SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — More people are putting up surveillance cameras outside their homes.

But that added security doesn’t always keep thieves away.

On September 13, Mary Bengford had packages shipped to her house while she was at work.
When she came home, she knew something was off when her gate was left open and her porch was empty.

“So I went inside and thought ‘Well, maybe my husband came home for something’, you know, put the packages in the house, not a big deal, he didn’t shut the gate. And then, there were no packages, and I was like ‘Oh no’,” Mary Bengford said.

When she checked her camera, this is what she found around two o’clock that day.

“You can see in the video she opened the gate, took her a minute to get it open, walked right through it, took them, and we have a dog inside who started barking, and that’s when she ran to her truck,” Bengford said.

Police say this happens more than you would think.

“It’s nothing unusual, I mean we probably average two to three thefts a week of packages from homes, sometimes it’s apartments, sometimes it’s houses, it really just kind of depends, but it’s something that happens fairly regularly,” Public Information Officer Sam Clemens said.

To prevent it from happening to you, Clemens recommends having a family member, friend or neighbor pick up your packages when you’re not home.

Other options are to pick it up at the delivery company, require a signature, or have packages delivered to your workplace.

“We were talking about putting in a lock box or something like that, changing the times of delivery, instead of just general to when someone’s at home, maybe just lumping everything to one day and making sure that it’s a day someone’s going to be here,” Bengford said.

And that’s not all she’s doing.

“We put the banner up just to detour everybody and to let them know, you may not think that you’re being watched, but you’re noticed,” Bengford said.

Because of the surveillance video, in this case, police know who took the packages.

Those videos often make it easier to solve these kinds of cases.