At noon on Friday, March 15, a burglar
entered our home in Kaaawa, Hawaii.
It was one of 10 burglaries reported
during the first two weeks of March in
Sector 4 of the Honolulu Police
Department’s Windward Oahu district, a
relatively thinly populated country
district running from Kaaawa to Kawela
Bay.
The crime itself wasn’t anything special,
just a run-of-the-mill burglary, in
which someone broke in and “went
shopping in our house.” It’s something
that happens on Oahu 5,000 times or
more in a given year.
But “our” burglary was different because
a hidden camera captured several
reasonably good digital photos of the
burglar, caught in the act as he went
through our house, and I turned to
social media to identify and track him
down. It led to a wild three-day
experience in which the new world of
technology and social media took on the
old problem of everyday crime.
Smile! You’re Now a Crime Statistic
It’s Friday. The end of a long week. We
arrived home in the late afternoon. I
was first through the front door, and
immediately saw that the sliding door
out to the back deck was open. The cats,
normally inside cats, were lounging
around on the deck. It took only a few
seconds to realize this meant someone
had broken in.
The immediate reaction is a sinking
feeling, an anticipatory sense of loss.
You don’t yet know what was taken, but
you can imagine what it might include.
And the whole process of being
burglarized is doubly depressing, because
after the crime and the initial sense of
loss comes the bureaucracy, adding up
the dollars and cents, dealing with the
police, with your insurance company,
then facing the decisions about what to
replace, and what to just try to forget
about. And then there are the “what
if’s.” What if we had installed an
alarm? What if I had stayed home that
day? What if we had hidden that prized
item away. What if… The self-
recriminations can drag you down as
much as the crime itself.
As we went through the house, the places
that had been searched were pretty
obvious. Drawers pulled open, containers
tossed around. It makes you alternately
angry, then depressed. Then it leaves
you just sort of empty.
We should have called the police
immediately, but it was Friday night, we
were scheduled to have dinner with
friends, and the burglar — along with
our stuff — was long gone. So we waited
until the next morning to call HPD. I
doubt it made us great company that
evening.
A Photo Finish
This isn’t the first time we’ve been
burglarized since moving to Kaaawa 26
years ago. After someone walked off
with a laptop computer in 2007, I
installed a small, wireless camera that
automatically starts taking pictures
when it detects motion in the room, and
uploads them to a secret spot in the
“cloud.” The camera requires a wireless
network to connect to the internet, but
doesn’t need to be connected to a
computer to function.
Once the initial shock and depression
wore off, I remembered the camera.
Before long, I retrieved the photos, each
automatically time and date stamped,
and got a good sense of what had
happened.
The burglar first appeared on camera
about 11:52 a.m., just minutes before
noon. Although burglary is usually a
young man’s crime, this burglar looked
to be around 50. He wore dirty jeans —
as if fresh from work on a construction
site — a gray t-shirt and athletic shoes.
Wrap-around sunglasses were pushed up
on his head. To avoid leaving finger
prints, he wore makeshift gloves made
out of plastic bags that were taped over
his hands. Once inside the house, he
moved quickly and silently through the
living room and kitchen, then moved
down the hall to our bedroom, emerging
several minutes later carrying a pillow
case holding items he had taken. Then
he made another quick look around the
living room, stopping to dump a small
bowl of coins — several months of
accumulated pocket change — into the
pillow case, then added a camera he
spotted on a table across the room. And,
finally, he made his exit out to the deck,
graciously leaving the door open for the
cats to enjoy. He was quick and
efficient, in and out of the house within
ten minutes. None of our neighbors
noticed anything unusual. And the cats
didn’t say a word.
After first retrieving the digital photos,
I printed a couple and walked the
nearby streets, asking neighbors if they
recognized the man. One thought the
person looked familiar. I took note.
Others took long looks, then shook their
heads. Nothing.
So I sat down and did two things. First,
I prepared a 4-by-6-inch photo of the
burglar to pass out and post in the
neighborhood, and sent it to Costco to
have several dozen digital prints made.
