Package theft

[atgcpaul]

Do you do anything to deter/prevent package theft at your house? This seems to be rampant everywhere and we got hit 2 weeks ago. I'm walking the dogs after work and I see an opened box in my neighbor's yard 2 doors down. I look at the label and it's for my wife. The box was opened and the contents were still in it. I guess they didn't want a little girl's water bottle and thermos. Yesterday, my wife found someone else's opened package in the same area except this was stolen from the apartment complex around the corner. We returned the empty box to the guy.

This package wasn't from Amazon so I couldn't use their locker program and their locker is in the opposite direction from our house from where I work. A PO box is $86/year for even the smallest one and then I can only pickup my stuff when the PO is open.

Our front porch sits 4' higher than the sidewalk so a box for the delivery person to place the package into would conceal it, but then people know to check the box. A one way door contraption like the USPS uses for mail would be ideal but not seeing anything DIY.

Do you do anything special to secure packages? I'm not sure how amenable delivery people would be to walking around d the side of the house although the day that package went missing (delivered by USPS),I got 2 largish boxes from Amazon and UPS put it around the side.

[capncarl]

A good neighborhood watch and a camera. Maybe a game camera. Set them up, leave empty boxes on the porch and get their photos and call the police. They possibly have a suspission who it is and this may make their case.

[atgcpaul]

We had a neighborhood watch, but I know most of my neighbors are at work when packages are delivered.

Sad thing in our case is I actually have a camera pointed at my front door but I didn't have notifications and recording setup. I do now. My wife reported the theft to the police and we encouraged the guy last night to do the same. Is it entrapment if you setup bait?

[leehljp]

We had a neighborhood watch, but I know most of my neighbors are at work when packages are delivered.

Is it entrapment if you setup bait?

Get a friend to be an accomplice. Put a package with a couple of rocks in it - outside the door for him to "pick up", only do it when he gets time, such as in a couple of days. Anyone picking it up beside him or your family could not be defined as entrapment, IMO.

[cwsmith]

Surprisingly we don't have that problem on our street... YET.

We don't do a lot of online ordering, but we do get a monthly 'over-the-counter' benefit delivery from our health insurance and of course the usual prescription deliveries. They're usually a fairly-stuffed white mailing bag which often won't fit into the mail box and thus are left on the front steps which is only about 10 ft from the sidewalk.

Foot traffic on our street is pretty heavy (big double wide sidewalks and roadway) as we have a very diverse neighborhood with lots of college kids as well as minorities living in the area etc. They trek back and forth to the local grocery, bus stops, etc. Our street is also one block south of the main street, running parallel to it. Because Main Street is so poor, between the roadbed and traffic, far too many vehicles turn off Main and travel down our street. Perhaps such traffic is somehow a deterrent, but I would think that 'porch bandits' are generally pretty bold.

I was just joking with my neighbor about how quickly things disappear from the curb area; not thieves, but opportunists who we're happy to feed with our disposals. He put out an old floor vacuum and a table lamp this past Saturday and they were 'picked-up' within the hour. While that is sort of neat and convenient if you want to get rid of old household goods, one has to be careful. A couple of years ago the other neighbor was mowing the lawn and left his lawn more out there while he went into the house for some reason. When he came back out twenty minutes later, he discovered someone had picked up his lawnmower, thinking it had been put out there as scrap.

Still, we haven't found anyone stealing packages. Really I'm surprised at this, having read several times that this is a very serious problem almost everywhere. I do have electronic security in the house and a sign out front, but to-date no cameras. I am considering doing this as we have periodically have trouble with dog owners and their poor manners when taking the dog out for the walk. Unfortunately, even with camera evidence the local enforcement officer can't prosecute, so I'm wondering if the same ignorance would prevail even if I caught someone stealing a package. With the exception of Walmart, many stores (Home Depot, Lowes, Harbor Freight, etc.) won't make any attempt to aprehend those who are blatantly stealing from them.

Hopefully, a good camera and watchful neighbors would help your neighborhood. However, before I went through the labor and expense, I think I'd discuss it with the local constabulary if such video evidence would be prosecutable.

