Surveillance systems are part and parcel of living in large cities and working at high-profile companies. It’s no surprise that people behave very differently when they’re alone and when they know they’re being watched. You can learn a lot about someone’s character when you monitor them without them realizing it. Sometimes, the results are very unexpected.
Inspired by user u/PopCultureNerd, the members of the r/AskReddit community who are in charge of surveillance systems and security cameras spilled the tea about the most bizarre things they’ve ever seen. Check out their captivating stories below!
We got in touch with the author of the popular thread, u/PopCultureNerd, who was happy to share their thoughts on safety and security. Check out Bored Panda’s interview with them below.
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I monitored the security cameras for an apartment complex and saw a couple beating their dog. Right in front of the apartment building. I confronted them, almost got assaulted, they were arrested, and-- long story short-- my friend now owns their dog.
Image credits: Different_Pause8486
We were very curious about what had inspired the internet user to start the thread in the first place. “I was at a supermarket buying food, and I couldn’t help but notice that there were not only security cameras everywhere but that I could see screens showing their feeds. Something about it got me wondering what they record,” u/PopCultureNerd shared with Bored Panda.
From their perspective, one reason why the topic was such a big hit with so many Redditors was that we all deal with cameras more and more. However, at the same time, we have “no idea what is actually being recorded.”
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In their opinion, there’s no longer any difference between how people behave when they’re alone and when they know they’re being monitored. Having a camera around at all times has become normalized.
“As such, I think many people have no real sense of their behavior in regards to private vs public spaces,” u/PopCultureNerd.
Bored Panda also wanted to get the OP’s thoughts on the link between security cameras and, well, security. The author told us that they don’t believe cameras make us safer.
“These cameras may make it easier for law enforcement to find suspects. As I see it, we now live in a time in which every person has a camera on them at all times. Every crime can be and often is recorded somehow. Yet, crimes still get committed.”
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The fact that people behave differently because they know they’re being watched is known as the Hawthorne effect. It can affect a wide range of behaviors, from how someone takes care of their hygiene to even what they eat.
The Catalog of Bias points to a fascinating study conducted in 2006. It found that medical staff were 55% more likely to comply with hand-washing regulations than when they weren’t observed.
However, one issue with studies that look at the Hawthorne effect is that they might affect people’s behavior simply by them being aware that they’re taking part in a study. Hidden observation, however, could help sidestep that problem.
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Based on the data collected by IHS Markit in 2021, there are over 1 billion surveillance cameras around the world.
According to Comparitech, the most surveilled country in the entire world is China, with 626 million estimated cameras or an average of 439 cameras per 1k people. After that comes the Indian cities of Hyderabad (900k cameras or 83.32 per 1k people), Indore (200k cameras; 60.57 per 1k people), and Delhi (449,934 cameras; 19.96 per 1k people).
Meanwhile, Singapore boasts 214k total cameras, Baghdad has 120k, Seoul has 144.5k, and London has over 127.4k.
However, Clarion Security Systems estimated that there were 942,562 CCTV cameras in London, or 1 for every 10 people, in 2022. Though, these numbers are still a guess.
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Image credits: ScarletWinters2024
The need to balance security and privacy is going to be an ongoing debate in the foreseeable future. On the one hand, we all want to feel safe. On the other hand, nobody wants to be treated like a potential criminal. Let’s be frank, being constantly observed on the off chance of preventing crime sounds dystopian and totalitarian…
…which is making a lot of folks who live and work in London a tad uncomfortable. The Metropolitan Police is continuing to use so-called live facial recognition, or LFR, in parts of the city and during important events.
Essentially, this “vital” policing tool maps an individual’s unique facial features and then matches them up against the faces of people on watch lists. According to the BBC, there have been around 50 arrests in Croydon during 8 deployments of LFR vans so far.
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“This technology is a really precise and really efficient way for us to catch these people, because otherwise it’s about us knocking on doors, it’s about us doing searches and talking to people. Isn’t it better to do it like this, where it’s really quick and simple and we get the same outcome?” Andy Brittain, a Metropolitan Police borough commander for Sutton, Croydon, and Bromley, said.
