Home security cameras are a game changer for the Wickliffe Police Department in solving crimes in their neighborhoods.
While visiting her niece in Wickliffe this past January, Lorne Lequyea, could have never planned for what she was about to experience.
“I saw this guy walking, he had like a face mask on,” she described the moment she was carjacked at gunpoint.
“And he said give me your car keys and I just looked at him and said, get away from me,” Lequyea said.
And to her surprise, he did, but for her, that meant one thing.
“At the beginning, I thought, they’re never going to catch him, how are they going to catch him?” she said.
Then, a neighbor gave police their home surveillance video.
“She didn’t know at that time whether it was the car that was involved or not,” said Lieutenant Pat Hengst of the Wickcliff Police Department.
The video shows the getaway car pulling out of a nearby driveway, the picture was clear enough to identify the car and eventually Lequyea’s attacker.
“That was really instrumental in helping us solve that crime,” Lt. Hengst said.
It’s the second crime officers have solved using surveillance footage.
Now, the police want residents and businesses to register their security cams, hoping to solve more crimes like that one, even faster.
“What we’re trying to do is really create a kind of video block watch,” he said.
The program started this month and so far about 20 cameras have been registered.
If you want to know how to do it, you can call the Wickcliff police department or visit their website here.
