Young Vehicle Thief outsmarted by 15 year old Black & White Camera System

I have several customers who help rehabilitate at risk youth who are adjudicated thru the juvenile justice system.

Alarm wire cut on door

 One such customer has an old  car dealership
where they offer an automotive  servicing course and wood shop
Where 8 years ago I patched together a surveillance system out of  various components from 2 schools they had that where consolidated into one. Consisting of one color and 4 black and white bullet  cameras which are 15 years old  made by Speco Technologies after a fight broke out in one of the classrooms . We had a 13 year old  Mitsubishi Digital  9000TU Video recorder
as part of the mix its so old it does not have internet access or USB slot or CD/DVD and no VGA output for screen and uses a standard glass tube monitor no longer made. and only 250 GB  hard drive  while modern DVR start at 1 terabyte an excellent Altronix power supply and what saved it all and kept it working was a Ditek Plug strip that protected all the equipment from surges.
 Well it seems on a Monday afternoon one of the schools old no longer used  vans which was sitting in the back parking lot looked like a good vehicle to  work on worth less than two thousand dollars the instructors fired it up with a new battery and parked it inside. Mistakenly leaving the Key's in it.

They came back Wednesday morning to find it missing . But how. well after some investigating and notifying local Police they found a rear 2nd floor door propped open and wire to door contact cut
to prevent alarm from automatically turning on.
The central station called the campus Monday and Tuesday night the system failed to arm but for some reason it was never communicated to security to check the building .
 But by using the alarm log to know Monday night the alarm did not set that gave us the time period to check the old system  and we knew staff left at 6:30pm .
so we started checking the recording from 6:00PM on and at approx 6:15pm we saw a young man go upstairs and set door up to break in not knowing those old cameras no one thought worked was recording him. then at 9:15 PM he reappeared  at garage and stole the vehicle which we saw him come down steps open garage door pull it out and close garage door and leave thru a man door. Only problem this young man was suppose to be in his unit   and had slipped out unseen or was allowed to go out for short walk around campus. he parked vehicle couple streets up then slipped back to unit then in morning took vehicle to north side where he parked it near where he goes to school.  On Monday night he had on clothes he wore to school so instructors knew exactly  who was involved and police upon taking the youth into custody and informing him of the video he confessed to everything and what he had done. He will now face a locked down unit at a prison instead of open style campus where he was till age 21 deserves him right he was already given a chance and blew it
Needless to say plenty of questions and reviews will be going on including why was keys left in vehicle or battery not pulled  and why was alarm not responded to when it failed to arm . But it goes to show how even an old camera system when properly installed can stay working for a long time and still give images good enough they can be enhanced .
In mean time a new feature has been added to system so even if a door is left open or its wire cut rest of alarm will still force arm and operate protecting the building to prevent this type of theft from happening again.