Seeing With or Without Visible Lighting

Over the holiday, one of our team members was approached by a large retailer who had been burglarized and "snatch and grabbed" three times in one week in Vermont. The retailer was begging for help, expecting that the thefts would continue until a suspect was apprehended. However, the retailer was struggling with poor indoor lighting, overview cameras with too wide fields of view, and a few other physical and electronic security challenges.

Fortunately, after our review of the video, we found that the person doing the daytime "snatch and grabs" happened to be wearing the same exact shoes as the masked nighttime burglar. When police confronted the suspect with the video footage of the matching shoes and a clear-as-day snapshot of his face in the store, he admitted to all three crimes.

Honestly, the retailer got very lucky because there was only one frame that somewhat clearly showed the matching Adidas shoes in the nighttime IR camera footage. The image on the left below was captured with an indoor IR camera at night in the dark. The image on the right was captured during normal store hours in full lighting.

Now, the organization is taking steps to improve physical and electronic security measures to prevent similar post-incident investigation limitations in the future.