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A pair of Atlanta home owners took home surveillance video of their homes being burglarized and posted them to YouTube. Instead of waiting for an overworked police department to solve the crime, they took matters into their own hands, worked with the online community, and solved the crimes.

The evidence rounded out the information the police had been working on a string of home invasion crimes and led to the arrest of 6 suspects. The first of which, DeGiorio Jackson, has been convicted and facing 15 years in jail for one of the robberies videotaped.

I think we are going to see more and more of this. Technology has lowered the bar for homeowners to take matters into their own hands. Instead of police departments trying to do it all themselves, people will start recording illegal activities and posting it online to allow the community to help.

And YouTube helped lead investigators to dismantling the entire illegal operation, Fulton County Assistant District Attorney Claire Farley said.

“This case pretty much was investigated and solved by the victims,” Farley said. “Decatur and DeKalb (police) really did a lot of work, but they weren’t able to pull it all together.”

The Kopps and Riley posted separate videos of their respective homes being burglarized to the popular online site, and watched as tips came in to their in-boxes.

“It’s up to the community to protect themselves, and that’s unfortunate,” Baxter said Thursday before sentencing Jackson. “If it hadn’t been for technology, police wouldn’t have solved this.”

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