SCUTTLING PORCH PIRACY
OKLAHOMA CITY – Because porch pirates have victimized residents throughout the state with greater frequency, a measure has been filed to make package thefts a state crime. House Bill 2777 by Rep. Ross Ford, R-Broken Arrow, would create the Oklahoma Porch Piracy Act.
“This has become a widespread problem,” said Ford, who retired from the Tulsa Police Department after a 271⁄2-year career. In addition, his wife is a civilian employee with the Broken Arrow Police Department who works with neighborhood associations in efforts to deter crimes such as package thefts. Incidents of porch piracy have risen dramatically in recent years in tandem with the growth of online shopping. Thieves follow mail carriers and FedEx, UPS, Amazon, and DHL trucks and vans as they make door-to-door deliveries. Precise statistics on package thefts are sketchy. The Oklahoma City Police Department, for example, does not keep statistics on porch pirates, said MSgt. Gary Knight in the OKCPD’s Office of Media Relations. And it is not known whether the Lawton Police Department keeps statistics on package thefts; a voicemail message the Ledger left with the department’s public information officer at 11:02 a.m. on Dec. 31 was ignored.
However, anecdotal evidence abounds. The U.S. Post Office in Elgin, which serves Fletcher, Sterling, and Elgin, processed 28,000 packages in December; among those, 30 thefts were reported to postal employees although local police were notified about only one incident. The New York Times reported in December that more than 90,000 packages are stolen or disappear without explanation in New York City each day. The Nextdoor online bulletin board reported that during the holiday season it usually experiences a 500% increase in posts on its social network about missing packages. For example, a woman in northwest Oklahoma City posted a message on Nextdoor on Dec. 20 that on one occasion a $1,200 package was delivered to her residence and an unidentified “kid came 5 minutes after the delivery truck” and scooped up the package. Her husband was “on his way to the get box off our porch when it happened.” The theft was recorded on a concealed camera at their front door, she wrote. Package thieves don’t seem to be particular about what they pilfer. In late 2017 a Tucson, Ariz., woman posted on Facebook that a package delivered to her home on Dec. 12 was missing. “It was supposed to have a signature for delivery but the postman waived the signature requirement,” she wrote.
“The package is irreplaceable as it contains my father’s ashes” and the urn that contained them was mailed from an Oklahoma City funeral home. She was one of the few lucky victims of porch piracy. On April 2, 2018, she announced on Facebook that “my father’s ashes were found and returned to me…” “We have such a problem with trying to enforce the law against porch piracy,” said Ford, chairman of the House Appropriations and Budget Subcommittee on Public Safety. “These cases are supposed to be turned over to postal inspectors, but there aren’t enough of them to handle the volume of these incidents.” In addition, law enforcement officers have been required to evaluate whether a stolen package “has any value,” Ford said. That can be a subjective matter; the stolen urn, for instance, was deemed priceless to the victim but useless to anyone else. “My bill doesn’t require a value to be established for the contents of a package,” Ford said. Regardless of what a package might contain, “so long as it’s delivered to your doorstep, if someone steals it, it’s a crime.” Quite likely a first-time offense would be classified as a misdemeanor that would be punished with a fine of up to $1,000 and/or a one-year county jail sentence, he said. However, HB 2777 provides that the ultimate decision whether to consider an incident of porch piracy a misdemeanor or a felony will be left to the discretion of the district attorney, Ford said. The Second Regular Session of the 57th Oklahoma Legislature will convene at noon Feb. 3.