Would someone in a poor neighborhood get the same kind of police response?  Would they be able to afford a web cam, and have a nice job at an office where they could surveil their estate in air-conditioned comfort?

Would this break-in have even occurred, if society genuinely offered everyone the opportunity for a future with a well-paid, non-hazadrous, secure employment leading to a comfortable retirement?  Doesn’t our “Every man for himself” attitude encourage this kind of law-breaking?

What you wrote is very dumb.

Someone’s race / ethnicity is their primary visual identifying characteristic.

If you call 911 and say a crime is in progress, if you don’t mention the race of the suspects that is one of the first questions the dispatcher will ask. No one wants a tall black man with red hoody and black jeans arrested because the police didn’t know the real suspect is a tall white man with a red hoody and black jeans, or vice versa.

And here I thought we had extraordinary unemployment, with a sizeable backlog of “overqualified” applicants who are more than willing to jobs like hers more efficiently for same or less pay.  (More efficient = not staring at CCTV feed of their precious kittens all day).

Re:  racism/terrible descriptions of suspects…  The tape is obviously edited.  I’m not judging either way, but if I were throwing this video together, I would much rather include tidbits about how scared her cat is instead of the banal (and usually useless…  “so the second man is heavy-set?”  Asks the operator at one point to confirm a mis-hearing) descriptions of suspects we can plainly see.  It makes for a more entertaining video this way.

Re:  Re: racism… I’d like to see more of you, when giving descriptions of suspects, supply more useful details in the following manner:  “Oh no!  There’s a man in my house! … Well, he’s Mormon (Muslim/Episcopalian/etc), drank Ovaltine with dinner, and sometimes wears yellow … No, he’s not wearing yellow now, I think he wore yellow last Thursday.”  “Ma’am, do you know the intruder?”  “No, but I figured if I said he was a fat Chinese guy in a white tank-top you would call me racist.”

Could she have done better?  Surely.  Is the operator going to press her for details once the operator understands that the police will eventually see the same video she saw?  Maybe not.  Let’s skip the racism stuff for now and focus on small dogs and their primary life goals.

Though maybe he was.  I didn’t wait to see if he held the car door open for the guy with the screwdriver.

The cops never came.

Gentleman Bandit 1, Justice 0.

If I had been robbed, what I would want back more than my possessions, would be some newer, wiser version of my peace of mind.  I would do everything in my power to prevent being robbed again, and then move on.  It didn’t make sense to me for her to put in a camera she would then have to watch, rather than eliminating the doggie door.  That was like leaving the window open.  Watching the camera from work would just extend her sense of having been victimized by the neccessity of constant vigilance.  Like she was constantly looking over her shoulder.  She hoped there was nothing there to see, but installed the camera and kept looking… just in case.  

What we hear in the recording is not her anxiety at being robbed.  It’s her continuous anxiety confirmed, in that she put in a camera instead of plugging the holes in her house.  So I was surprised she was surprised.  For those us who have truely been victimized and assaulted, we harbor no illusions that lightning can’t strike twice in the same place. 

Most squares are not used to dealing with something like this. She did pretty good considering.

I’m amazed the cops got there in time. They must have loved that. Catching someone in the act is so hit and miss, mostly miss. So when you do catch someone red-handed it’s pretty sweet.

Sure have your little dogs but you need at least one kick butt dog.

And if you like police radio, check out  radioReference.com.  Feeds from all over.

Have you ever been robbed or assaulted? No preparations can change your primal “Oh shit! I am being violated!” instincts.

Actually, with PTSD, you can skip the shock and go directly to the fight-or-flight.

That’s not true. She also said he was a man. Sexist!

She would have if she herself was black. When asked for a description of somebody while being under pressure we tend to point out the differences first. If you always dress in Armani suits and the guy you’re supposed to describe wears the same then you are less likely to point out that fact than if you are a jeans-and-sneakers kind of guy. I don’t think this is in and of itself *any* indication of racism.

Instead There is a BLACK man in my HOUSE! and my poor, poor, poor cat is pissing all over itself! Save my cat!

My dogs would have been barking like crazy and most burglars skip houses with dogs barking.