In NYC you MUST register with USPS, UPS, and FedEx for delivery notifications. Delivery folks won't even bother ringing your bell and will often skip getting the signature even if it's required because they face constant pressure to deliver more in less time from the company. You need the electronic notification to know it's there and you need to get there immediately as thieves will follow delivery trucks/personnel around the neighborhood, stealing after each delivery.
>In NYC you MUST register with USPS, UPS, and FedEx for delivery notifications
That's just not true. As long as you have a tracking number, you can get delivery notifications without registering simply by requesting them on the relevant websites.
I do that all the time.
>You need the electronic notification to know it's there and you need to get there immediately as thieves will follow delivery trucks/personnel around the neighborhood, stealing after each delivery.
That may happen where you live, but where I live (10025), that's not even close to the truth. There are often at least a half-dozen packages in my lobby (no doorman) at any given time and package theft is rare.
We had a problem with that a few years back, but when I called the police and then loudly told the likely perpetrators (and reminded them about the video cameras in the lobby), that stopped pretty quickly.
Want to do the same? Here's a shocking idea -- talk to your neighbors. Make sure there's surveillance (not that invasive Amazon Ring stuff) where packages are left, and make sure folks know they're being watched.
What's more, it would only take one person to be arrested (because the thieves are likely people you see every single day) for this to make it stop in your building.
Having a community makes a difference. Perhaps you should try it sometime?
That hasn't been my experience. Everyone rings the bell except the USPS, who has a key to let themselves in. Many years ago, something being shipped by Lasership means you'd never get it, but they seem to have improved on that front.
Anecdotal but I don't think packages get stolen in my neighborhood. I occasionally read Nextdoor and it never comes up. And my neighbors complain about everything.
Roughly in the same timeline, porch pirates have been rampant in my community (in the SF Bay Area nevertheless!) and causing a lot of headache for me and my neighbors (at least those in our chat group).
It seems to me that these CRIMINALS face little to no consequences here, both absolute and relative to the damage they are causing. The so-called police is willing and capable to do exactly nothing about it. Any confrontation either hurts the resident, or puts the (otherwise perfectly legal) resident under legal trouble... Which is weird, because this effectively means that the victim faces more risk than even the perpetrator, just by the virtue of having an address and living a proper, productive life!
In the end I can't help but feel they are the predator and we are the prey. And the rest of the society is, uh, pretty content with the status quo?
Lived in Singapore, Caning is absolutely barbaric and an atrocious way of punishment.
They have special people who are trained in caning and the culprit will get their 30 lashes or whatever regardless of whether they pass out at lash 19 say. They'll heal you up and back you go for the next 11 lashes.
This is what they did in medieval times, not today. Singapore is barbaric in this aspect and this is enforced in middle schools as well. It turns kids into obedient robots.
Whatever solution is proposed, caning is not one of them.
I don't understand this kind of perspective. You ate completely olivipus to the root of the problem: why would mail carriers even leave parcels on the porch or similar?
In most (all?) European countries the rule is that they ring the bell, if you don't answer they leave a note and either leave it with a neighbour, come back a day later, or you have to pick it up from the post office. In addition nowadays you can ask to get mail delivered to a specific kind of locker (operated by the mail service) where you can pick it up any time of day.
Really, such a weird perspective to want to reintroduce capital punishment rather than force the companies to use one of the many available solutions. You have accepted that the legal burden is on you, rather than the carrier paid to get the package to you - which is just absurd.
By contrast, in Texas the law allows you to use lethal force to protect your property.
You can literally shoot someone in the back as they run away with your amazon package if you have no other reasonable way to prevent your property from theft.
Didn't expect that last line ("BTW") but to be honest, I think something like that is the only solution.
If you look at society 400-500 years ago, brutal punishment of this variety was the norm: theft in Restoration England was often enough met with hanging. Since then, the penalties for theft and other "petty" crimes have been reduced, to the point that now theft has been completely normalized. People complained, for example, when charges against Amy Cooper were dropped in New York, but the fact is that you can get arrested hundreds of times in New York, and your charges will always be dropped, for basically any charge, theft, assault, domestic violence, you name it, they drop it. There is a total unwillingness by people in power to inflict punishment on people who punish ordinary citizens by committing crimes against them, sending the signal committing crime is not at all, in fact, criminal, but normal, expected and acceptable behavior. Non-criminal people will flee such environments en masse or become criminals themselves. The result will be lawless cities that blowhards like Trump talk about but do nothing to fix, and only make worse.
I am not saying we should go back to hanging people for theft. But we do need to figure out how to punish people without maintaining the Prison Industrial Complex. We need to figure out what is a crime (theft) and not a crime (drug use), we need to provide social services, food, shelter to poor people. We MUST provide education and opportunities to people. But if crime goes unpunished, perhaps in an asymmetric manner like caning, the lawlessness we're seeing today will grow much, much worse and make basic life unlivable in places that were once and still maybe are the pinnacles of civilization, like New York. It will destroy us.
