By Dan Parker
A $20 webcam has proved to be a priceless piece of crime fighting equipment for a Wellington man who was able to raise the alarm when he saw his house being burgled live on the internet.
Jake Briggs was busy at work when he noticed something was wrong at home.
He'd received an email notification from his home-made security system that there was an unknown intruder in his house.
Initially Mr Briggs wasn’t too concerned.
“My immediate thought was, ‘Is my partner at home?’ and then I thought, ‘That's not my partner, that's a guy,’ so I asked my workmate what I should do and he said dial 111, so I did.”
It turned out Mr Briggs was watching his home being burgled, a crime which came to a premature end when the bungling burglar discovered he was being watched.
“He scarpered when he saw it, so he can't be that dumb,” Mr Briggs says.
But the burglar was dumb enough to provide a clear mug shot for police and it didn’t take long for them to pursue him.
Police officers with dogs turned up to the house minutes after the burglary, they picked up the scent and followed the suspect to a group of shops. But that's where the physical trail ended.
However with the photo on record there is still hope that he will be caught.
The system which took the pictures is the combination of a webcam, free email notification software and the programming smarts of Mr Briggs.
He replicated a system which AlphaNZ professionally installs, and spokesperson David Roche says is the future of home security.
“The benefit with surveillance is that you can actually see what’s going on so if you do get a false positive, where it may be triggered by a cat, you're actually able to login to see what's going on to hopefully avoid a call out fee from a security company,” he explains.
The other benefit for Briggs is hard evidence. He's been uploading the pictures of the burglar to social networking sites in the hope someone recognises his face.
3 News