Good news: Your package has been delivered.
Bad news: It isn’t on your porch, under the mailboxes or in a package room, if you have one.
Unfortunately, your package might have been stolen by a porch pirate, like an estimated 120.5 million last year in the United States, according to a study by SafeWise.
More people shopping online during the holiday season means more packages — and an increased risk of theft. This year, holiday spending is expected to reach a record high of $902 per person, with 57 percent of adults opting to shop online, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation. E-commerce sales have ramped up in recent years, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, increasing 43 percent in 2020 over the previous year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“Most package theft is going to be a crime of opportunity,” said Ben Stickle, a professor of criminal justice administration at Middle Tennessee State University who has done research on package thefts. “And then, a package being left unguarded, where a thief can see it, is just kind of an open invitation to take it.”
To thwart thieves, some people are rerouting packages to lockers or rerouting themselves to be home for the delivery. Others are moving to luxury buildings, not for high-end amenities like IV drips, but for more practical ones, like package rooms. Of course, the ease of having packages delivered directly to your door is already a luxury. Without the looming threat of theft, it’s that much more luxurious.
“It’s the type of thing where if you have it and then you don’t have it, you would notice that it’s missing,” Phil Lavoie, the chief operating officer of Gotham Organization, a developer, said about package rooms. “It’s something that feels like just an essential convenience, and you can’t really function without it once you have a building that offers that amenity.”
After losing many items, including a wedding dress that was stolen and reappeared damaged days later, Mandy Ansari Jensen couldn’t handle the stress of stolen packages anymore. She said that receiving packages is directly tied to her work as a content creator, because many publicists and companies send her products to promote.
“It was truly just causing so much stress,” said Ms. Jensen, 39. “I was like, ‘I think it’s time for a doorman. It’s time for a package room. We can’t live like this anymore.’”
Those amenities were the main incentives for her move from a walk-up in Greenwich Village to the Suffolk, a luxury building on the Lower East Side. Now, she says, she can “live more calmly.”
There isn’t much data on the extent of package thievery because in most states, there’s no legal statute covering just these thefts, which often fall outside mail theft, Mr. Stickle said. In an email, the New York Police Department said data was “not tracked to that level of specificity.” This year, Mayor Eric Adams’s office began an initiative that installed free public lockers for package deliveries. According to a city news release about the lockers, 90,000 packages are reported stolen or lost in transit daily.
At Grace Hargis’s apartment building in Brooklyn, packages are left near the mailboxes or on a landing under the stairs, rather than on a porch. But that hasn’t deterred thieves.
Ms. Hargis, 27, who loves to shop for secondhand items, has lost tank tops, vintage clothes and trinkets sent to her from her family since she moved into the building two and a half years ago. Once, she even lost a collection of old Playboy magazines, with which she hoped to decorate her walls.
“When those things get stolen, there’s no, like, ‘Oh, let me just ask them to send me another one,’” said Ms. Hargis, a product manager for a software company. “It’s gone.”
John Grogan, who lives in San Francisco, said the thieves who target his apartment complex have gotten creative, scaling two gates to reach the area where packages are left.
Mr. Grogan said that recently his packages haven’t been stolen as often, but the fear still lingers. (He had a package containing electric toothbrush heads stolen last week.)
“It’s kind of random,” said Mr. Grogan, 47, a software developer for a start-up. “We’re conditioned now to know that as soon as you get the notification, you literally have to run to get the package.” In the past, he estimated, packages were being stolen within minutes.
“There’s a little dopamine hit when you find it because it hasn’t been stolen,” he said.
Mr. Stickle’s advice is to get packages off the porch as soon as possible or get them delivered to a neighbor. The New York Police Department suggests choosing a shipping option that requires a signature upon delivery or shipping packages to where you work. You can also install a lockable delivery box that stays on your porch; Mr. Stickle noted that he has one at his home.
“If nothing else, then put a plant or something” on the porch, he added, “and see if the delivery person will at least put the package behind it. Because if you can’t see it, it’s very unlikely that people are going to walk up and try and take something that they don’t know is there.”
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