The technology isn’t perfect, though. The false-positive identification rate, where someone is falsely flagged as a suspect, is 1 in 6,000. Nor can passers-by refuse to consent to having their faces scanned by the technology in these police vans. It’s all happening without their knowledge.
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One night, I was reviewing the footage and saw a raccoon wandering into the parking lot. It then managed to climb into an unlocked car and reappeared wearing a pair of sunglasses it found inside. The raccoon then strutted around the parking lot like it was the coolest animal in town before eventually wandering off, leaving the sunglasses behind. It was the most confident and stylish raccoon I’ve ever seen.We had a lady who worked in our building who was married to another employee of the company who worked in another office.
The husband's building was under construction, so he was temporarily moved to our building.
Security saw them having sex in her car during the day and reported it to HR.
HR called them in and basically said, "hey, this isn't a huge deal, but please stop having sex in the parking lot."
The husband was legitimately dumbfounded, and demanded to see the tape. The guy his wife was banging in her car wasn't him.
It was her boss.
It was awkward.A guy was dragging some bins out to empty into a dumpster and as he opened the lid of it a squirrel flew out and parkoured off his face.Not many things strange but here's the funniest one:
I work as the sole IT guy for a head start/child advocacy program that has a few daycare/head start schools in surrounding towns. One day my boss comes over to me really upset saying that someone had gone into the playground of one of the schools and tore everything apart. They asked me to go over and check cameras to see if we could identify the vandal.
So I go over and look at the playground and it's a mess. The plastic playground toys had been strewn all over the playground and a big plastic caterpillar had been disassembled and chucked over the fence. Now I'm annoyed and go check the cameras with resolve at finding out who did it.
So I started narrowing in on the footage. Finding the earliest time when the cameras showed the destruction and working back. So I'm skipping in five minute intervals and suddenly the playground is fine. These people took less than five minutes to destroy the playground?
Finally I catch the culprit. I watch as a dust devil makes its way to the playground, sends everything flying in every direction and then buggers off in less than fifteen seconds. I started laughing my a*s off and told my boss. Everyone was relieved that it was a freak act of nature instead of some a*****e destroying a kids playground. .Hospital Security. Watched a patient wearing an O2 mask, go and hide in a courtyard niche - directly opposite a camera as it turned out, in order to have a quick surreptitious ciggy. Smoking is not normally allowed on hospital grounds, hence the need to hide.
With his (running) O2 mask pulled down below his chin, he quickly proceeded to set fire to his beard.
I could see it coming and had already sent patrolling officers to his location doubletime, so the fires were put out without too much injury.My oldest son was probably around 4yrs old at the time. My wife had borrowed some flour/sugar/something that comes in that type of packaging from the neighbor.
She gave the bag to my 4yr ol and asked him to go leave it on porch by the front door.
My wife is standing on the sidewalk and watched little man run over to the neighbors front door, goes out of sight momentarily and comes running back proud and happy as can be with an empty bag.
Wife was pissed at first until I asked her what she told him. It was then she realized he did exactly what she asked.
Neighbors sent us the video from the Ring camera and we all laughed hysterically.Not your ask, but my friend who lives on a large ranch with many raptor species got dive-bombed and hazed by a red-tailed hawk. Bird thought my guy friend's long, thick ponytail was some sort of delicious rodent and tried to make off with it. Ranch security cameras caught the whole episode. His wife just dies laughing every time she watches the video.In a very small police department, watched a deputy escort an inmate to the bathroom. When the inmate came out of the bathroom the officer wasnt there so he opened the door to the lobby and casually strolls towards the front door. An assistant district attorney was also leaving the building at the same time and held the door for inmate has he fled.
They did manage to chase him down a couple of blocks away.I manage a couple of self storage facilities, and one of them has an elevator lobby that you used to be able to walk into from the parking lot. This facility isn't in the best area, and we'd occasionally have people wander in during the night - usually homeless people sleeping or people doing d***s.
One day the cleaning crew came in and said that there was a duffel bag, some clothes, a razor, and a bunch of hair on the ground in the elevator lobby. I pulled up the video footage from the previous night and got subjected to a strange sight.
