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Amazon Helps Cops Set Up Package Theft Sting Operations (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard:
In response to Amazon packages being stolen from people's doorsteps, police departments around the country have set up sting operations that use fake packages bugged with GPS trackers to find and arrest people who steal packages. Internal emails and documents obtained by Motherboard via a public records request show how Amazon and one police department partnered to set up one of these operations.
The documents obtained by Motherboard -- which include an operations plan and internal emails between Amazon and the Hayward, California Police Department -- show that Amazon's "national package theft team" made several calls to the Hayward Police Department and sent the department packages, tape, and stickers that allowed the department to set up a "porch pirate" operation in November and December of 2018... Several other cities around the country -- including Aurora, Colorado; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Jersey City, New Jersey; and Hayward, California -- have also conducted porch pirate sting operations aided by Amazon. Jersey City, New Jersey -- like Hayward, California -- put GPS-tracking devices inside the dummy packages. Aurora and Albuquerque, meanwhile, used doorbell cameras from Ring -- which is owned by Amazon -- to capture video footage and surveil for theft.
The documents obtained by Motherboard -- which include an operations plan and internal emails between Amazon and the Hayward, California Police Department -- show that Amazon's "national package theft team" made several calls to the Hayward Police Department and sent the department packages, tape, and stickers that allowed the department to set up a "porch pirate" operation in November and December of 2018... Several other cities around the country -- including Aurora, Colorado; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Jersey City, New Jersey; and Hayward, California -- have also conducted porch pirate sting operations aided by Amazon. Jersey City, New Jersey -- like Hayward, California -- put GPS-tracking devices inside the dummy packages. Aurora and Albuquerque, meanwhile, used doorbell cameras from Ring -- which is owned by Amazon -- to capture video footage and surveil for theft.
Disagree. Having to be home to get packages would be a huge pain for me. Whereas if porch piracy were shut down (at substantial cost and inconvenience), the people who do it would just start stealing by other means.
is there's way more wage theft (not, "I got paid less than I deserve" but "I got paid less than I was legally owed") than robbery but we've got around 1000 cops nationwide pounding that beat and several hundred thousand on robbery.
For this you can't even argue there's the risk of violence. Package theft if done while no one is looking.
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That works great if you live and work in your Mom's basement.
In all seriousness, street addressing for PO Boxes or mailbox providers is in the only reliable way to go if nobody is typically home.Unless your a porch pirate, how could this possibly cause trouble? Police work with companies all the time to help stop theft and fraud. Why is this news?
Have the packages delivered to a drop-off point where you can pick them up later.
THIS is why my family has paid for a professional drop box for over thirty years.
We discovered that some checks delivered to our home were simply left behind the shrubs next to the front door, and had been there for two weeks, since we don't usually use or check the front door.
It's a touch over $200/year, and totally worth every penny.
Have the packages delivered to a drop-off point where you can pick them up later.
They offer this already - Amazon Pick-up Location
Ken
Probably deployed where they own actual real estate and where theft rate is highest.
Ken
I have a better plan: Amazon talks to their shipping partner and tells them to ring the doorbell and actually deliver the package to a person, instead of leaving it on the porch. And if they're not paying enough for that, they should pay them more.
Bad idea. Stealing packages out of my front door is no different from stealing mail out of my mailbox, and I shouldn't have to be forking extra money in my shipping costs so that Amazon can pay shipping companies the xtra cost of face-to-face delivery.
Additionally, for many of us who are out of homes most of the day, it is extremely inconvenient to have to limit our purchases to face-to-face deliveries only. This is an inane requirement that can not be easily met by the average customer. Just think about it.
I understand the possible implications (the ever present slippery slope of a big tech behemoth partnering with law enforcing agencies, but I find this to be an splendid idea.
It's either that or us customers having to mount security/honey-pot-package systems to track theft of our own purchases at an extra cost just because some fuckers can't help themselves with other people's shit.
I'm not a fan of some of Amazon's practices, but I'm on board with this.
In Poland, we have a dense network of "packomates" -- lock boxes that you receive a pick up code for. There's a packomate within 2-3 street segments of every place I needed a package delivered to.
Then, a competing carrier instead signed a contract with a widespread chain of convenience stores. This was spurred by the govt banning shops from being open on Sundays -- except for churches, gas stations, post offices, etc. The way the law was written, a convenience store that you can send packages to/from does count as a post office -- which, after a series of lawsuits, stuck. Other carriers followed suit and now you can pick up packages at several store chains -- as the contracts are not exclusive, effectively every of those stores serves each of the carriers, providing a very dense network.
To-door deliveries not only are ~3 times as expensive and tend to take longer, but suffer from the porch pirate issue you mention. No wonder hardly anyone uses them anymore. Problem solved.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Also, the taxpayer ends up picking up the bill for the extra police activity.
That is what taxes are for.
We've recently seen stories in which a Tesla had video of a man breaking the window that included his face and license plate and where video doorbells were filming those that stole them. In both of those stories, the police had little to no interest in pursuing the case.
