Since 2014, the public had been able to quickly setup a camera and then get alerts to their mobile phones.
Yet instead of truly making homes and property safer, what looks to have actually happened is that people stopped reporting their crimes to the police.
I've talked to so many people who described how this happened to them. The first crime they experienced, they did all the things they are supposed to do. If the first experience led them to feel nothing was done and that the system didn't work for them, then they naturally feel 'Why should I keep reporting when nothing gets done?'
The second and third crimes these people experience, they may report it to police, but more than likely they will not.
I once showed this chart to a policing veteran to ensure it wasn't missing some critical perspective. To my surprise he went on to describe how as a student he had an expensive bicycle stolen from him. For a period of time before he entered the police force, he felt this exact same way about reporting any future crimes.
This is partly how the under reporting rate of crime mushroomed to being somewhere over 20 times higher than the official numbers in just ten years.
The explosion of low cost synthetic crystal meth created demand for property crimes on a larger scale than ever before. With weaker security than before, the wave kept growing.
I think we need to ask the question ‘Why did people become so frustrated with property crime over the last ten years, despite the explosion of things like doorbell cameras, social media and mobile phones that they stopped reporting on such a large scale?'
If these things really worked, then crime should be just about stopped by now.
Everyone would know 'Just get a doorbell camera and use social media' to keep your home safe.
At the end of the day, all of these technologies are another isolated information system that has little to no impact on real crime.
Based on the data, homeowner's still carry the risks of property crime, with things like doorbell cam's and security cameras as their only home security system.
Even worse, they often feel they have security, and therefore misunderstand the real level of risk they are exposed to.