A guy had walked in around 3:00am and sat down for a few minutes rummaging through his duffel bag. Then he took off all his clothes, and put on a pair of thong underwear. He propped each of his legs up on the box that houses the elevator call button and shaved them. Then he put on a garter belt and thigh-high stockings, leaned back against the elevator door, pulled out his d**k, and masturbated to climax, then ran out of the lobby and off the property.
That was one of the final straws that made upper management decide that we really needed to block access to the elevator lobby after closing time.I had to watch the overnight video feed because my LP auditor told me one of my employees was coming in to the closed store in the middle of the night. His job was on the line over it, because that's a big no-no.
He never did anything shady or criminal, and usually he came in because he realized he forgot his phone or something, but one time had me dying laughing. It's probably one of those "you had to be there" things.
He came in, grabbed a trash bag from the roll, and carried it around for a couple minutes. Then he stood perfectly still for a few more minutes, staring at something in the distance with a trash bag in his hand. He finally put the trash bag in an empty can, and left.
Imagine almost losing your job because you really needed to go to work at 3 am and put a trash bag in a can. It must have been giving him anxiety or something. I'm not even the kind of boss who flips out over a trash bag.Probably the time a group of penguins waddled up to a security camera and seemed to be discussing their escape plan from the zoo. Either that or a very organized gang of squirrels attempting a break-in at a nut store.Bass pro shop. It was one of the big a*s stores. There was an employee that lived at the store, several days a week, for months. I thought I was losing my god damn mind because the guy knew all the camera angles and was able to basically be a ghost. Yet im there thinking I'd be hearing s**t or the place is Haunted. Eventually over time the routine revealed itself. Poor guy had to sneeze and thats what got him. He could have easily done it a few more weeks if I wasnt one curious bastard. He lost his job but they gave him a pass on criminal charges because no damage was done and he was compliant
/apologetic when busted. They just banned him from all Bass proshops forever. Anyway this was back in 2008 where the quality of security cameras was going digital and it looked like pure garbage. When you see something move at the corner of a screen in 280p, you don't know what it is. To us it says "someone is in the store" but the guy just avoided detection for so long it had us freaked out. Almost had my dumbass believing in ghost.Across the street from where I live is a former grocery store with an animal statue on their roof that recently went out of business. One night around 12:30am, I heard some noise outside, checked my security camera, and saw four teenagers carrying a very large ladder. They placed the ladder against the building, climbed to the roof, took selfies with the statue, and then climbed back down. Just as they were grabbing the ladder and leaving, the local sheriff pulled up and started berating them. He let them all go in the end but made sure to give them a good scolding lol.A guy shot a gun at another guy from about 20 ft away five freaking times. He missed the guy with all five bullets.A lot of naked drunk people. There was a couple of guys having a perfecty sensible conversation whilst wearing nothing but traffic cones in the middle of winter once.
Also was able to access CCTV feed of cameras in a city centre, and was pleased to see the regular homeless people communicating with the camera operators, with the homeless people using basic body language (thumbs up, drinking motions, pointing etc) and the camera operators moving the camera around for yes and and no!Call center. Still don't know what d**g or if alcohol, but we caught two employees drinking *something* on the job. We viewed Monday's tape and confronted each on Tuesday.
We wouldn't have been suspicious if they'd *just* drank from their cups. But each would stand up, look around the room and then take their cup *under the desk* and drink from it there.
The manger who confronted each simply showed them the tape and asked "What is going on here?". Neither employee offered any explanation. They just said "I quit.", got their stuff and left.I used to work security at a chemical plant, with cameras covering the majority of the facility. There was one employee who would pull in to the exact same parking spot every night, but he would always back up, pull forward, back up, pull forward, etc in an effort to get his car PERFECTLY lined up in the spot. When he finally got out, he would walk to both sides of the car and hold his arm up to judge how straight it was. If it wasn't good enough, he'd get back in and do it again. Otherwise he'd come inside. He did the exact same thing every. Single. Night.
Probably goes without saying but I'm pretty sure he had/has OCD.My brother caught his drunk neighbour trying to open his door for 5 minutes until he realised it was the wrong house lmao.I worked Loss Prevention in a big electronic store in college. I was working the door and cameras when my manager went to apprehend a shoplifter. I warned him against it, but made sure to get it on camera for evidence.
