Emma French took to social media late last week after her Subaru WRX was damaged outside Snap Fitness while she exercised inside – luckily, it was parked directly in front of the gym’s CCTV camera. 

“I’ll be parking there all the time now,” she said. 

Ms French said she did not notice the extensive scratch damage until the next day when a roadwork crew member pointed out she had a flat tyre.

“It’s not a little runaround, I put a lot of money into it and I worked for that,” she said.

She said the CCTV footage went viral, viewed more than 100,000 times and shared 1500 times.

“People rang with information,” she said.

The police investigation is ongoing.  

Flirt owner Julianne Pearce said the business often posted screenshots from its CCTV footage on social media when it established items had been stolen.

“There has been quite a few arrests and it acts as a good deterrent to people because they know we will put them on Facebook,” she said.

“Quite often people will supply us with names and then we pass it onto police and the majority of other people actually then also send messages of congratulations and say thank you for doing it,” she said. 

Canobolas Local Area Command Inspector Linda Bradbury said social media often played an important role because it involved the community and often helped police in their investigations.

However, she also recommended consulting police before releasing footage because legislation guiding evidence needed to be followed. 

“For example, when we show footage, we don’t show people committing the offence because if they’re going to go before the court, they have to be given the opportunity to explain it to a magistrate,” she said.