Selective thieves target high-end camera gear
They knew exactly what they were doing.
That’s what an owner of a downtown Calgary photography shop is saying after thieves made off with tens of thousands of dollars worth of high-end camera gear in a breakin early Saturday.
“Someone worked very hard to get in, because it’s a hard building to get into,” said Julian Ferreira, co-owner of The Camera Store.
“It was insanely targeted — we carry a massive inventory.”
Roused by phone calls from their alarm monitoring company a little after 4:30 a.m., managers arrived at the 11th Avenue S.W. shop to find the culprits had managed to peel back the steel security shutters and push their way in through a glass window behind the cashier’s desk.
Once inside, the thieves went straight to work, stopping first at the Leica display case.
Smashing the glass, the suspects removed just one of the many cameras manufactured by the high-end German photography company — a rare, limited-edition, olivegreen Leica M-P Safari that comes with a $13,000 price tag.
“They left them all, and just took that one — they left all the lenses, which was worth many more thousands of dollars,” Ferreira said.
Surveillance footage from inside the store shows the crooks being very careful not to be seen — using flashlights and conspicuously concealing their faces with hats.
From there, the thieves then moved to another case and stole a Hasselblad X1D camera and a number of lenses before fleeing.
“We’ve never been broken into — which is not a mean feat,” he said. “Most camera stores in Canada, if not the world, have been broken into.
“We’ll be taking measures now to make that even harder.”
In all, the thieves made off with about $35,000 in merchandise.
“It was planned, somebody worked at it hard to both get in and then get out,” he said.
“It’s very specifically targeted, which means, of course, that they’ve obviously come into the store and looked at the stuff, which my staff are saying makes them even more uncomfortable.”
Ferreira is offering a $5,000 shopping spree for information that leads to an arrest.
“That one Leica — being such an unusual item — we’re hoping that somebody will show off their latest prize or try to sell it,” he said.
“If anybody’s into photography — and typically you would be if you buy a camera like that — will hopefully have heard about this.”
Since word of the break-in spread across social media Saturday morning, Ferreira said support from Calgary’s close-knit photography community has been overwhelming.
“My phone has not stopped, from texts and phone calls,” he said. “It really is quite remarkable.” Anybody with information is asked to call Calgary police at 403-266-1234, or anonymously through Crime Stoppers at 1-800222-TIPS.