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California woman fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

A Southern California woman fed up with her packages getting stolen out of her post office box sent an Apple AirTag to the address and cleverly tracked down the suspected thief, police said.

The woman had had several items stolen from her mailbox at the Los Alamos Post Office already when she thought of the idea, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday. Apple’s $29 AirTags have become popular items since their 2021 release, helping users keep tabs on the location of anything from their lost keys to wallets and luggage.

On Monday morning, sheriff’s deputies were called to the post office where the woman told officials her mail had been stolen again — including the package with the AirTag.

circuscritic ,

…why wasn’t this handled by the Postal Inspectors?

I assumed someone repeatedly breaking into PO boxes is something they would actually want to investigate…?

johannesvanderwhales ,

Budget, probably. Republicans have been trying to strangle the USPS for years.

circuscritic , (edited )

Postal Inspectors are Federal Law enforcement, and while you could argue that their budget hasn’t kept up with inflation, it hasn’t been cut either.

Point is, while I’ll always support the need for the US Post Office, and support employees who work in any capacity to deliver mail, I can’t be as charitable with the USPIS when they have the manpower to spare for warrantless surveillance programs.

BlitzoTheOisSilent ,

When I was a carrier, I had a business road on my route, all the mailboxes were at the curb for every business. On two or three separate occasions, I’d get to the last box and it looked rougher than it did the previous day. Business owner came out and told me the box had been broken into again, along with several others on the road, and wanted to know what we could/would do about it.

I called my postmaster and explained and asked if USPIS would be getting involved (as the business owner also asked). I was told no, they don’t get involved in those sorts of things, the owner would just have to file a report with the police, and we’d stop delivering on Saturdays since none of the businesses would be open.

I never got a further explanation than that, so I couldn’t say why USPIS doesn’t get involved, but they don’t seem to anymore. 🤷‍♀️

circuscritic ,

I understand that they won’t get involved and run of the local mail mailbox crime, but this was inside of a US Post Office.

That has to be the easiest layup possible a USPIS agent to get a case closure off from, but now I’m really curious about what jurisdiction local police or sheriff’s deputies even have when dealing with crimes that occur inside of the post office, which I’m fairly certain are federal buildings.

I always thought that crimes that occur on federal property, or land, are automatically assigned to federal law enforcement.

norimee ,

Are post boxes at the post office not locked in the US? Do you not have to identify yourself or have a key? How can they keep stealing her mail not from her porch or something but from the actual postoffice?

Eggyhead ,

Serious. What’s the point of even having a post box?

mofongo ,

Drugs

BeardedBlaze ,
@BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world avatar

USPS doesn’t deliver to the house everywhere, so you’re stuck with a PO Box.

Darkassassin07 ,
@Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca avatar

The last town I lived in didn’t do door-to-door mail for ANYONE. If you want your mail, come to the post office.

Private carriers like Fedex/Purolator are a bit more accommodating, but tracking down your regular letter mail was your problem.

The post office worker’s would get super pissed off if you received mail with your actual address on it instead of the PO box too. Taking 10sec to type it into the computer to match street address with PO box was the end of the world apparently…

Rhaedas ,

It depends on where you are. The commercial carriers often will use USPS as the "last mile" carrier to send stuff too. People dump on the US postal system (rightly so for a lot of things) but it really is an incredible system, when it works. And a lot of that is the government side to blame, making it more costly and inefficient where it could be better.

aramis87 ,

DeJoy is still in office actually, and is planning to further degrade service as soon as the election passes.

JWBananas ,
@JWBananas@lemmy.world avatar

Purolator

TIL there is a logistics/shipping company that shares a name with an oil filter manufacturer.

sudo ,

There are other answers, but privacy as well. Some people who do business online may not want to give their home address out.

BeardedBlaze ,
@BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world avatar

Never seen one without a key lock or combo lock. Could’ve been an inside job.

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

They are locked, but as anyone who has watched 20 seconds or more of the Lockpicking Lawyer, the locks are trivially easy to defeat. Typically they are in an unsupervised area of the post office and most of the time there “isn’t budget” to even cover them with cameras, as if a premeditated thief would not just show up wearing a disguise anyway.

girlfreddy OP ,
@girlfreddy@lemmy.ca avatar

The sheriff’s department commended the mail theft victim for contacting law enforcement so they could apprehend the suspects rather than attempting to contact them on her own.

They should have been congratulating her because she did their job for them.

DaddleDew ,

I’m just glad they did something about it.

Some police departments won’t even be bothered to do anything about petty theft even if you give them a name, picture and address of the perpetrator.

khannie ,
@khannie@lemmy.world avatar

Isn’t interference with mail a fairly hefty offense over there?