CWS

[LinuxRandal]

If something is large or valuable, I tend to have it sent to my work. That also gives me the benefit of a commercial address, which deliveries are quicker to (if Amazon, pretty much Prime speed, without prime cost), and more often.
Newer locations, and places with a lot of animal attack issues, either have, or the post office is pushing for imminent domain taking of a section of land for centrally located mailboxes, which include larger parcel mailboxes.
Then there are private, parcel mailboxes, sold by places like Home Depot, Woot, Amazon, etc. Think of having a large blue mailbox looking thing, in other colors.
I have one friend who picked up one of the postal style ones at a sale (the kind used in multibox locations), and another late friend, who placed one in a brick, mailbox enclosure setup he made, after too many baseball mailbox drive by's.

[atgcpaul]

I have considered sending it to work, but what I've found recently is that many sellers, Amazon included, don't let you pick how a package is delivered--just that it gets to you in X number of days for Y price. And it seems more and more packages are coming through USPS or non-standard shippers.

The complication for me is that USPS can't deliver directly to my building because we have no mail room. You have to provide USPS a different address so the central mail room can then distribute it to my building. Fedex and UPS can deliver directly to my work address, but not the mailing address. Without always knowing ahead of time what shipper will be used, I don't know which Ship To address to use.

I saw USPS deliver something to the house today. Let's see if we catch any rats.

I'm thinking a quick disguise is a large square shaped planter. Cut a board to divide the planter into 1/2 or 1/3 and fill with dirt and plants (or use fake plants) in the front of the planter. Packages would be dropped into the back half of the planter with plants in the front to make it look legit. In the winter, switch to evergreens.

Something like a mailbox drop box would be ideal, though. Packages come in, but not out without a key. Also a lock for the slot when packages aren't expected so foreign objects don't get deposited.

[capncarl]

If you can't catch them maybe you can have some fun messing with them.

We were having a lot of trouble with theft out of the back of pick up trucks. I lost several 5. gals of gas in red plastic jugs, cases of soda, shovels, extension cords etc. I teamed up with a couple of my work buddies having the same problems by putting a couple gallons of water, a couple coffee cans of sand and topped the 5 gallon jug off with gas. After we all lost our donor cans out of the back of our trucks I haven heard of much problems loosing gas cans. I bet that gas didn't run well! A weed eater still doesn't stand a chance but the thieves lost their urge to steal gas cans!

An old trick that I saw some bored firemen playing on people that would swoop by a bus stop bench on a bicycle and grab someone's purse, briefcase or shopping bag and speeding off might be in order. ( they nailed a purse to the bench and when the perp rode by on his bike and grabbed the strap they got snatched off their bike) Cut a piece of plywood that will just fit the bottom of your donor shipping box and attach a 20 ft piece of aircraft cable to the plywood and tie it off to a fixture on the porch. Maybe tie it off to a chair or something that will make a lot of noise when it is disturbed. When the thieves grab the box and run maybe it will snatch them down when they run out of cable and maybe the noise from the furniture following them will alert someone.

Put a can of paint with the lid just tapped on in a shipping box. When they throw it in their get away car maybe it will mess up their car.

[capncarl]

I would have suggested putting a rattlesnake in the donor shipping box but someone might comment that it is cruel to the snake!

[tfischer]

Is it entrapment if you setup bait?

No. Entrapment only applies if it's done by a government official (e.g. police). Also even if that didn't apply, the defense would have to prove that the perpetrator would have been unlikely to commit the crime without your specific bait (e.g. they wouldn't have just gone for someone else's package).

[d_meister]

On the news here in San Diego about a week ago, was a featured news story in this vein. The people that had been victimized in the past happened to have dogs, so they filled a box when cleaning up their backyard with dog waste. Sure enough, someone came and stole it from the front porch.

[dbhost]

In the nearly 15 years I have owned my house, I have had 2 packages misdelivered, but none stolen. One package was delivered to a house with the last 2 digits of the address reversed, and the other delivered to the same address and street name, in Pasadena Texas. Oops... Both misdeliveries were done by UPS.

The first misdelivery was 2 clock makers sized forstner bits from Grizzly. The second was a set of pickups for my Jazz Bass.

I have had musical instruments, amplifiers, tools, jewelry for my wife etc... delivered with no problem.

I have a camera system, as do several of my neighbors, but honestly, most of those sorts of crimes seem to happen as a crime of convenience (I can swipe this and pawn it for a few bucks) and it seems to be prevalent in areas with a fairly high drug abuse problem. While I am sure there are folks abusing drugs in my neighborhood, we don't have any "tweakers" running amok trying to score bucks for their next fix. I am probably oddly lucky.