And then I posted the photo and a brief
description of what happened on my own
personal website, as well as on a website
featuring occasional news about Kaaawa,
with additional links posted on Twitter
and Facebook.
I was stunned by the result. Even before
we had a chance to pick up the printed
photographs, the pictures of the burglar
at work, and my call to help identify
him, had gone viral. Twitter seems to
have been effective in getting the word
to the news media and to key opinion
leaders, who then retweeted details to
their own networks. But Facebook seems
to have had by far the most reach, as
people saw the information and reposted
it, quickly taking this from a local quest
to a search with national reach.
How effective was social media? Here’s
one indicator. The number of page views
on my blog jumped from a daily average
of about 2,000 to 58,857 on Sunday, and
another 17,818 on Monday, undoubtedly
generated by the reposting of
information with links back to my
original post. That’s a pretty dramatic
reach, achieved in just a matter of
hours. And it made the difference.
Mainstream news media then picked up
the story, spurred on by the online
response the issue had been getting. And
the broadcast news coverage, in turn,
reinforced the social media presence.
A phone call came in early Sunday
morning from Las Vegas, where several
former Hawaii residents had compared
notes and said they believed the burglar
was a Hauula man. They provided his
name as well as a good description of
where he lives. Phone calls, emails, and
online comments continued throughout
the day, and into the evening, with quite
a number of other people pointing to the
same Hauula resident as the person in
the photo. Several other names came up
as well, including a former Kaaawa
resident recently seen surfing nearby.
Case Solved!
It was social media that broke the case
open.
Late Sunday afternoon, just 24-hours
after I first posted the burglar’s photo
online, a man called and, without
identifying himself, said he knew the
person in the photo. He said he wanted
to talk to him before saying more. I
encouraged him to call me back any
time, but wasn’t sure if this was any
more solid than the other leads that
had been offered.
He called back a few hour later. He was,
I learned, one of the burglar’s brothers.
He had been alerted to the photograph
by a daughter living on the mainland,
who saw it on Facebook and thought she
recognized her uncle. With the
photograph getting such broad exposure,
it would have been hard for the family to
look the other way. And, thankfully,
they didn’t.
While crowdsourcing made a tremendous
contribution to getting out the word
about the search for the burglar, it
wasn’t as successful at making the
actual identification. The burglar, as it
turns out, was not the Hauula man
mentioned most often by those online.
Instead, it was the former Kaaawa
resident, identified by just a couple of
people who seemed to be swimming
against the tide. He was someone who
had done a lot of work as a
neighborhood handyman back around
2002, and who we had hired back then to
do repairs on our deck. We later
learned, according to rumors circulating
in the neighborhood, that he might not
be a novice when it comes to the art of
the burglary. And now he had come
back, after more than a decade.
Just before 9 p.m. on Sunday night, I
was standing in our driveway, in the
darkness, meeting with the burglar’s
brother. He said the family had
confronted the man, who admitted to
the burglary. He then reached into his
truck and presented me with a dark
pillowcase which, on later examination,
was filled with almost everything that
had been stolen. A few items, those with
any gold content, had already been
pawned, but he said the family would do
their best to retrieve and return those
items as well.
I believe the man’s brother was
genuinely humbled and deeply pained by
the experience, and was telling the
honest truth when he said the family is
now trying to “do the right thing.” He
said the family had been trying to
support their brother as he dealt with
drug dependence and past criminal
charges. It’s a struggle many local
families will relate to, I’m sure. But
what is the “right thing” under the
circumstances, for the family, for the
burglar, for the victims, and for the
community? I don’t pretend to know.
It’s something we’ll all be grappling with
going forward.
We were obviously very lucky to solve the
crime in a timely fashion, and also to
get most of our stolen property back. But
technology, such as our small security
camera, combined with the long reach of
social media, obviously provides new ways
of responding to routine crimes of this
kind. A small self-installed camera
obviously won’t provide as much
protection as a commercial alarm
system, and neither can provide absolute
security. But it doesn’t cost much and,
as this has shown, can be quite
effective. That said, I repeat–we were
very lucky. Your mileage may vary.
entered our home in Kaaawa, Hawaii.
