Cameras, GPS Fight Holiday Theft | God's World News

Cameras, GPS Fight Holiday Theft

12/12/2018
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    An Amazon package containing a GPS tracker sits on the porch of a Jersey City, NJ, residence. AP Photo

’Tis the season for giving. Unfortunately, it’s also the season for taking. The explosion in online shopping has led to porch pirates swiping holiday packages. So police officers in one New Jersey city are trying to catch the thieves with some trickery of their own.

The police in Jersey City, across the Hudson River from New York, teamed up with Amazon. They installed doorbell cameras and planted dummy boxes with GPS tracking devices at homes around the city.

They didn't have to wait long for someone to take the bait.

“We had a box out on the street for three minutes before it was taken,” says police Captain James Crecco. He is overseeing the mission. “We thought it was a mistake at first.”

But no. It was no mistake. The theft was intentional, and the suspect was caught, Crecco adds.

Exact figures on porch thefts are hard to come by. A company commissioned by comparison-shopping service insurancequotes.com surveyed 1,000 people. From that data, it extrapolated that 26 million Americans have had a holiday package stolen from their home. That would be nearly one in 12 Americans.

Jersey City Police Chief Michael Kelly says that locations for cameras and boxes were selected using the city’s own crime statistics, plus mapping of theft locations provided by Amazon. Some of the “bait packages” are placed under video surveillance. Other packages are equipped with GPS. Members of the police department who live in the city volunteered to have the cameras and boxes placed at their homes.

Is setting such holiday temptation before potential thieves legal? Some may cry “entrapment!” But Kelly says the program was approved by a municipal prosecutor. He says the city hopes to expand with assistance from Amazon, the nation’s largest online retailer.

Similar programs have been tried in other cities including Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Hayward, California. With online sales growing faster than brick-and-mortar retail sales for several years, opportunities for thieves is growing too.

The United States Postal Service expects to deliver about 900 million packages this holiday season. Not far behind, United Parcel Service (UPS) forecasts it will handle about 800 million in the same time frame. And when residents aren’t home to receive their goods directly, that means lots and lots of temptation waiting outside doorways and on porches.

(An Amazon package containing a GPS tracker sits on the porch of a Jersey City, NJ, residence. AP Photo)