Stolen in Thousand Oaks, CA: Canon 30D s/n 0820502625

slattts

My house got burgled Wednesday 4/18. Along with the 30D (and unrelated other valuables) they got: Canon 50mm f1.4, Canon 28-135 IS, Metz Mecablitz 54-MZ3 flash, corded shutter remote with cord modification, and a crappy tripod. Please do not buy 'hot' gear, it encourages thievery...

DavidTO

slattts wrote:

My house got burgled Wednesday 4/18. Along with the 30D (and unrelated other valuables) they got: Canon 50mm f1.4, Canon 28-135 IS, Metz Mecablitz 54-MZ3 flash, corded shutter remote with cord modification, and a crappy tripod. Please do not buy 'hot' gear, it encourages thievery...

Whoa. We live in one of the top 3 safest cities in the nation, that ain't supposed to happen! Can you tell us what area you're in, specifically? Like the major cross streets?

dogwood

slattts wrote:

My house got burgled Wednesday 4/18. Along with the 30D (and unrelated other valuables) they got: Canon 50mm f1.4, Canon 28-135 IS, Metz Mecablitz 54-MZ3 flash, corded shutter remote with cord modification, and a crappy tripod. Please do not buy 'hot' gear, it encourages thievery...

Sorry to hear about your loss and the icky, scary feelings you're going to be dealing with from the burglary. Been there twice myself now!

Just curious (so I can be better prepared), how did the burglar/burglars get into the house? In my case, it was basement window they broke. I put steel grid over the windows after that, and the next break-in was the garage where I lost a very nice bicycle that was locked to the workbench (the burglars climbed a fence, broke into an outside side door to the garage, and used my own tools to pry the bench apart to swipe the bike). The police told me to paint over glass windows on the garage door so no one could see in. And to put a seperate padlock on the garage door (it's has an electric garage door opener they were able to use to exit the garage).

As I mentioned in another thread, theft prevention is always important, so I'm just curious if the police gave you any tips that could help the rest of us prevent this kind of thing?

navigator72

Wow
I'm sorry to hear about your buglary. I read an article recently about stolen items showing up on Ebay. If I were you I'd check it out every so often.

jeff lapoint

navigator72 wrote:

I'm sorry to hear about your buglary. I read an article recently about stolen items showing up on Ebay. If I were you I'd check it out every so often.

Sorry to hear about your loss. It is smart that you have the SN though and that got me thinking: is there an online database of stolen camera SN's? Sure would be nice to have and would certainly discourage unknown purchase of shady gear on stand up places like dgrin. Of course I could forsee tricky verification issues and the problem of the forum acting as a sort of watchdog...but maybe a user maintained page of SN's could be helpful to the online community.

-jeff

pat.kane

jeff lapoint wrote:

... is there an online database of stolen camera SN's?

http://www.photo.net/neighbor/registry/

slattts

DavidTO wrote:

Whoa. We live in one of the top 3 safest cities in the nation, that ain't supposed to happen! Can you tell us what area you're in, specifically? Like the major cross streets?

Thanks all for the concern. Yes, we do live in a safe city - normally I have few concerns about security but I guess now we feel a little differently. I used to leave my keys and wallet in my car in the garage overnight all the time! But felt that was tempting fate a bit. The thief(ves) tried to pry open a back patio glass door. The lock wouldn't give so the strain on the frame caused the tempered glass to shatter into 2,592,837 pieces - I know this number because I cleaned them all up. I have my suspicions - local kid in trouble with the substances - but am leaving it to the sheriffs and my insurance at this point. This took place in broad daylight as they say, the missus was out for a couple of hours at most. Oh well, guess I have to settle for new gear

slattts

slattts wrote:

Thanks all for the concern. Yes, we do live in a safe city - normally I have few concerns about security but I guess now we feel a little differently. I used to leave my keys and wallet in my car in the garage overnight all the time! But felt that was tempting fate a bit. The thief(ves) tried to pry open a back patio glass door. The lock wouldn't give so the strain on the frame caused the tempered glass to shatter into 2,592,837 pieces - I know this number because I cleaned them all up. I have my suspicions - local kid in trouble with the substances - but am leaving it to the sheriffs and my insurance at this point. This took place in broad daylight as they say, the missus was out for a couple of hours at most. Oh well, guess I have to settle for new gear

Oh and by the way, the closest main streets: Wendy and Borchard. Lock up yez stuffs!

Nikolai

Sorry, neighbour!
As David said, it shouldn't happen here. But I guess it does whether we like it or not.
Look for ebay listings for a next couple of weeks. If the thieves are dumb enough, they may try to use that channel...
My prayers are with ya!

noeltykay

Geeez!! I saw your post on AW and I had no idea you live in So.Cal...I will keep a lookout on CL and eBay...damn!

dogwood

Nikolai wrote:

Look for ebay listings for a next couple of weeks. If the thieves are dumb enough, they may try to use that channel...

Craigslist is quite common too-- you don't have to register or anything like on ebay.

Thanks for the details-- not much you can do about a broken sliding glass door except put bars over it. And who wants to do that?

Incidentally, the police in my area say daytime residential burglaries on weekdays are pretty common since thieves know that people are off at work.

zappbrannigan

Try this site

www.registeryourcamera.com

lots of SN's there.

vintagemxr

We had a series of burglaries in our otherwise peaceful neighborhood last year. First ones I'd heard about in the eight years I'd lived there. Everyone immediately freaked and bought security doors and alarm systems.

Not wanting to spend a fortune I went on-line, bought a GE Simon XT home security wireless system, did the install myself, and signed up for a national monitoring service for $9.95 a month. None of it was real difficult to do, just took some time and planning. We feel much better now when we're away from home or if my wife is home by herself.

Doug

ashby

vintagemxr wrote:

We had a series of burglaries in our otherwise peaceful neighborhood last year. First ones I'd heard about in the eight years I'd lived there. Everyone immediately freaked and bought security doors and alarm systems.

Not wanting to spend a fortune I went on-line, bought a GE Simon XT home security wireless system, did the install myself, and signed up for a national monitoring service for $9.95 a month. None of it was real difficult to do, just took some time and planning. We feel much better now when we're away from home or if my wife is home by herself.

Doug

What monitoring service?