The motion-activated surveillance camera outside Jesper Jurcenoks’ home in the Oakland hills neighborhood takes some 12,000 pictures a day. Every car, motorcycle, delivery truck, police car, bicyclist, pedestrian, and deer that enters his isolated street off Skyline Boulevard gets photographed. Four times a second. Day and night. When they arrive and when they leave, time-stamped and stored on a server for 60 days.

The two cameras, one at each entrance of Jurcenoks’ looping street, form a virtual wall around the neighborhood, he said. For years, Oakland residents have built fences or installed security cameras on their homes because they were fed up with burglaries and auto break-ins. Some neighborhoods hired private security guards to patrol their streets.

Now they’re becoming more aggressive in their efforts to fight back. In growing numbers, residents are forming neighborhood groups and spending thousands of dollars on cameras that can monitor the perimeter of entire blocks.

They don’t merely want to protect their homes. They want to catch anyone intent on criminal behavior.

“We will not a let a criminal enter or leave our neighborhood undetected,” Jurcenoks said. “We’re not saying we can stop the crime. We want to make sure we have a photograph.”

Trying to avoid abuse
Seven areas across the city have signed up for a neighborhood-wide surveillance system and dozens more are interested, said Jurcenoks, the founder of Neighborhood Guard, a nonprofit that helps owners set up and install such systems.

He installed his neighborhood’s system in 2012, costing the neighborhood association $2,000 […]