It was one of 10 burglaries reported
during the first two weeks of March in
Sector 4 of the Honolulu Police
Department’s Windward Oahu district, a
relatively thinly populated country
district running from Kaaawa to Kawela
Bay.
The crime itself wasn’t anything special,
just a run-of-the-mill burglary, in
which someone broke in and “went
shopping in our house.” It’s something
that happens on Oahu 5,000 times or
more in a given year.
But “our” burglary was different because
a hidden camera captured several
reasonably good digital photos of the
burglar, caught in the act as he went
through our house, and I turned to
social media to identify and track him
down. It led to a wild three-day
experience in which the new world of
technology and social media took on the
old problem of everyday crime.
Smile! You’re Now a Crime Statistic
It’s Friday. The end of a long week. We
arrived home in the late afternoon. I
was first through the front door, and
immediately saw that the sliding door
out to the back deck was open. The cats,
normally inside cats, were lounging
around on the deck. It took only a few
seconds to realize this meant someone
had broken in.
The immediate reaction is a sinking
feeling, an anticipatory sense of loss.
You don’t yet know what was taken, but
you can imagine what it might include.
And the whole process of being
burglarized is doubly depressing, because
after the crime and the initial sense of
loss comes the bureaucracy, adding up
the dollars and cents, dealing with the
police, with your insurance company,
then facing the decisions about what to
replace, and what to just try to forget
about. And then there are the “what
if’s.” What if we had installed an
alarm? What if I had stayed home that
day? What if we had hidden that prized
item away. What if… The self-
recriminations can drag you down as
much as the crime itself.
As we went through the house, the places
that had been searched were pretty
obvious. Drawers pulled open, containers
tossed around. It makes you alternately
angry, then depressed. Then it leaves
you just sort of empty.
We should have called the police
immediately, but it was Friday night, we
were scheduled to have dinner with
friends, and the burglar — along with
our stuff — was long gone. So we waited
until the next morning to call HPD. I
doubt it made us great company that
evening.
A Photo Finish
This isn’t the first time we’ve been
burglarized since moving to Kaaawa 26
years ago. After someone walked off
with a laptop computer in 2007, I
installed a small, wireless camera that
automatically starts taking pictures
when it detects motion in the room, and
uploads them to a secret spot in the
“cloud.” The camera requires a wireless
network to connect to the internet, but
doesn’t need to be connected to a
computer to function.
Once the initial shock and depression
wore off, I remembered the camera.
Before long, I retrieved the photos, each
automatically time and date stamped,
and got a good sense of what had
happened.
The burglar first appeared on camera
about 11:52 a.m., just minutes before
noon. Although burglary is usually a
young man’s crime, this burglar looked
to be around 50. He wore dirty jeans —
as if fresh from work on a construction
site — a gray t-shirt and athletic shoes.
Wrap-around sunglasses were pushed up
on his head. To avoid leaving finger
prints, he wore makeshift gloves made
out of plastic bags that were taped over
his hands. Once inside the house, he
moved quickly and silently through the
living room and kitchen, then moved
down the hall to our bedroom, emerging
several minutes later carrying a pillow
case holding items he had taken. Then
he made another quick look around the
living room, stopping to dump a small
bowl of coins — several months of
accumulated pocket change — into the
pillow case, then added a camera he
spotted on a table across the room. And,
finally, he made his exit out to the deck,
graciously leaving the door open for the
cats to enjoy. He was quick and
efficient, in and out of the house within
ten minutes. None of our neighbors
noticed anything unusual. And the cats
didn’t say a word.
After first retrieving the digital photos,
I printed a couple and walked the
nearby streets, asking neighbors if they
recognized the man. One thought the
person looked familiar. I took note.
Others took long looks, then shook their
heads. Nothing.
So I sat down and did two things. First,
I prepared a 4-by-6-inch photo of the
burglar to pass out and post in the
neighborhood, and sent it to Costco to
have several dozen digital prints made.
