Ordering a package online is so convenient. You can shop multiple stores from your bed, compare the prices, and arrives at your door without you having to worry. Well, you hope it arrives and stays at your door at least.
According to Forbes, “In the year 2022 alone, 79% of Americans fell victim to porch pirates with more than half having more than one package swiped from their doorstep. The amount of loss adds up and is climbing. Nationwide the annual amount of loss due to theft is more than $19 million.”
This is an epidemic that people have people grasping for solutions: video doorbell cameras, package tracking, and special delivery instructions. Like other people, my roommates and I installed a Ring doorbell camera in our Minneapolis home in Dinkytown to make our place safer and protect our packages, but to our dismay, this still was not enough.
This past month, I ordered a package from Amazon. The University of Minnesota Spring Break was on my mind, and I didn’t have time to go to the store and buy new swimsuits for my trip with my busy work schedule.
Unfortunately, I received a text from my roommates just a few days later that a package was stolen off our porch. One of my roommates received a Ring notification, checked it out, and sent us the video of a lady running away with my CupShe package.
Looking through more Ring footage, we saw a vehicle enter our driveway. Because of our Ring camera, we were able to see her license plate number and the package thief running away with my package.
Despite being upset, I was relieved that the face of the thief and the license plate of the car were clearly visible in the video. I thought for sure that the police could easily identify the owner that the car was registered to. With living in Dinkytown, I figured this likely wasn’t a first time occurrence and other residents had experienced similar situations; however, after submitting a police report, with the license plate number, nothing happened. There was no investigation and likely got filed away to sit and collect dust in the Minneapolis Police Department. One would think that after having a video and license plate number that some sort of action would be taken, but silence was all I received.
Maybe this is why porch piracy has grown rampant over the last few years. More and more people are ordering more packages and police intervention is not matching the increasing level of theft. This lack of police is emboldening some thieves, like the one in my situation, to completely ignore any sort of concealment, even to the extent of having a Ring camera recording her in the middle of the day. And while this is a problem everywhere in America, it is most common in cities and Minnesota ranks #2 in larceny. With a larceny rate of 319 per 100,000 people. Minnesota lawmakers introduced the Porch Pirates Act of 2022 to make mail theft from other private mail carriers a felony like how it is for USPS mail theft, but the bill gained no traction.
With the absence of lawmakers and police protection, many Americans are trying to provide their own protection but many of these solutions are inconvenient or expensive. What are Minneapolis residents supposed to do to protect their packages by themselves when they are at work or school? For now, we are left to deal with theft claims and delayed package replacements until our public defenders do something about it. And for me, I hope that the lady, with the Minnesota license plate of DMJ 464 can fit into my swimsuits because I will no longer be able to wear them.
