We in our little middle-class Berkeley enclave do not feel we live in a big, bad, dangerous city. Yeah, we see stuff happens. Our house was broken into seven years ago, and we’ve had a car vandalized on the street in front of our place. Offhand, I can think of more than a half-dozen burglaries on our block since we moved here 20-some years ago, including a couple that happened within the last six months. Unbeknownst to anyone here, last week there were several burglaries on the street just west of us. As it happened, one of the homes that was broken into had security cameras installed. According to the Berkeley police, here are the images captured:
If nothing else, these two look prepared: the bags. The baggy, anonymous white T-shirts that can be taken off and thrown away (“Officer, I saw someone wearing a white shirt. …”). I’d also note that the blocks where the burglaries occurred are within a four-minute walk of the BART station. Lots of students go in and out of there, and a couple of young people carrying big bags would attract no attention at all.
Wish I had a picture of the people who got away with my two laptops back in 2002.