ATLANTA — When Brendon Ford moved to Georgia in 2017, he says his vehicle was broken into. A few years later, he says his friends' car was broken into as well, costing him about $4,000.
Since then, he has installed dash cameras with forward and back facing cameras to catch potential thieves... and it worked.
In late May, he woke up to his vehicle's back window glass shattered and some of his belongings rummaged through.
"[It cost me] under $300 -- it wasn't bad," he said. "Still sucks because I lost a day's worth of work. I own a business so it kind of hurt. It hurt way more than the window did. It took two days to get the glass in stock. So for two days, my truck had to sit with a broken window - just waiting for another opportunistic criminal to jump in and go through it."
In his dash video, you can see a man wearing gloves, breaking the rear window, climbing in through the window and looking through the center console.
"He looks up to the camera like 'oh shoot' kind of thing," Ford said. "He still wore a mask. We've got some leads on him but we're still not 100% sure who he is."
Ford says he knows at least a dozen people who have had their cars broken into since the start of the pandemic.
According to Atlanta Police, there have been 3,466 car break-ins in the city since the start of 2021. At this time last year, there were 2,762. That's about a 25% rise in vehicle break-ins since 2020.
"I think ultimately at the end of the day, if you catch some of the guys who are breaking into cars, you're going to catch guys who are committing other crimes, too," he said.
That's why he created an online petition, asking Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Gov. Brian Kemp to give Atlanta Police the necessary funding and resources to bring back bait cars to prevent break-ins and auto thefts.
"I just really want them to do something," he added. "Right now seems the police is catching some guys here and there, throwing them in jail for an overnight stay and the judges are throwing them back out on the street."
As of Wednesday night, the petition has gotten more than 2,000 signatures.
"I've seen some posts online that are very negative, calling it entrapment. I don't believe it's entrapment. If you break into a car, you break into a car. No one held a gun to your head and said you need to break into this car," he added.
His petition says:
Thieves will think twice about breaking windows and stealing cars if enough of a presence is made with bait cars and thus will curb the problem that is plaguing the area and costing the local economy thousands each day.
11Alive reached out to Mayor Bottoms and Gov. Kemp about the petition. Mayor Bottoms' office says they will look into it. We're still waiting to hear back from Governor Kemp's office.
"If people that are doing these crimes are concerned about potentially breaking into a vehicle owned by police, the threat of getting arrested and going to jail is a little higher and maybe they'll stop breaking into my car, my friends'... heck, maybe even yours some day," he said.