Break-in on Farley

[Gabe Harley]

Hi all,

Our neighbors house on Farley was broken in to last night through the back door. They were not home.

Or houses are on Farley between Elsie and Montecito on the creek side.

There was a suspicious car parked in front of our house for a few hours in the night (~2am-5am). See still shot below.

If anyone else had an issue or has video of the street showing that car, or anything else that could be related, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Gabe

[Mark Lakata]

I looked at my security camera (on Montecito) and found this one "white" car circle the block 4 times this morning.  

There is a "white" car in your security camera still, in the background behind that tree (is this the corner of Montecito and Farley?), and that car looks similar to one that I captured in my camera on Montecito.

( None of these photos is enough to incriminate anybody though, and the police are unlikely to do anything. I've had my car broken into, and my neighbor had his entire trailer stolen, and the police haven't done anything with the security camera footage ).

-Mark

00:22 driving towards Farley

00:59 Coming from Farley

01:43 Towards Farley

03:55 Towards Farley

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[Nathan Laredo]

I think this is the same car that appeared in front of my house (on a different street) on april 8th at 3:07am that I already sent MVPD this video for:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l_2bqTeemcRmXS2Hz5VqZakKMn6aZxrS/view?usp=sharing&t=17

Unfortunately a scheduled software update interrupted the recording, so the second part of it after the software update is here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lcR-LN9O-7RLbRvFLWk9FdLco2p1_sR7/view?usp=sharing

MVPD told me the dark car was reported stolen outside of mountain view and recovered later that day.

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[David F Watson]

Mark, The first two appear to be visitors to your neighbor

12:22

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nzxnUaJZymbxfMHpfZ3jzuqQfQaROkTo/view?usp=sharing

12:59

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BelnFHuq6gmEca2tjwI4kjIX_SUwO6QR/view?usp=sharing

#3 is clearly a different car: 1:43am

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-doY7Nln49rJgYgzo5kQ3EHZJ2KgYJxR/view?usp=sharing

as is #4: 3:55am

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bao3pTBTGBTLlo8ax9H_nxVsKvSKeOJD/view?usp=sharing

Hope that's helpful, let me know if there's any other times I should check that would be useful to anyone.

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[Sydney Lin]

+@tenn...@gmail.com FYI

I don't have any camera but one house on Elsie had a break-in attempt last week. 

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[Persi Shafto]

Hi Neighbors,

Thank you for the insights.

We were only gone overnight and this happened.  The thieves broke into our house through the back French doors. They initially attempted to shatter the glass by throwing a brick at it twice, leaving two visible markings. However, this method likely proved too loud, so they instead pried the door frame open around the glass to gain entry.  We have a Ring camera in the front of the house and proved to be insufficient. Do you have any recommendations on security cameras? Also, we (Sha...@gmail.com and per...@gmail.com) appreciate being added to the google group. 

Thank you again!

Persi Shafto

On Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 12:59 PM Tennille <tenn...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi All,

Our house at 1788 Elsie had one pane of a sliding glass door broken just after sunset on 4/10/2025.  They were likely watching the home and left as we arrived to settling glass from the exterior broken pane and the interior pane with marks showing an attempt to break it, but intact.  

We don't have great video from our neighbors as most of them are configured to only catch their own yards, not the sidewalk or the street.

We also had a still photo of a suspicious car that a neighbor took (black infinity G37), plate 6PNA787. 

Would love an invite to join this google group.

Thanks,

Tennille

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Tennille Christensen
Techlawgarden.com
@10Niel

[Persi Shafto]

Hah!  That is interesting.

Are we dealing with the same group of poachers or multiple groups targeting our neighborhood?

Persi

On Wed, Apr 16, 2025 at 12:21 PM Tennille <tenn...@gmail.com> wrote:

Interesting. Ours was a completely different MO. Even though it was the same night, seems like a very different approach.

