Suspicious activity UPDATE page 4 Been to court

[oukie]

Today 11/10/15, 14:00

Caught a chap in my garden who had climbed over my fence,

He was looking through the window of one of my garages, I actually saw him on our CCTV.

I confronted him, he got a bit of a fright when I announced my presence
I basically asked him what he thought he was doing and he replied I like classic cars.

I told him to get the curse word out of my garden, he climbed back over the fence.
He was busily apologising, saying stuff like oh sorry I thought my mate mossy lived here, this was pure BS, he was having a look and he was well caught.

He was late 40's early 50's about 5'8" to 5'10" ish wearing dark blue/black coveral trousers with a very new looking high viz jacket and a wooly hat.

He drives a Black Ford Focus, the 
registration number is

SL54 TAU.

Police informed, my wife and three kids were in the house at the time.

Just a warning to any Scottish members, especially in fife or the east central area to be on guard.

Chris.

[oukie]

Just an update, the police, two female officer's actually came round took a statement, told me that they had put a marker on the car for other officers to keep an eye out for it, they told me that the registered keeper was known to them and they will be keeping an eye out for him.

Reading between the lines from what they said to me he is a bit of naughty boy, but because I confronted him he was less likely to return.

Will wait and see.

[chubz]

whats a 40-50 year old doing climbing over fences ? lol

strange behaviour indeed

[oukie]

Yeah it a bit worrying, was the car thing just a smoke screen for a peeping Tom type scenario, I've three daughter's although only two were in at that time, not sleeping well tonight, been out and checked my garages more times than I can remember this evening.

[oukie]

Well had, CID round with some pictures for me to look at, anyway I picked him out of twelve pictures although it turns out he is actually only in his early 30's not his late 40's, this I was shocked at but he is a well known thief, who has a serious drug problem hence why he looks 20 years older lol.

Really impressed with the police tbh, acted very quickly, looks like they've got him bang to rights, they have lots going on with this chap. So more nails in his coffin, glad I caught him.

[Soopahfly]

He's probably on the look out for tools and bikes. Stuff that's easy to punt on.
Still wants his hands chopping off.

[paul99]

Time for:

www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-Carpet-Gripper-1-53m-8-Pack/p/158066

but I didn't tell you

[lewis]

Good work from the police. I've got blinds on my garage windows to stop undesirables seeing all my stuff.

[oukie]

I did think of blinds but then thought in retro and decided net curtains

[dodgerover]

Personally I would go for bars and sheet steel shutters for the windows, you can always paint nets on them!

[igor]

Oct 12, 2015 12:11:02 GMT oukie said:

Well had, CID round with some pictures for me to look at, anyway I picked him out of twelve pictures although it turns out he is actually only in his early 30's not his late 40's, this I was shocked at but he is a well known thief, who has a serious drug problem hence why he looks 20 years older lol.

Really impressed with the police tbh, acted very quickly, looks like they've got him bang to rights, they have lots going on with this chap. So more nails in his coffin, glad I caught him.

Your police seem much more efficient than ours. I had occasion recently to call the police to sort out a mob of drunken youths causing a disturbance next door and the emergency number took me to a big city call centre 1000 miles away manned by someone with little geographic knowledge and a don't give a rat's ring hole attitude. After a pointless discussion with him I called our local cop at home. He couldn't come himself because he'd been drinking but he told me if no-one turned up within half an hour I should call him back and he'd sort something out. Until a few years ago we could call our local station after hours and even if it was un-manned it would automatically divert to the nearest permanently manned station which for us is only about 60 miles away. They call this progress. Yeah, right.

[dodgerover]

If you happend to be doing some carpentry and left a piece of wood with nails stuck up where he landed when he jumped the fence it would be very unfortunate. Pallets are good for this as they use ring nails

[oukie]

Oct 12, 2015 19:40:39 GMT dodgerover said:

Personally I would go for bars and sheet steel shutters for the windows, you can always paint nets on them!

I think I'm gonna go for some heavy duty steel weld mesh, mainly so light can get in etc but also pretty tuff.

[Dan_betG]

worryingly, he was snooping round your garden in a high-vis jacket....

[Battles]

Oct 13, 2015 12:24:18 GMT Dan_betG said:

worryingly, he was snooping round your garden in a high-vis jacket....

The hi-viz jacket is super-common, it's supposed to make it okay for crooks and creepers to be in bushes or in lanes between houses or looking over fences and the like. If anyone asks they can be like "Oh, I work for such and such utilities and I'm looking for one of our manhole covers" or whatever. For most people, that would be enough to pretty much forget about them. It's hiding in plain sight.

I occasionally notice in the papers that plod are appealing for more information after a BT van or a Virgin Media van or whatever has been broken into and the uniform or paperwork has been stolen. The reports usually have notes about watching for bogus engineer visits.

[oukie]

Yeah, he was pretty smartly dressed for a thieving junkie, but that's his m,o. According to the police anyway. Just like Battles said it's very convenient to just say, oh I'm looking for man hole or some such, the Police told me they have problems with people blagging there way into old folks house's talking about gas leaks etc always wearing a high viz, as this seems to make them look more 'official'

[oukie]

Just to let you guys picture my house and garden etc, I have no neighbours, I live next to an unnamed road and surrounded by fields, he had no reason to be there other than dodgyness. He Just didn't tie the farm and the house and my farm has one of the camera's faces right to my second drive and garages, but it was his car that I spotted on the main camera, I went to investigate and walked into my garden from the rear, he was obviously keeping a look toward the house but when I appeared from behind him he pooped his pants big styles. there's no way in, even counting the drive as I have looked double gates as part of the complete fenced in perimeter.

[Battles]

At least you're set up with CCTV and whatnot and now Plod are aware.
Hopefully that will be the last of it.

A guy I know has a smallholding near Kinross, up a huuuge long driveway that goes only to his place and he doesn't have CCTV though he's always getting cars and vans driving right up to the top and turning and going back down. He's not short of a few quid but just won't get CCTV.

[oukie]

Best couple of hundred quid I've spent in a while tbh, apart from this the only use the cctv was in proving to a contract waste firm that no they blooming haven't emptied the skip AGAIN , no matter if there driver says he has, he came had a fag and then curse word off.

Deffo worth it, got four cameras, ir equipped, recording to a hard drive, only down side camera's arnt that great quality at distance.

[Battles]

I know you might not want to discuss it publicly but would you mind PMing me the details of the set up?
We're looking at getting CCTV at our shared workshop but the budget (less than five hundred or so) systems we've looked don't seem to be able to catch a registration plate or the details of a face at the sort of distances we'd need.

We'd need to have the cameras up on the edge of the roof, about 20 feet up. There are security lights that come on so IR might not be required.

A couple of my customers have CCTV fitted (either eBay stuff or Maplin stuff) and when they showed me the quality I had to sort of pretend to be impressed but I couldn't help noticing that the cameras couldn't pick up the reg plates on the cars parked outside, like 20 feet from the camera. It was just a blurry mess.