STOREOWNERS NOT THE ONLY ONES UNABLE TO OPERATE EQUIPMENT THEY'VE ACQUIRED

No surprise here. For some 50 years now, police agencies across the country have acquired the latest high-tech equipment with funds provided by federal government grants. And in many local police departments, much of that equipment ends stacked up in some remote storage closet, never to be used, because no one ever learned how to operate it. Why should some storeowners be any different?
　
FLOYD BERNARD PAYNE: STEALING AN ATM IS EASIER WHEN THE STOREOWNER DOESN’T TURN ON THE SECURITY CAMERA
By Randall Patterson
　
Houston Press Hair Balls
November 30, 2010
　
There is breaking and entering, and then, as Humble police say happened last week, there is backing your truck through the wall of a convenience store after hours, attaching chains to the ATM and -- whee! -- racing off into the glory of the night.
　
How anyone expected to get away with that is beyond us -- it's not exactly cat burglary, you know. Roused by the sound of collapsing wall, the inevitable witness spotted not one but four people who thought they could get away with this. And the really amazing thing? According to Humble police detective David Scott, three of them have gotten away.
　
Two were in the lookout car, Scott tells Hair Balls, and looked out for themselves. A third, police lost after chasing the truck to a hotel near Greens Road.
　
The one they caught, Floyd Bernard Payne, is a 32-year-old man with 25 small-time drug and theft convictions already behind him. Payne is really bad at getting away, and really good at refusing to help police catch his friends.
　
But Scott believes he would have them, even without Payne, even without his witness who couldn't see clearly in the dark. He'd probably have them all, he says, if the storeowner just knew how to operate his security camera. Yeah, the camera was staring down on the whole crime scene, and from it, Scott has not an inch of footage.
　
"These storeowners will buy these high-dollar video systems," he explains, " and then they don't know how to work them -- and of course, we can't force them to learn how to work them. It's highly frustrating for police officers."
　
And super lucky for the bad guys.