Tesla Sentry mode catches several more people vandalizing cars – help find them

Tesla Sentry mode keeps proving useful and it just caught more people vandalizing cars – seemingly for no reason. The videos could help find them.

Building on its previously released dashcam feature, Tesla enabled the use of more cameras around the vehicle and activated a “stand-by” parking mode.

The feature became Sentry Mode, which also includes an alarm and notification system to deter thieves even more — efficiently creating a system to watch over Tesla vehicles when their owners are not around.

It was first developed to address a growing problem with break-ins that Tesla owners were dealing with, especially in California, but it is now proving useful in other situations.

Several Tesla owners have captured instances of vandalism on their cars with the feature.

Earlier this month, we reported on the case of Alan Tweedie’s Tesla Model 3 being keyed badly by a woman for seemingly no reason while he was at his daughter’s soccer game.

The Tesla Sentry mode video of her keying the car went viral and she ended up turning herself in.

Now two more owners are reporting similar incidents and this time it happened in Canada.

Andrew Batiuk reported the following accident on Youtube that happened at Davies Park and Ride in Edmondton:

“This occurred October 12th, 2019 to a friend of mine, while his car was parked for an Eskimos football game. It is super upsetting that folks think it is acceptable to damage other people’s property, regardless of the reason. Unfortunately, Alberta doesn’t require front license plates. If anyone happens to recognize this individual, privately contact me, and I will relay it to the owner and onwards to the police.”

The license plate is unfortunately not visible in the Tesla Sentry Mode video, but it does show the vandal’s face somewhat clearly despite him wearing glasses:

We have seen several similar incidents in the US, but it’s the first time we have seen one reported in Canada since Tesla’s released Sentry Mode earlier this year.

Yet, it’s the second one in a week from Canada.

Model 3 owner Dannie Chang from South Surrey, British Columbia reported anoter keeying captured on Sentry Mode.

He told the local news:

“Chang said he’d only had the car for three months when the vandalism occurred. He reported the incident to police, and posted the dash-cam video to YouTube, hoping it would lead to the culprit’s identity. He noted that sharing of footage of a similar incident in Colorado – also involving a Tesla Model 3 – led to the person in the video taking responsibility.”

The Tesla Sentry Mode video from the side camera clearly shows the act of vandalism:

Unfortunately, there was some water on the windshield where the front-facing camera is located, but we still get a decent look at the face of the vandal:

Both owners will have to mostly rely on the public to recognize the vandals in those cases since the license plates are not visible, but there’s still hope.

As previously mentioned, the video we posted earlier this month got hundreds of thousands of views and the vandal turned herself in.

Earlier this year, a Tesla owner also posted a video of two men keying his car for no apparent reason, and the men turned themselves in after the video went viral.

While Tesla Sentry Mode is useful to capture those incidents, the hope is that the feature gets publicized enough that people become less inclined to vandalize Tesla vehicles in the first place.

In order for Sentry Mode to work on a Tesla, you need a few accessories. We recommend Jeda’s Model 3 USB hub to be able to still use the other plugs and hide your Sentry Mode drive. For the drive, I’m now using a Samsung portable SSD, which you need to format, but it gives you a ton of capacity, and it can be easily hidden in the Jeda hub.