

Man, i know what that feels like. Recently an ex-housemate broke in, stripped the house and took my car also. The police got him in custody and had a warrent for him but let him go because there was no 'interviewing officer' to question him about the crime (although hed already admitted it).

He then went and burnt my car out so it couldnt be fingerprinted. It turns out hes had numourous offences for theft, assault, driving offenses and car crime. Since they let him go hes also attacked a young woman and stolen a taxi (which led to an angry mob turning up at my door at 1am).

Iv lost a car worth £3,000 and about £3,000 worth of stuff from the house, some of which i cant claim back because I dont have reciepts for it. The punishment for him - a slap on the wrist because its a 'minor offense'

Hyperbit - I'm afraid that you're misinformed about the CCTV.

If you are going to go down the CCTV route, then bear in mind that most "off the shelf" cameras work very poorly at night. Unless placed in areas that have a constant light source, images will come out muddy and prone to digital noise.

All cameras are off the shelf from somewhere and whilst lgiht source is an important factor, it has nothing to do with digital noise. In fact, there is no such thing as digital noise on CCTV - typical quality issues are due to the wrong cabling being used and incorrect voltage.

Also bear in mind you can only keep footage for a maximum of 31 days.

Wrong. You can keep it as long as you like if you have a need and as long as it's stored securely.

I recommend at least 12.5 frames per second, I have known certain footage to be thrown out of court due to very low frame rates. Unless you can explicitly prove that the video has not been tampered with, 1 frame per second will definately not be considered evidence.

Wrong again. Real time is 50fps so you ideally want as close to this as possible. The fewer frames the more 'jerky' the playback. ! freame per second is more than adequate as evidence if it can identify a person. It's basically a still photo at that point instead of a video. Frame rates have nothing to do with evidence. The biggest issues for CCTV evidence in court is image quality (different to frame rates).

Storage is cheap, very cheap. You can get 500Gb of storage and that will give you plenty of storage, with 25fps and high bitrate (compression), but searching through all that video is time consuming, so if you are going to get DVR software, get some that has retrospective VMD (Video motion detection) or VMD based capture.

Frames per second is the same as bit rate or compression and a single camera you will get 60 days decent footage if set up right on a 240gb hard drive. When you begin to talk of VMD you're talking of commercial DVR's which will cost a thousand pounds upwards.

In your situation I wouldn't recommend CCTV, particularly as this may be a jealous girlfriend. If she's been nicked then she may get the message.

dat,

I dont want to get in to a flame war, but digital noise can creep in due to cheap A->D convertes, each camera has one, signals are often amplified which again can introduce digital noise. There is a law stating that footage can only be kept for 31 days, this is explicitly referenced in the data protection act. You can apply for an extension, but more often than not it will be denied.

I did recommend a minumum of 12.5 fps

Anyway rant over.

Sorry to hear about all this vandalism. My father has a corner house, and every so often a waste of air 'tags' the long wall running along his back garden. Luckily, the council are good about painting over it, but it still gets on my nerves that there are morons damaging a pensioner's property like that.

This sort of petty crime is far too common.