It was before noon on a late-August day when a white van with an orange blinking light on top pulled up to the two speed cameras on West Patapsco Avenue in South Baltimore. A man clad in a hard hat and boots climbed out.

“Anyone driving by would’ve thought, ‘Oh, they’re doing something with the speed cameras,’” Baltimore City Police Officer Regan Miller said in an interview.

Except the man wasn’t a maintenance worker. Instead of entering a code to access the devices, he pulled out a grinder saw and cut through the locks, removed the cameras, put them in his van and drove off.

Baltimore Police say they traced the thefts to a 67-year-old man named Daniel Thomas Kerins and have charged him with stealing four cameras in three locations around the city. They are investigating whether he is responsible for other camera thefts — perhaps a dozen or more.

Kerins was released on his own recognizance on Aug. 31. He could not be reached for comment; a man identifying himself as Kerins’ father said his son did not have a working phone. Though Kerins told court officials he lived with his father, his father said that was not the case.

Light-gray metal speed cameras dot the city landscape. Baltimore has network of about 160 of them, after relaunching its program for the third time in 2017 following two failed attempts in which cameras were found to be erroneously issuing tickets to drivers who were not speeding. Between speed cameras and red light cameras, city officials projected they would collect $26.8 million in revenue from tickets this fiscal year.

Kerins’ charging documents say the first theft occurred in the late-night hours of July 18, when a camera in the 5100 block of Baltimore National Pike was snatched.

Even without the camera itself, officials had access to its recorded footage, which police said showed a close-up of a white man gazing into the lens before it was disconnected.

A month later, on Aug. 14, the speed camera vendor reported another theft, this time in the 2400 block of Erdman Avenue. Footage from that theft showed the distinctive van, and police put out an internal bulletin with a picture of it.

One of the camera vendors said they saw the van at the Erdman camera location and had taken down the tag number. It was registered to Kerins, but police said they wanted to continue investigating before approaching him.

“We had to get more concrete information about who was operating the vehicle,” Miller said.

The Patapsco Avenue thefts — of both the eastbound and westbound cameras — occurred Aug. 26. Two days later, Miller said, police received a call that someone was stealing copper pipes out of a vacant home on Edmondson Avenue. The white van was there, and officers stopped the driver and verified his identity. He presented them with an invalid driver’s license, they said.

Police then compared body-worn camera footage from that stop with the image of the man stealing one of the speed cameras.

“It was a perfect match,” Miller said.

Kerins was arrested for driving without a license and taken to police headquarters for questioning. He confirmed that was his van in one of the speed camera theft recordings But when police showed him images of himself, “that’s when he kind of shut down from talking,” Miller said.

Police haven’t found the stolen devices. “We’re still working to figure out what he did with these cameras,” Lt. Charles James said.

They’re also not sure of a possible motive.

Did Kerins have a penchant for getting speed camera violations? Records suggest no: The database to pay citations shows just one speed camera violation tied to his van’s license plate. It occurred Aug. 22, in the 3100 block of Edmondson Avenue.

That’s not one of the cameras he’s charged with taking.