A neighbor emails overnight:
I thought I would share a tip about mail theft from tonight (9/25/2015). We installed a mailbox alarm on our mailbox that triggers inside the house whenever the mailbox is opened, in part to notify us when our mail comes and in part to notify us if someone opens our mailbox at odd hours, since we’ve had sporadic mail theft for the past few years.
Tonight at exactly 10:00 p.m. our alarm went off, so I went out to the street to find two individuals going through mailboxes as they walked down our hill. We live on Northeast 98th Street at 15th Avenue Northeast, and they were walking east/downhill.
I immediately called 911 to give the police a chance to nab them as well. There were two individuals of average weight, one taller than the other (one male, one female?), both in black clothes/black hoodies, carrying a big black umbrella. I didn’t get a better description than that, but at least it’s something. Maybe someone else has noticed similar goings-on or people who match that description.
There was a similar report last week, about a man in an older red sedan. “He came by a few minutes after UPS and appears to be following the UPS guy and grabbing packages behind him.
“We’ve called the police … If anyone has seen this person before the police would of course be interested. Additionally, if anyone else has lost packages in the last few days they will be interested as well.”
Below are mail thefts reported to police in the neighborhood so far this year.
File a police report like anything else.
How do you report mail theft? I’m guessing most people don’t report it. I had two packages stolen early on in the year I never reported.
There are a group of squatters living (in the 1200 block of) NE 97th St. They were supposed to have been evicted last spring but they are back. These individuals have been connected with a burglary ring in our neighborhood and we are pretty confident they targeted our home and many others in the neighborhood. Our locking mailbox was pried open last night (near the corner of 12th NE and NE 95th. We contacted the police and their level of interest could be categorized as “apathetic” at best. There is one white female, approx. 25-30 years of age and at least two African American makes of indeterminable ages. The female has shoulder length brown hair and changes her appearance frequently.