TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) – Following record-breaking online shopping throughout the post-Thanksgiving weekend, people are expecting orders to arrive at their front door soon.
However, those packages are also catching the eyes of porch pirates.
Several Tucson residents told 13 News they feel angry and confused, but mostly frustrated.
Christine Carino lives on Tucson’s southside, and she said this is a common problem.
Recently she bought limited-edition jewelry as her mother’s Christmas gift, but upon finding her USPS package, it was ripped apart and the necklace was missing.
“This is jewelry that you can’t get again,” Carino said. “It’s upsetting that the community is doing this, or porch pirates or whatever they call them. It’s not cool.”
This was the second time within a month that Carino’s packages were stolen. In another incident, she planned on gifting pairs of socks to her daughter. Those were stolen as well.
On the east side, a resident caught a porch pirate on camera allegedly dumping stolen mail in a nearby alley.
The resident retrieved some of the letters and gave them back to their rightful owners.
One of those owners was John, a veteran who lived a couple of streets away from the alley. He chose not to be on camera but told 13 News he had several outgoing packages in his mailbox stolen.
“I was just highly upset,” John said. “And not only me, the people that are expecting the things that I mailed out to are also upset because they are collectors of items that I happened to have, and they’re not going to get it now.”
Across the country, there were over a million complaints of mail theft from 2018 to 2023.
13 News spoke to Dan Grossman from the United States Postal Inspection Service.
“There is certainly an increase in the volume,” Grossman said. “This is certainly a busy season for a lot of gifts online, and so there’s a lot more coming through.”
Grossman adds it’s essential to bring mail into your home quickly before criminals have the chance to steal it.
“Get the mail out of those mailboxes or off of the porch as quickly as possible,” Grossman said. “A lot of times we know that those items are coming, and sometimes we don’t. So, it’s really on us to be diligent to get them to a secure place.”
Mail theft is a federal crime if the stolen packages are from the United States Postal Service. If items are delivered from carriers such as Amazon, UPS and FedEx and goes missing, it is not a federal crime, and the carriers will need to be directly contacted instead.
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