Baltimore police say they've received 27 video doorbell theft reports since Sept. 20.
These thieves may not be the brightest lights in the criminal universe.
Baltimore police are reporting a brazen string of home thefts in which people are walking up to doorbell video devices and stealing them on camera.
Since Sept. 20, the Baltimore Police Department has taken 27 theft reports from residents near Patterson Park.
And the thieves apparently care not one bit that their faces are being recorded by the cameras.
“Guy just went and pulled it out,” resident Tom Prats told WMAR-TV.
Prats and his neighbors have shared their videos showing their doorbell cameras being ripped out.
“I saw a group of kids and then I saw like a hand, and then I didn’t see anything. So I tried to open it back up again, and then it kept saying video not found,” said Stacie Forrest, whose Ring camera was pulled from the front of her home this month.
Her neighbor's house was hit too, she said.
“It looked like it was a game. I walk every day and was walking back from Patterson Park and noticed that ... I counted four people putting up new doorbells,” she said.
Ring has a replacement program for owners of the device who submit a copy of the police report within 14 days of a theft.
But Forrest told the station she is most annoyed by the fact that people came to her home and stole a security device she'd paid good money for.
“There’s just something about you thinking you can take something that I worked for. That’s the thing with me. You thinking you can take it, OK ... you can take this ass whooping too because that’s what I was ready to do and I’m just tired of it. Just tired of it,” she said.
