[Balata]

And aren't the tapes on some kind of loop, not archived in perpetuity? So every gas station in the world has video, but it's on a four hour loop, for instance. Let's say, for example, that the shooter recons two days prior to a shooting. IF he's caught on camera, and for me, that's a big, big if, I'd say that chances are good the tapes for his recon day have been wiped and replaced with pictures of hundreds of people who have nothing whatsoever to do with the shootings

Hey poppyseed, you are not getting your information from the real world. I can tell you first hand many places have video tape that recycles after 30 days. Some insurance companies give a premium break for this.

[valleygal]

I read the other day on her somewhere that they are not supposed to let the tapes keep recycling but some places let them go for a year without changing them.

[poppyseed]

Hey poppyseed, you are not getting your information from the real world. I can tell you first hand many places have video tape that recycles after 30 days.

I didn't claim to be an authority - hence my phrasing the assumption as a question. But 30 day archives or no, the guy still has to be on-camera at some point, and if he's scouting spots from where he'll be shooting, he'll be out of range of the cameras. Well, that's my guess - which is just that, and no more or less outlandish than some of the other theories we've cooked up on here.

Or maybe he's on gas station cameras the region over. It'd be laborious to cull through them all, but hey, if that's what it takes to catch him, then do it. I'm not saying I don't want to consider the possibility of him being caught on tape - it would be quite a boon if he was - merely that I seriously doubt that he's on all these tapes regardless of how long they run, or even if he is, that authorities are expending the resources it would take to go through them all. At this point, anyway.