My advice: lobby for stronger personal stimulus from congress. It's hardly a mystery why this is happening.
Also if you think you're being preyed upon: you're hanging out on a forum with millionaires. This forum is far more predatory than porch theft ever could be. It's only a quirk of fate that our grift is legal and theirs is not.
Wow that 43% of people who get online orders have experienced a theft seems super high to me.
I'm trying to think of the lowest tech solution to this that would work. Maybe plexiglass lockboxes that are secured to the floor but left unlocked. Package delivery workers can put them in the boxes with little effort (important or won't be done) but only residents can open them up.
There isn't a solution really. Drivers are paid too little to care and have to deliver too many packages - leading to mistreatment of a package and lack of time to knock and wait for the owner.
You could maybe have an option to register with distributors to not deliver your packages but keep them in the centers and only send you a not that you can collect package. But that kind of defeats a purpose of delivery :/
I'm actually a little bit shocked that people are this naive. You should try to ship virtually everything to either an Amazon locker or a workplace or somewhere with a concierge. This theft of packages is absolutely rampant throughout every major metropolitan in the U.S. If your package is going to be dropped off casually somewhere, it had better have inexpensive contents.
Sorry but no, this rate of package theft is not the norm around the globe and law abiding citizens should not have to take such measures. Government needs to find a solution.
And no, people are not this naive. Don't belittle them. That's just victim blaming.
What's the punishment? What are the odds of stopping them from doing it again? They'll just go back to stealing packages after spending a few days in jail. People who do these things frequently have no reason not to because the available punishments do not affect them.
I lived in a LARGE apartment building for many years. We had some package theft, so I let it be known that I would accept deliveries for other residents during the day. (I worked nights.) I did not charge for this service - but I did accept tips.
One wonders how long it will be before people simply start trying to open package lockers, e.g. with a battery powered angle grinder like bike thieves use. Sure, I suppose there are cameras on these lockers, but from news reports about package theft in the US, it seems like many of these thieves don’t care at all if their face is caught on camera.
Oh they resisted eh? Exactly how? I'm not seeing much of anything in this article, besides getting a security camera reactivated so that they can see a video of who stole their stuff, which will never be followed up on anyways.
I want to feel sorry for them, but I cannot forget that this is exactly what they asked for. In all probability, the actual people in this building they featured, that is. They got the state to abolish bail for people arrested for these "low-value property crimes". They elected DAs who promised to not prosecute them at all. They are probably even now campaigning to "abolish the police" entirely. In case anyone was wondering, they've also published articles declaring that yes they really do want to literally abolish the police and it is not at all a euphemism for some kind of reform. What they're seeing now is exactly what they asked for. Now they want to whine about their packages getting stolen? Too bad, wake me when the start advocating for actual enforcement against brazen theft.
[+] [-] JohnTHaller|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nobody9999|5 years ago|reply
That's just not true. As long as you have a tracking number, you can get delivery notifications without registering simply by requesting them on the relevant websites.
I do that all the time.
>You need the electronic notification to know it's there and you need to get there immediately as thieves will follow delivery trucks/personnel around the neighborhood, stealing after each delivery.
That may happen where you live, but where I live (10025), that's not even close to the truth. There are often at least a half-dozen packages in my lobby (no doorman) at any given time and package theft is rare.
We had a problem with that a few years back, but when I called the police and then loudly told the likely perpetrators (and reminded them about the video cameras in the lobby), that stopped pretty quickly.
Want to do the same? Here's a shocking idea -- talk to your neighbors. Make sure there's surveillance (not that invasive Amazon Ring stuff) where packages are left, and make sure folks know they're being watched.
What's more, it would only take one person to be arrested (because the thieves are likely people you see every single day) for this to make it stop in your building.
Having a community makes a difference. Perhaps you should try it sometime?
[+] [-] jrockway|5 years ago|reply
Anecdotal but I don't think packages get stolen in my neighborhood. I occasionally read Nextdoor and it never comes up. And my neighbors complain about everything.
[+] [-] pid_0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smilekzs|5 years ago|reply
It seems to me that these CRIMINALS face little to no consequences here, both absolute and relative to the damage they are causing. The so-called police is willing and capable to do exactly nothing about it. Any confrontation either hurts the resident, or puts the (otherwise perfectly legal) resident under legal trouble... Which is weird, because this effectively means that the victim faces more risk than even the perpetrator, just by the virtue of having an address and living a proper, productive life!
In the end I can't help but feel they are the predator and we are the prey. And the rest of the society is, uh, pretty content with the status quo?
BTW: Would the Singapore system ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore ), properly enforced, act as a credible deterrence?