So I watched my manager follow a suspect heading for the emergency exit and he chased and tackled the guy before he could leave. While my manager was wrestling to get him pinned down, apparently the guy had s**t his pants from the tackle, so to escape, he scooped up a whole handful from his pants and just smeared it all down my manager's face, mouth, neck and chest (and yes, his mouth was open). My manager freaked out (as you would expect) and the guy ran out the emergency exit. This was like 25 years ago, or else I'd have definitely uploaded that video to a thumb drive to show at parties...A lot of cubicle sex after hours. People are weird.My in-laws were caretakers of a cemetery, located right off the main 401 highway in Ontario. There are no other houses nearby, just theirs. It is a small cemetery, with a horseshoe path around the lot, and brush on either side.
For several days in a row, an older skinny gentleman would go running around that horseshoe path.
Buck naked. Wearing nothing but running shoes and a visor. Just all flappy penis and ball sack.
My mother-in-law is a very conservative Christian.
My father-in-law is as well, but is a lot more worldly, having spent years as a long haul trucker.
They spent a good couple of days deciding how to confront the streaker. I think they were in denial. They confronted him on Day 8 or 9. He apologized and my father-in-law suggested other spots he could run in.
He never deleted the videos.I used to work for a high end security company, and while my job was systems administration, and not directly with camera footage, we had a few weird "best of" clips circulated among employees. We had a variety of services, but the most common was a camera would trigger movement, a rep would review the footage, and then call the customer if it wasn't a bird or the wind or something.
One series of clips was some kind of medical facility. Not a hospital but like a research lab. Customer reported some break ins and vandalism, and we had to review the footage. This was 4-5 different cameras.
1 & 2 showed an unlocked door next to a loading dock slowly open. No person. The camera inside, which had a temperature sensor, registered a 20° F drop from 65 to 45, and it was 55-60 outside. Except for the door, no movement. About 10 seconds later, another internal unlocked door opened. But instead of opening smoothly, it took a few jerks, like someone was having trouble with the weight of the door. There were motion sensitive lights that clicked on. Then nothing for about a minute, and the lights turned back off. Not even a breeze. Then lights and motion registered in the warehouse as equipment fell down. The forklift, unmanned, had rolled backwards into some stuff leaning against the wall. By this point, the guard on site heard the noise, ran into the warehouse, gun drawn... Nobody there. He turned off the forklift. He called on his cell phone, and that's when we were called. Most of the alerts was now his movement, but one internal camera showed the loading dock door open and close again, with another temperature dip.
Customer wanted to know "how was this intruder camouflaged??"
Nobody could explain it. I am not saying it was spooky because of ghosts, but somebody was sneaking in and not showing up on camera. THAT was spooky.>I've posted this before
Had an issue with a new guard on site apparently not realizing he was on camera. I was doing a second night of training with the guy, asked him if he was comfortable with the rounds, guy says yeah and wanders off to do a round solo.
So I'm watching cameras and monitoring the phone, I see guard walk by, he stops, ok he seems a bit lost but it happens to all of us... Dude sticks his hand down the front of his pants and just goes to town. He is digging his crotch for about 30 or so seconds, he then walks down the hall and into the kitchen. So guy returns to the desk and tries to hand me the keys, I tell him due to covid we are to sanitize keys when they change hands, so I douse those things with Lysol like my life depended on it.
We are sitting and he is asking me questions, soon the questions turn to the cameras on each floor. He is pointing at each and asking where they are... We get to the one and I tell him it is located right outside the kitchens. Dude just stares blankly at me for a second and then asks if he can go out for a smoke break. I tell him that we are a smoke free facility so if he wants to smoke he will have to go across the street where the nurses go. He says cool, back in 5... Never see the guy again. Told the supervisor the next morning when he asked how training went. The company couldn't reach him and apparently never got uniforms back.Saw a tweaker finger blast herself on black Friday with 30 people standing within 20 feet of her. She then walked outside, blew a dude in the parking lot, then came back in and stole $400 worth of electronics. I gloved up, grabbed her ar the door and brought her back, where she winked at me and said she would do anything to get out of cuffs.
