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> I don't follow the logic.

It's pretty simple.

Many of us live in places where if a neighbor is robbed the chances the robber will come back to the neighborhood again and maybe rob us is several orders of magnitude higher than the chances that anything bad (or even mildly inconvenient) will happen to us if he give the police all information we have that might help identify the robber, and where police will in fact use that information to try to catch the robber.




In most jurisdictions in the US cops won't even investigate a burglary unless somebody gets hurt. They simply have too many higher priorities.

Yes if you can give them video of the bad guy that helps, but only a little. They now have the burglar's face, but that doesn't give them the burglar's address. Maybe your camera got the license plate number of the burglar's car? Won't help: Burglars mostly use stolen plates nowadays because so many people have cameras.

Your best hope is for the burglar to actually hurt one of your neighbors, or the burglary wave becomes so egregious that elected officials notice and put pressure on the cops.

Cameras are not magic crime-stopping devices: They still require police to take action, and when police are motivated to take action, cameras are useful. For simple property crimes which the cops won't investigate, cameras don't do much. You're better off making your home a harder target with heavier doors, bars on the windows, etc because those things encourage the burglars to move on to the next house. Cameras don't do that. Why? Because the burglars know everything I've written above.




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