Originally posted by Dlanor Sekao Actually....IF firearms weren't involved all this would have most likely gone NOWHERE in spite of having a GPS location.
Trust me on this....They have much more pressing things to do than Chase down a Camera theft no matter how expensive it is.
El Paso is an extremely crime ridden city. As it was , it took over 4 hours for them to respond , and this was considered rather Low Priority !
That's exactly what I was told over the phone by an Officer.
It may be a sad state of affairs......just the way it is.
---------- Post added 01-12-17 at 09:06 PM ----------
You heard it here First......Americans are notoriously Stupid when taking firearms into/across Canada.
When they aren't Declared properly they are seized and Destroyed. You do NOT get them back !
Now as far as Crossing the Canadian Border.....They are ALL Business and aren't Friendly at all and for the most part they are Jerks. They can make your life really miserable for a few hours if they want to .
Crossing into the USA....is actually a Joke !!! Between Canada , Mexico , and the USA......Its obvious the Canadians actually CARE about who come's into their country , and what they bring. They scrutinize everything , play by all the Laws and Rules , and use extreme Vetting when needed. To me its quite intimidating at times.
Crossing into the USA and Mexico.......they Just Don't Care ! Its a Complete Joke !
I say this from experience.....about 40 trips to Mexico.....10 trips to Canada.
In the mid 80s two of us were crossing the border from Dawson City Yukon to Chicken Alaska in a 1972 chev pick up truck loaded to the gunwales with camping gear, plant samples and microclimate logging equipment. They asked us if we had any firearms and we told them that we had a shotgun (we spent two months on the side of a mountain in bear country) and then they asked us if we had any dogs with us. The customs officer circled the truck three times, each time asking us if we were sure that we did not have any dogs with us, which we did not before she let us through. The only place for a dog would have been in one of the cardboard boxes in the back or the glove compartment.
Coming back through customs in Canada is always easier than entering the USA except for the time my whole vehicle was searched most likely because I was a random number. So perhaps your experience crossing the borders is different as an American it is easier for you to return your own country than enter ours and for us easier to return to Canada than enter the USA. The best time was entering the US with a pile of camera gear and then got a lot of questions about what we were going to do with it until I told them it was mostly film gear in which he became real friendly and gave me advise on some places to go but this is on one of the small crossings where they do not even let you use their bathroom and the last one in Canada was an hour past and the next one in Montana is almost an hour ahead.
Glad you got your gear back. I was in El Paso almost a decade ago and some of the houses were better protected than is the army base I work on and the neighbouring house may not even have a fence and kids toys and bikes all across the lawn but the entire blocks were like that, a mixture of heavy protected doors or yards and others totally what I would think of as normal.