[+] [-] filereaper|5 years ago|reply
They have special people who are trained in caning and the culprit will get their 30 lashes or whatever regardless of whether they pass out at lash 19 say. They'll heal you up and back you go for the next 11 lashes.
This is what they did in medieval times, not today. Singapore is barbaric in this aspect and this is enforced in middle schools as well. It turns kids into obedient robots.
Whatever solution is proposed, caning is not one of them.
[+] [-] estaseuropano|5 years ago|reply
In most (all?) European countries the rule is that they ring the bell, if you don't answer they leave a note and either leave it with a neighbour, come back a day later, or you have to pick it up from the post office. In addition nowadays you can ask to get mail delivered to a specific kind of locker (operated by the mail service) where you can pick it up any time of day.
Really, such a weird perspective to want to reintroduce capital punishment rather than force the companies to use one of the many available solutions. You have accepted that the legal burden is on you, rather than the carrier paid to get the package to you - which is just absurd.
[+] [-] barbacoa|5 years ago|reply
You can literally shoot someone in the back as they run away with your amazon package if you have no other reasonable way to prevent your property from theft.
https://www.shouselaw.com/tx/crimes/defenses/self-defense/
[+] [-] 77777|5 years ago|reply
If you look at society 400-500 years ago, brutal punishment of this variety was the norm: theft in Restoration England was often enough met with hanging. Since then, the penalties for theft and other "petty" crimes have been reduced, to the point that now theft has been completely normalized. People complained, for example, when charges against Amy Cooper were dropped in New York, but the fact is that you can get arrested hundreds of times in New York, and your charges will always be dropped, for basically any charge, theft, assault, domestic violence, you name it, they drop it. There is a total unwillingness by people in power to inflict punishment on people who punish ordinary citizens by committing crimes against them, sending the signal committing crime is not at all, in fact, criminal, but normal, expected and acceptable behavior. Non-criminal people will flee such environments en masse or become criminals themselves. The result will be lawless cities that blowhards like Trump talk about but do nothing to fix, and only make worse.
I am not saying we should go back to hanging people for theft. But we do need to figure out how to punish people without maintaining the Prison Industrial Complex. We need to figure out what is a crime (theft) and not a crime (drug use), we need to provide social services, food, shelter to poor people. We MUST provide education and opportunities to people. But if crime goes unpunished, perhaps in an asymmetric manner like caning, the lawlessness we're seeing today will grow much, much worse and make basic life unlivable in places that were once and still maybe are the pinnacles of civilization, like New York. It will destroy us.
[+] [-] himinlomax|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monadic5|5 years ago|reply
Also if you think you're being preyed upon: you're hanging out on a forum with millionaires. This forum is far more predatory than porch theft ever could be. It's only a quirk of fate that our grift is legal and theirs is not.
[+] [-] hshshs2|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] michaelbuckbee|5 years ago|reply
I'm trying to think of the lowest tech solution to this that would work. Maybe plexiglass lockboxes that are secured to the floor but left unlocked. Package delivery workers can put them in the boxes with little effort (important or won't be done) but only residents can open them up.
Just enough to deter casual/opportunistic theft.
[+] [-] me_me_me|5 years ago|reply
You could maybe have an option to register with distributors to not deliver your packages but keep them in the centers and only send you a not that you can collect package. But that kind of defeats a purpose of delivery :/
[+] [-] MilnerRoute|5 years ago|reply
Because it ends with the package thefts still ongoing, and the author of the article resigned to their continuing.
[+] [-] tgsovlerkhgsel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AdrianB1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] padraic7a|5 years ago|reply
But also really negligent landlords. It really shouldn't be possible to access resident's belongings with a plastic card.
[+] [-] zeppelin101|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hu3|5 years ago|reply
And no, people are not this naive. Don't belittle them. That's just victim blaming.
[+] [-] pmcollins|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oh_sigh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morninglight|5 years ago|reply
It worked out very well.
[+] [-] cushychicken|5 years ago|reply
I'm guessing Amazon lockers are fairly rare in NYC.
I'm also guessing that it's rare that you can get a post office box/UPS store box in NYC, what with real estate being so expensive.
[+] [-] thatguy0900|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mediterraneo10|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siliconpotato|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haspoken|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barnacled|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sokoloff|5 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=a...
[+] [-] ufmace|5 years ago|reply
I want to feel sorry for them, but I cannot forget that this is exactly what they asked for. In all probability, the actual people in this building they featured, that is. They got the state to abolish bail for people arrested for these "low-value property crimes". They elected DAs who promised to not prosecute them at all. They are probably even now campaigning to "abolish the police" entirely. In case anyone was wondering, they've also published articles declaring that yes they really do want to literally abolish the police and it is not at all a euphemism for some kind of reform. What they're seeing now is exactly what they asked for. Now they want to whine about their packages getting stolen? Too bad, wake me when the start advocating for actual enforcement against brazen theft.
[+] [-] xsmasher|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]