Catching someone breaking into your vacant furnished rental?

[Paul Sandhu]

2 months ago someone broke into one of our furnished rental houses and was living in there, for 2-3 days judging by the trash in the can. Utilities, and wifi are always on. They were also stealing bicycles and grinding off the serial numbers in the house.

We bought FOUR Arlo home security cameras and set them up in 3 of our unoccupied rental properties. They were $160 total. Long story short, we caught a young lady breaking in to one of our houses and setting up a Wifi repeater station in the house to steal the internet service. She lived a few houses away, or should I say...she was staying with some guy that lived a few houses away. We have the recordings of the police showing up and arresting her. I was outside when they showed up. She's been in jail since October 28th and she goes to court December 8th.

Last week I got a letter from the court asking for a "Victim Impact Statement". It asked about my medical expenses, losses, insurance coverage, and what I thought would be a fair punishment and restitution.

I'd like for her to pay us $160 for all 4 cameras, or at least $40 for the camera that was in the house that caught her. Do you think this is a good idea? Do you think a judge would go along with it? I also think it would get word out in the criminals network not to mess with any of our houses because we have surveillance cameras.

Should I try to get $160 in restitution or just leave things in the hands of the judge, that's my main question.

[Anthony Angotti]

@Paul Sandhu

Where in the world is this property that people are breaking in and doing reasonably small crimes compared to most break ins. Weird.  (By small crimes I mean they didn't totally trash the place and steal everything inside)

I'm not a lawyer, but I think that you should ask for whatever you feel is fair. This person wronged you so you should ask for whatever you feel justly compensates you. All the judge can say is no.