Security cameras can help with more than just keeping your home safe

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) - According to ADT, having a surveillance camera reduces crime by at least 50%. Those cameras can also help officers identify suspects if a crime does occur.

“First of all it’s unfortunate that we have to talk about this topic,” said Dustin Morrison, investigations captain with the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office.

According to Security, in October 2023, 44% of Americans had packages stolen from their front door. That’s more than 145 million people, and owning a door camera, while it might not deter the suspect, footage can help identify the thief.

“When I first started, we’d have an incident, we’d go door to door, there wasn’t a lot of cameras. Now in today’s day and age, every residence, most residents, have a camera on the outside, there’s security cameras on businesses. So there’s a ton of footage for us to gather in these investigations,” Morrison continued.

Video footage can also help in more serious crimes, such as hit-and-run accidents, or shootings.

“Well, it can help us identify a suspect, or an offender, or maybe a witness. We may have things through our discussions over the course of investigation that were just not quite sure about, and we may get some video footage to either confirm or deny some of things we might be hearing in the investigation,” stated Morrison.

After footage is acquired, if law enforcement doesn’t have a lead, they often share images to social media, where the public might be able to help with identifications, much like what happened in recent shootings.

“In that case, we were able to use security cameras to identify our suspect, or at least capture the photo of our suspect and share that on social media. We also had an incident which we responded to a report of a gunshot heard in a neighborhood. Within moments we had law enforcement converging on that area, we were able to locate video and we were able to recover video that actually captured the shooting,” said Brendyn Medina, community relations for the Rapid City Police Department.

Some other things home and business owners can do to help deter crime is to have well-lit areas, and even have signs stating the building has video surveillance.

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