For us, they used a glass breaking tool that's essentially silent and leaves little round marks (the tool you can buy to break your windshield or car window if you are flipped). It worked on the outside pane but didn't finish the job on the inside pane.

They also waited 'til just after sunset. And clearly had a lookout who told the glass breaker to stop and leave when we got home.

Tennille Christensen
Techlawgarden.com
@10Niel

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Persi Shafto

[Luna C]

Sorry to see our beloved neighborhoods go through these incidents. This is the 3rd or 4th break-in that I've heard within the last month :(

If you have not already, please be sure to submit a police report

It will give the police more data and reason to patrol our area more often to deter these crimes from happening

or better yet, catch them!

I am looking into the Eufy security cameras (no subscription needed) since they seem to have pretty good resolution based on seeing neighbors sharing their videos. If anyone has any particular feedback on the models, please share :)

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[Gabe Harley]

Oh geez.  They are definitely targeting this neighborhood. 

Do you have the picture or license plate of the sedan to share so we can all be on the look out?  

They need to be caught asap. 

Gabe

On Apr 19, 2025, at 5:22 PM, Tennille <tenn...@gmail.com> wrote:



Another break in happened last Thursday at 8:19 PM at 1793 Elsie Ave.  We caught the whole thing on video -- white sedan, rims, 3 men through the side gate, broke glass with a tool, out in 6 minutes.  We've submitted all our video/info to the police.

[Michael Woods]

should we set up more "preventative" cameras as an "automated neighborhood watch" sort of thing?

it wouldn't take much... just a few hardwired cameras at the major entrance streets to the neighborhood... (farley and central, montecito and burgoyne, etc) positioned to clearly capture license plate views, combined with continuous recording and a 24-48 hour storage buffer for lookup (or something similar...).

i would pitch in to help fund a project like that...

-Michael

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[Mark Lakata]

Sounds good. I just ordered one of these, recommended by NYT Wire Cutter. I'm going to mount it to monitor Montecito street traffic. It's battery powered.  It's supposed to be able to capture license plates, which my current security cameras can't do.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHSK6M21

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[David F Watson]

I’ll be interested to hear if a battery powered one like that can catch license plates on moving cars. Let us know

[Nathan Laredo]

If you want full time license plate reading, even with one of these Poe++ powered monsters it's still not 100% accurate: https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/uvc-ai-lpr

I personally have multiple of the much smaller UniFi G5 bullet cameras that don't do license plate reading and are much more affordable and MVPD was impressed with the quality of video I shared with them through past events.

mvpd actually has 12 license plate reading cameras of their own around mountain view, and this article from last year shows the 24 planned locations:
https://www.mv-voice.com/city-government/2024/05/29/mountain-view-approves-automatic-license-plate-cameras-despite-community-objections/

Here is the transparency dashboard for current cameras in operation:
https://transparency.flocksafety.com/mountain-view-ca-pd

And the source of that transparency report suggests MVPD is using these cameras:
https://www.flocksafety.com/devices/lpr-cameras

[Tennille]

We got the full video of last Thursday's break in on Elsie at 8:19 PM (same MO as our break in, just after sunset, side yard access, glass break with a tool for entry).  My husband will be uploading a link to the video in a new thread on this group.  

BOLO for a white sedan (probably a nissan altima?) with aftermarket rims and thin tires. Driver plus 3 men who went in via the side gate, and were in and out in 6 minutes.  We did not get plates as our cameras face the house where they pulled up.

[Mark Lakata]

I installed that battery powered Tapo C425 camera I mentioned below, and it is not good enough to capture license plate numbers.  I had the camera mounted on a city light pole, looking down the street, which is about the best location you can use, but license plates were 100% unreadable.  It does have good wifi range though and the image is a decent 2K. I doubt the quoted 300 day battery lifetime, especially if it triggers on every car that drives by.

This photo is zoomed in to a random truck that drove by, about 20 feet away.