Hello, I'm a long-time lurker who hasn't posted in years, but finally have a thread worthy of asking the BBS for help/advice. Summary: Went on vacation, got back in Houston, stopped for dinner returning from the airport in a nice area with no objects in plain sight and several cars next to each other in a parking lot were broken into at random. The thieves smashed passenger windows and took various things of significant value from multiple cars, the worst including an expensive camera with pictures from the vacation. Aftermath: The thieves also got a friend's wallet, which has turned out to be the best piece of evidence so far. They aren't so bright and before they were cancelled, attempted to use the credit/debit cards in the wallet several times. They also made a couple of online purchases. After doing research and speaking with the credit card company and the online retailers, we have a significant amount of evidence on the thieves: - Time and location they pumped gas, twice (should be on camera along with vehicle) - Time and location they tried to guess pin numbers unsuccessfully at an ATM machine, twice (should be on camera) - The shipping address they put in for the online order including the apartment number (could be a friend, relative or empty unit, but they aren't intelligent, so it wouldn't surprise me if it was their exact address) - The shipping address matches up with the zip code everything else occurred in. They seem to live in a low-income housing unit in 77033. Problem: Between the address and multiple should-be captures on video, we should have enough leads to gift-wrap this case to HPD, however they have no interest in helping. They basically just tell us an investigator will be assigned to the case sometime next week. By then all of the items will surely be gone, as might the evidence to put these thieves away. Any advice as to how to get the police to do anything or how to find more info on the thieves based on their address? Thinking of trying to call the apartment complex to find out a name for the unit listed. They won't give out the name, of course, so I'd have to find a way to pry that information out.
Tell them you had a box of golden donuts that was part of the items stolen. You'll have the entire force seeking vengeance. In actuality, there are probably too many cases like this already in the pipeline. There's gotta be an enormous backlog for the investigators for them not expediting the research.
Does your friend have insurance? HPD has murders and rapists to find. Typically those have higher priority.
it's probably bad advice so take it with a grain of salt. If the cops don't do anything (which is my experience) then take the shipping address and get some revenge. Send over mariachi bands, encyclopedia salesmans, midget wrestlers, male strippers, pizza delivery, etc. Make sure you send them staggered so they show up about 30 min apart. (something my roommate did to me back in college, lol) Personally I'd probably find out what car they drove by staking out the address.. give that to the donut patrol.
Yeah, they have insurance so the items can hopefully be replaced. Unfortunately the pictures are likely gone - I'm sure they'll destroy/clear out the memory cards before trying to sell the cameras if they haven't already. At this point, I just hope the thieves are caught since so much evidence is already right there. But yes, many other cases are going to have priority over this. Would love to stake out the address and see what car/people live in that unit, but based on Google Maps it doesn't look like an area I want to be caught staking-out in. Yung-T - ha, you're right. Upon re-reading that is what it sounds like.
Another thing you could do is to upload an image to stolencamerafinder Basically it searches the web for any pictures with the same exif information. It's basically like a fingerprint for your camera. So if anyone ever takes a picture and uploads it to the internet.. then you'll be able to identify that it was taken with your camera.
then it's probably the place you're looking for. heh You can still do some malicious stuff but I don't like to be a bad influence. hehe I've been through the same thing and have had the same frustrations. I even had someone empty my car out while I was camping before. Makes me want to go camping with my desert eagle sometimes.
Pretty cool website. Yikes, camping is actually what we had been doing on the trip before we got back. Lots of great Narrows and Angel's Landing pics gone forever.
police will probably do nothing with that kind of break-in. But you can have a field day with the address and names., e.g. craigslist,
Yeah, I've been on whitepages, spokeo, etc. most of the day. Whitepages and Spokeo are actually giving me the same general names -- so I've been doing additional research into those names. Unfortunately I'm not quite sure how reliable those sites are. I know they are pretty good with home-owners but maybe not so great for renters. I searched my own apartment, for example, and the names aren't mine, my roommates, or any of the tenants that lived there right before me (based on the names I always see on the mail I still get). It's a start though, having some names. Macy's (one of the online purchases) gave us the email confirming what they bought and the shipping address, but said they would only give out the phone number and email address to the police -- those would be really nice to have.
I am sorry to hear that. Someone just stole my Ipod out of my car at my apartment complex so i understand your anger on it. The best thing to do is probably gather as much as you can and possibly get a lawyer? since you do have proof you can use that against them... hopefully you don't try and take things into your own hands becuase that never turns out pretty. Good luck to you aand i hope you get your stuff back as well as get those punks off the streets.
All of these vigilante revenge ideas requires you to assume you have found the guilty party. How bad would you feel if you harassed some random person living in a run down apartment complex? If you go the revenge route better make dam sure you got the right person.
I think the furthest I've gone in terms of a vigilante idea was stating that I would hypothetically like to drive near the complex to possibly gather more evidence. I'm not about to run into any random apartments attempting to terrorize people that are criminals and armed (they stole a rifle from another truck that night) lol. And who knows what else they've stolen. These guys weren't exactly hanging out at Christian's Tailgate in the Heights on a Tuesday night, so I'm sure they've driven up to the area to commit burglaries before. Email address and phone numbers on the orders they made and gas station/atm video footage is what I want.