Someonelol ,
@Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Yeah it’s a federal offense. That said cops can be lazy as shit and usually won’t bother to help unless you’re someone who’s important to them.

drcobaltjedi ,

USPS does NOT fuck around with mail crimes. Reporting it to them means they’ll bring the hammer down.

scottmeme ,

Yep I had a USPS worker sign on a signature required package, had it on video.

Pretty sure he was fired because he fucked around and found out on a package I specifically requested to be signed required.

Ashelyn ,

Local police also aren’t generally the best to contact over federal offenses. If it’s not immediately actionable, they tend to lose interest and just shove the paperwork onto the “when we get around to it” pile

IphtashuFitz , (edited )

If it’s US Mail then contact the US Postal Inspection Service. They’re federal law enforcement specifically for the USPS, and they don’t fuck around.

ayyy ,

Sure, maybe they don’t fuck around, but they also aren’t funded so they don’t do jack shit for you. Thanks DeJoy and Republicans.

some_guy ,

Came to say exactly this. Lots of articles about police doing fuckall when trackers show the location of stolen property.

IphtashuFitz ,

In cases like this also contact the US Postal Inspection Service. They won’t take kindly to stolen mail, especially if it’s stolen right out of a US Post Office.

Hegar ,
@Hegar@fedia.io avatar

A friend of mine had his phone snatched on the bus, so he had me call his phone and pretend to be the phone company, telling the thief that he'd won a new phone and I just needed his address.

The police were very happy that we'd done their job for them, and they got his phone back.

khannie ,
@khannie@lemmy.world avatar

LOOOL. Something similarly stupid happened to a friend of mine. His phone got stolen in a nightclub but it was a rather unusual phone. He saw it for sale a few days later on our equivalent of craigslist and offered to buy it. Thing is the guy was a professional fighter and he turned up with a good friend who was a bouncer and also fought out of the same club.

Anyway…The person selling it was the bouncer from the club it had been stolen from. Someone would go around robbing phones from the club then sell them to the bouncer at a hefty discount and he would then sell them on. He apologised profusely and tried to explain his way out of it yada yada.

Friend got his phone back anyway.

CMDR_Horn ,

Law enforcement budgets are tight. 30 dollars is too much when they have to buy military equipment instead.

gdog05 ,

Oh they’re given the military equipment. But the new cruisers they buy and then the cost to paint and modify them to win the Best Looking Cruiser Competition is pretty high.

shalafi ,

Nah, they still have to buy the milsurp, it’s just so cheap it’s “an offer you can’t refuse”.

I don’t need a black powder cannon, but if you offered me one for $100, I’d be reaching for my wallet.

Darkassassin07 ,
@Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca avatar

Na, they were too busy being pisssed of they couldn’t just say “nothing we can do, there’s no way to track the thief down” and walk away like usual.

qjkxbmwvz ,

Honest question, are there any reasons why a private citizen performing this sort of thing would be legally less of a problem than the state?

From a philosphical perspective I’m all for catching mail thieves. But I would get a little twitchy hearing that the police are mailing tracking devices. And I would be more or less ok with a private citizen helping to “catch the bad guy” with their security camera, but I do not want police surveillance cameras on my street, thank you very much.

AA5B ,

We had a possible breakin on my street, and police noticed my doorbell camera. They politely asked if I could check whether it picked something up, and I showed him a picture possibility (complainants said oh yeah that was us).

I was ok with it because it was a request, the cam only shows public areas, and it never left my control. I don’t know what would have happened if it went anywhere, but I could have said no, and I could have said nothing was picked up. This was all reasonable cooperation with no overreach or privacy invasion

TheReturnOfPEB ,

I haven’t received an unopened new debit card/credit card from the USPS in over a decade. Postal employees all need raises and better working conditions to combat this and organized fraud by postal workers.

Phoenix3875 ,

What happened to the beeping anti-stalking feature?

Ghoelian ,

Yeah that’s what I was wondering as well. I still have one lying around in a drawer somewhere (don’t have an iphone, it’s not mine). Every time I open the drawer it beeps at me, and nowadays my android phone even notifies me of one following me as well.

ggppjj ,

Takes three days of separation from the owner to kick in, IIRC.

JimmyBigSausage ,

This was actually genius! Congratulations to her.

I lived in a rural area where these creeps just followed the Fed-Ex truck around and then picked up the packages just delivered. I saw them after a delivery at my home and hurried out for my package, picked it up, and waved at them! 🤭 Foiled again!!!

MediaBiasFactChecker Bot ,

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