And then I posted the photo and a brief
description of what happened on my own
personal website, as well as on a website
featuring occasional news about Kaaawa,
with additional links posted on Twitter
and Facebook.
I was stunned by the result. Even before
we had a chance to pick up the printed
photographs, the pictures of the burglar
at work, and my call to help identify
him, had gone viral. Twitter seems to
have been effective in getting the word
to the news media and to key opinion
leaders, who then retweeted details to
their own networks. But Facebook seems
to have had by far the most reach, as
people saw the information and reposted
it, quickly taking this from a local quest
to a search with national reach.
How effective was social media? Here’s
one indicator. The number of page views
on my blog jumped from a daily average
of about 2,000 to 58,857 on Sunday, and
another 17,818 on Monday, undoubtedly
generated by the reposting of
information with links back to my
original post. That’s a pretty dramatic
reach, achieved in just a matter of
hours. And it made the difference.
Mainstream news media then picked up
the story, spurred on by the online
response the issue had been getting. And
the broadcast news coverage, in turn,
reinforced the social media presence.
A phone call came in early Sunday
morning from Las Vegas, where several
former Hawaii residents had compared
notes and said they believed the burglar
was a Hauula man. They provided his
name as well as a good description of
where he lives. Phone calls, emails, and
online comments continued throughout
the day, and into the evening, with quite
a number of other people pointing to the
same Hauula resident as the person in
the photo. Several other names came up
as well, including a former Kaaawa
resident recently seen surfing nearby.
Case Solved!
It was social media that broke the case
open.
Late Sunday afternoon, just 24-hours
after I first posted the burglar’s photo
online, a man called and, without
identifying himself, said he knew the
person in the photo. He said he wanted
to talk to him before saying more. I
encouraged him to call me back any
time, but wasn’t sure if this was any
more solid than the other leads that
had been offered.
He called back a few hour later. He was,
I learned, one of the burglar’s brothers.
He had been alerted to the photograph
by a daughter living on the mainland,
who saw it on Facebook and thought she
recognized her uncle. With the
photograph getting such broad exposure,
it would have been hard for the family to
look the other way. And, thankfully,
they didn’t.
While crowdsourcing made a tremendous
contribution to getting out the word
about the search for the burglar, it
wasn’t as successful at making the
actual identification. The burglar, as it
turns out, was not the Hauula man
mentioned most often by those online.
Instead, it was the former Kaaawa
resident, identified by just a couple of
people who seemed to be swimming
against the tide. He was someone who
had done a lot of work as a
neighborhood handyman back around
2002, and who we had hired back then to
do repairs on our deck. We later
learned, according to rumors circulating
in the neighborhood, that he might not
be a novice when it comes to the art of
the burglary. And now he had come
back, after more than a decade.
Just before 9 p.m. on Sunday night, I
was standing in our driveway, in the
darkness, meeting with the burglar’s
brother. He said the family had
confronted the man, who admitted to
the burglary. He then reached into his
truck and presented me with a dark
pillowcase which, on later examination,
was filled with almost everything that
had been stolen. A few items, those with
any gold content, had already been
pawned, but he said the family would do
their best to retrieve and return those
items as well.
I believe the man’s brother was
genuinely humbled and deeply pained by
the experience, and was telling the
honest truth when he said the family is
now trying to “do the right thing.” He
said the family had been trying to
support their brother as he dealt with
drug dependence and past criminal
charges. It’s a struggle many local
families will relate to, I’m sure. But
what is the “right thing” under the
circumstances, for the family, for the
burglar, for the victims, and for the
community? I don’t pretend to know.
It’s something we’ll all be grappling with
going forward.
We were obviously very lucky to solve the
crime in a timely fashion, and also to
get most of our stolen property back. But
technology, such as our small security
camera, combined with the long reach of
social media, obviously provides new ways
of responding to routine crimes of this
kind. A small self-installed camera
obviously won’t provide as much
protection as a commercial alarm
system, and neither can provide absolute
security. But it doesn’t cost much and,
as this has shown, can be quite
effective. That said, I repeat–we were
very lucky. Your mileage may vary.
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