Brazen thief caught on camera stealing flowers in Orland Park

FOX 32 NEWS - It was an unbelievably bold act caught on camera.  For 40 minutes, a flower caper walked around an Orland Park yard that wasn’t hers.  She looked over the planters as if she was shopping at a store.

“She picks this up and she mm, that's not good enough for her, she puts that back. Then she sees my beautiful purse plant that was here. Then you see her in the camera like this and she's struggling,” said Mary Jo Cain-Reis

What the thief didn’t count on is that cameras outside Mary Jo Cain-Reis’ home captured her every move. The footage is now being looked at by Orland Park police. Commander Tony Farrell says one of the first things investigators do to try to solve a crime is look for surveillance cameras on the entire block, and hope someone captured good images.

"The higher number of pixels would be better for us viewing people's faces,” said Orland Park Police Commander Farrell.

Commander Farrell says if you’re investing in a home camera, get something with night vision that’s motion activated. Be sure it’s easy to transfer the video onto a thumb drive or straight to the internet and pay for extra storage.

“Because we may go back ten days and want to be able to see something that happened ten days ago, well some of these camera systems are overriding too quickly and you lose what happened ten days ago,” said Commander Farrell.

Cain-Reis has another audience looking over her video now – Facebook. People just as shocked as she is, telling her to set a trap in case the thief returns.

“Some other lady told me to put manure in one of the pots so that when she picks up the pot she'll have manure all over her hands,” said Cain-Reis.

The video’s got thousands of views and shares already. Cain-Reis also put together a flyer, in the hopes that someone out there can dig up some dirt on the flower caper.