Neighborhood Theft

Greetings Summers Landing Residents,

The HOA recently received a complainant from a resident that had a Fed Ex delivery stolen from her front steps. Fed Ex was nice enough to send her a replacement package at no charge; however, no one likes to be taken advantage of by thoughtless and selfish criminals who don’t care who they hurt in order to enrich themselves.

We, as an HOA board, wanted to post this as a good reminder for all of us to be aware of this kind of thievery; it is not uncommon. Thieves who specialize in this kind of theft will usually follow the Fed Ex, UPS or other package delivery trucks at enough of a distance so the delivery driver doesn’t notice them. Then, as soon as the delivery is made and the delivery truck is out of sight, the thief rushes to the front door and steals the package.

There are several suggestions that we'd like to highlight to help prevent package thefts and to help catch these thieves:

1. Make sure you’re home when you expect a package and consider a camera or something like a ring tone unit that lets you monitor the area in front of your house on your phone and alerts you to anyone at your front door. This will enable you to get a package before a thief can steal it. This also affords you the opportunity to look for any suspicious vehicles and possibly get a license number to enable the police to apprehend these criminals.

2. If you have a long driveway, consider a driveway alarm. It alerts you when a vehicle enters your driveway. Delivery trucks usually use the driveway to make their delivery. A thief will most likely leave his car on the street and take the shortest distance to the package. This gives him the most mobility to make his escape.

3. Check with the seller and the delivery company to see if they have a signature option, but be sure you’re home when the package comes. Most delivery companies will not keep delivering unsigned packages if people are frequently not at home. After a second unsigned delivery you usually need to go to the company to pick up your package, which kind of defeats front door delivery.

4. Another possibility is delivery at the back door into a large sturdy storage container that you keep open and that locks when the delivery driver closes it. The disadvantage of this is that the storage container needs to be in an area where it is protected from rain and snow because any package dropped in a wet storage container could be water damaged to the point where it could reach the contents of the package.

5. We should also all also make it a point to keep an eye on delivery vehicles when we see them to see if anyone is following them. If we see someone stealing a package, try to get a license plate number and description of the car and driver, but be careful not to be obvious about it. Do not attempt to challenge the thief. Call 911 and give them whatever information you have that would help a deputy find and apprehend the thief.

6. Obviously we have an active thief operating in the area. Let’s all all make an effort to be vigilant and alert to this kind of thievery. It it happened to one of our residents, it can easily happen to any of us because most of us get deliveries from time to time..

We're sure that we haven't thought of everything, so if anyone has any other suggestions, please let us know and we'll update this post.