As online sales boom, so too have the shenanigans of porch pirates.
I can’t go a day without seeing posts in my neighborhood Facebook group reporting another package stolen off a porch by a person dressed in a hat and mask.
The kind of pirate they are isn’t fun. There are no eye patches or parrots to be seen.
They’re just another neighbor who’s perfectly friendly when you run into them on the street, but has secretly stolen your biweekly Subscribe & Save delivery of toilet paper and diapers for the last three months.
Laurie Pringle is a 54-year-old resident of Hamilton, Ontario.
She had lost about a dozen packages to porch pirates in three years, and many of her neighbors had also.
Laurie left a gift for the next pirate to see her porch.
She wasn’t the only one planning. The people in her row of houses were all on board.
The time it would take to collect enough dog poo to fill a box was an issue.
She had a moment when she was cleaning the litter box.
Laurie dumped the entire contents of the litter box into an Amazon box.
She put it on the porch with the Amazon logo visible.
It took 40 minutes for someone to steal it, and she caught the guy on her doorbell camera.
Laurie decided to post on social media instead of reporting it to the police.
She’s lost faith in her local police because previous attempts to report stolen packages didn’t result in much.
Many repeat offenders have been caught by Hamilton’s porch theft program. It’s easy for victims to simply report porch thefts to the online store and get a refund or replacement, according to a police officer.
