Package Thefts On The Rise In Boulder County: Officials

BOULDER COUNTY, CO — Online shopping has reached an all-time high due to the coronavirus pandemic as package thieves gear up for the holiday season in Boulder County and across the country.

"We have recently seen an increase in criminal activity associated with package theft around Boulder County, but especially recently in and around the Town of Lyons," the Boulder County Sheriff's Office said in a media advisory.

"It appears we have criminals who come into the area, often driving a stolen vehicle that is used to drive around and steal packages from porches. The stolen vehicles are then often 'dumped' nearby after they have been used by the so-called porch pirates."

The county offers the following tips for package theft prevention:

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• Report suspicious activity to law enforcement.
• Keep your vehicle locked.
• Avoid having packages sitting outside for an extended time.
• Consider having your packages delivered elsewhere, such as your place of employment, an Amazon delivery site, P.O. box, FedEx/UPS location, or install a package lock box.
• Request that deliveries require a signature ahead of time, or sometimes you can do this even if the package is already on its way.
• Subscribe to delivery alerts or notifications from the package carrier.

"If you are a victim of a theft, report it to law enforcement," the Boulder County Sheriff's Office said. "If you have surveillance cameras, share that footage with law enforcement as well."

More than 5.5 million Americans have been victimized by package thefts over the past year, according to Finder, a personal finance comparison website, in a study released in November.

About $5.4 billion worth of items were stolen in package thefts from November 2019 to November 2020, the Finder determined.

Because of the busy online shopping month of December, that number is likely to grow by the end of the year.

Fewer people were in the nation’s malls on Black Friday, yet overall holiday season sales in 2020 are expected to rise 0.9 percent, with a 36 percent jump in online sales, a study by the research company eMarketer shows.

Porch pirates could see a prime opportunity to take advantage of the expected spike in packages left at front doors.

They usually get away with it, too. Only 11 percent of victims said the culprits were caught, according to a 2019 study by C+R Research.

Who Steals A Package?

Men are found to be more likely to be both package thieves and victims of the crime, according to the Finder study. With 5.29 percent of men admitting having stolen a package compared with 0.85 percent of women, men are more than 500 percent more likely to be package thieves than women, the study found.

Seventeen percent of men say a package of theirs was stolen during the past year, compared with 11 percent for women.

Still, 86 percent of the nearly 2,000 participants in the study said they have not experienced a package theft since this time last year.