In both cases there was also a high probability that the individuals had committed strings of those crimes. Catching the individuals could prevent a lot of theft and damage. It is very possible they have priors and could get very significant time. If not, given that they know who is doing things, they should be able to do a bit of police work and prove the pattern. Who knows, perhaps they'll have a pile of doorbells in their home ready to sell on E-Bay or a little surveillance on the car could catch them doing other drive-by Tesla break-ins.
In both of those cases, I saw many responses on comment sites with worse things that police didn't care to pursue including grand theft auto and night-time residential B&Es.
I've personally had night-time B&Es twice. In both cases I knew who did them. One was an officer and another was someone who had a restraining order against them. Both managed to leave blood evidence. In both cases, the police didn't feel the case worth the time and cost of pursuit. My interpretation was that I was not in upper class neighborhoods where these things matter.
Yet, Amazon is able to get them to spend time on package theft? Why? Are they also paying them or giving a kickback perhaps? Just because they are Amazon? Citizens don't matter but companies do? What's the deal?
Just let the taxpayer deal with the problem
The problem is stealing, stealing is a crime, I don't see the problem.
We borrowed money to bail out the corrupt trade unions at General Motors.
That is the wrong business decision. It is cheaper for Amazon to just take the loss.
Even retail stores like Walmart routinely write-off over 10% of their goods due to theft and fraud because it is cheaper to do so. If they buckled down, they could stop it, but the cost of doing so plus the fact that far fewer would shop there because of the inconveniences makes it a losing deal. This is why they don't even do simple things like open a box up and see what's in it when you make a return. Legit customers don't like being questioned.
In Amazon's case, if you both increase the delivery cost and make delivery inconvenient for the consumer, the losses would outweigh the gains.
They aren't stupid. They very carefully experiment with and measure these things to determine the sweet spot in the loss prevention cost vs. benefit equation.
It is very unlikely that they have any plans to expand this GPS sting thing. The purpose here is more likely on the prevention side. They are trying to create some publicity to make the least intelligent thieves that are working alone think twice.
ring the doorbell and actually deliver the package to a person
You can sign up for delivery alerts.
You will get a notification on your cell a few seconds after the deliverer scans the barcode and drops the package on your porch.
Of course if hub pickup became commonplace there would be nice long lines for extra fun.
There is no line. You get a locker # and code by text or email. You enter the code on the keypad and your locker pops open. It is a parallel process, so no queueing is needed.
Can't comment about porch pirates in particular. But I manage a commercial building in a strip mall, and set up video cameras to help fight robberies of our tenants. I got high-resolution 4k+ cameras, and positioned them so they can easily read license plates of passing cars. When there's a robbery, we turn the license plate numbers over to the police. Most of the time it turns out the vehicle was stolen. One time the thieves had put paper dealer tags (the kind you get with a new car before it's issued a license plate) in place of the license plates (either that or they'd stolen a new car off a dealer's lot).
In other words, right now porch pirates probably drive their own vehicle because there's very little risk of them being caught. If police start to crack down on them using things like license plate readers, they'll adapt and start doing their crime with a stolen vehicle, or a vehicle dressed up to look like it's new so it doesn't have plates yet. I'm doubtful even a GPS locator will help, since that will just make them open the package inside the car instead of at home. Cameras to get a clear image of their face would seem to work, but at our building I've noticed they know where the cameras are and take care to hide their face (usually a hat, sunglasses, bandanna, or coat pulled up over their face).
So there's no simple one-shot solution to catching the crooks. You'd be entering a protracted arms race, where each side will try to one-up each other to catch / avoid being caught. The simpler solution would seem to be one-way drop-doors like you find in mailboxes. The package deliveryman and just drop the package inside, and it'll fall into your garage or (for an apartment) a holding room.
This is B.S. You are assuming all people are essentially chaotic-neutral, and that an opportunity automatically results in crime. In short, you are BLAMING THE VICTIM.
A more educated response would be to acknowledge that SOME people commit MOST of the crimes. Use this lower-hanging fruit as a mechanism for purging the rotten apples, rather than your approach of blaming society for creating an opportunity.
They seem to be deployed mainly inside grocery stores and even some new apartment buildings. They don't take much room, they are like lockers. I don't think Amazon owns any of the real estate. It is probably cost effective because they can drop it all off at one location, instead of individually to eacch address.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The magic words are "DRUGS" and "GUNS" That's what motivates our for profit police, things they can seize. Anything else is just incidental.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
I had my packages stolen, and then started having them delivered to my work location and/or amazon lockers when available. It is inconvenient, however safer.
The main driver of the issue is that police will not have the resources to look at small crimes. In fact, it seems like they will not be able to prosecute if the item costs less than $1000 or so: https://www.latimes.com/opinio...
The thieves know this, and they would not care even if they get caught. This is not a good thing for our society. If we do not have resources to prosecute them we should at least put some method of discouragement. Community service, or financial penalties, or some another method to prevent future thefts.
Otherwise we would essentially give up the sanctuary of homes, and hence civilized society.