You are lucky if you lost only the pit grates. The meth addicts in our area are stealing anything they can carry. Park benches for the metal frames; guard rails from highway barriers.
Car wash related, they cut the chain locking our gate and drove a pickup up to our dock and took all of the 4" x 6" aluminum legs of a used car wash system we had in storage; the conveyor chain and rollers; a UNIMAC Extractor and most of the aluminum parts of a Stripper Air Dryer.
As for cameras, we had security cameras at our exterior wash and on two occasions caught the people red-handed on camera:
a. He stole an aluminum
door off our pay terminal. Police caught him, he admitted the theft and the district attorney never prosecuted him.
b. In another case, a man was caught on camera assaulting my partner (hitting him and knocking him down) and again the distrist attorney never prosecuted.
Regards