No thank you.I was in a surveillance team in a school, upon watching the recorded tape because of a missing person. That person locked himself inside a locker. He was there for more than 24 hours. He was found when he shouted, "I couldn't handle it anymore".I wasn't in security, but IT. So when they needed a copy of footage they always came to me to download it to a flash drive from the server.
Once there was this crazy accident. A late model Chevy Malibu was coming around the corner at a questionable speed. Then the front right wheel and fair amount of the suspension just snapped off the car. That wheel was on the outside of the turn, probably with the most weight on it. So with that traction lost the car flew off at an angle, like a rock from a slingshot, and crashed in front of the building. The wheel smashed through the corner office where our program director would normally be sitting.
So it was a weird accident, and weird that Chris wasn't in his chair with his coffee firing off emails when it happened.
When I went back to check the footage there was a mom pushing a stroller. She was looking a different direction when it happened but somehow intuition and reflexes told her to snatch that baby stroller back. Because the car missed them by millimeters. And now that I think about it I guess the wheel went the other side of them.
I've actually seen the video floating around on the web. But whenever I search for it I get all the videos of moms and babies that didn't make it through such encounters.
Also, found out I walk funny by seeing myself on sped up video. Like a wind up robot.When I worked at CVS, we saw on the surveillance footage, 2 middle aged women, one shakes her leg, pile of s**t falls out onto ground, and then they left the store. Later someone stepped on said pile of s**t, and trekked that bad boy all the way out of the store.Animators practicing character movements in front of a mirror. However weird you think this is, it’s 10x weirder.My brother-in-law thought he had a ghost in his garden, on two separate occasions a faint outline of something human passed quickly across his camera's vision. It certainly looked creepy. Me being the skeptic I am I figured it was his camera doing some weird compression artifacts.
It was one of his neighbors out for a late night jog as it turned out, and yep the camera in night vision mode just couldn't keep up with it.We had a crew doing roof construction for our house. They did a ton of stuff they weren't supposed to do that caused additional damage. I guess they didn't see the cameras and put together we would have the footage. We had tons of stuff to prove it. They didn't have much choice but to admit they did it. It's important to back these things up.Saw a couple of attempted murders.
First was a guy waiting in a second floor hallway. Other guy comes walking up the stairs, they make eye contact and the first guy unloads on him and somehow manages to miss him from no more than 8 or 10 feet away. They both run downstairs and outside never to be seen again.
Second was a group of 4 masked kids crossing paths with another kid. Uneventful at first but then the group stops, seems to confer for a second and then run after the lone kid. He hears the footsteps behind him and takes off up the sidewalk. One of the group pulls a pistol from his waistband and fires at him a bunch of times, then they run. Heard later they hit him once in the back but he lived.
Kind of funny one was a building where we assumed someone had let their dog s**t in a hallway. Checked the footage and find a little kid who was playing outside with friends. He runs into the hall, squats with his back up against the wall, drops his shorts and takes a dump right there in the middle of the afternoon. Pulls his pants up and goes back outside to resume playing.Im a Casino surveillance manager; I've watched more than a half dozen people die over the years, people shooting up d***s in the parking lot, prostitution, had a pipe bomb that the bomb squad had to detonate in a blast chamber, someone projectile vomited into a security guards mouth, people pissing and s******g themselves, women intentionally leaving period stains on chairs, a guy methed out of his mind was cranking his junk while talking to a random woman, there's more, so much more.A deer trying to hump a wild pig XD.Was working gravyard shift. Lobby door is unlocked because our office was 24 hours. We were down the hall from the lobby entrance. On the outside camera we saw a man walk up the front door, the front door open, and the man walk inside. The camera in the hallway never picked up anyone approaching the door or entering the building. Just the door opening on its own. It was not an automatic door. We didn't see him leave and there wasn't anywhere for him to go in the hallway. We aren't sure what really happened.
During a remodel, one of the cameras got forgotten in the drop ceiling. It showed the space between the actual ceiling and the drop ceiling. We got a smoke notification on the camera, the fire alarm in the vacant building went off, and we could see smoke billowing up on the camera. Fire dept showed up and they couldn't find any source for what we saw. There wasn't any trace, visually or by smell, that there was any smoke.
