Renton PD, USPS team up to take down ‘prolific’ porch pirates

The tips are generally the same no matter where you live or shop around Western Washington — don’t leave valuables in your car, park in well-lit areas, and have packaged delivered to secure areas.

Still, car prowls and package thieves plague the region. This is especially true around the holiday season, when shoppers swarm stores — or websites — producing plenty of opportunities for thieves. It also provides law enforcement opportunities to catch them.

“There are opportunistic offenders who see an easy opportunity and take advantage of it,” said US Postal Inspector Anna Weller. “And then there are those who are repeatedly being arrested for committing the same crime. Those are the offenders we love to target and arrest. They are out causing a lot of damage … they are victimizing multiple people in short periods of time … their intention when they go out is to steal mail and packages.”

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US postal inspectors and the Renton Police Department recently teamed up over four days to take down what Weller calls “prolific” porch pirates. These aren’t opportunistic thieves. Prolific porch pirates are organized, striking entire neighborhoods at a time. Weller was tight lipped about details of the take down operation, but says they disrupted three prolific porch pirate operations in Renton, and more arrests could be coming.

According to the Renton Police Department, it placed bait packages throughout the city with the cooperation of witnesses and homeowners. The operation resulted in:

• Tuesday Nov. 27:  Incident in the 600 block of Bremeton Avenue NE. One felony arrest, and one vehicle taken for a search warrant which will be served soon with the suspected stolen property inside.
• Thursday Nov. 29: Incident in the 400 block of Edmonds Avenue NE). One misdemeanor arrest (the person had a felony DOC warrant), one vehicle taken for a search warrant which will be served soon with the suspected stolen property inside.
• Friday Nov. 30: Incident in the 200 block of Stevens Avenue SW. One vehicle taken for a search warrant; suspected stolen property inside. Patrol attempted a stop on the suspect vehicle, but it fled. The vehicle collided a short time later at SW 16th Street and East Valley Road. A male driver fled on foot after colliding with a fence and was not located. A female passenger in the car was transported to a local hospital with minor injuries. Charges are expected.

Porch pirates

Weller said that there is no specific area that porch pirates and car prowlers target. They generally don’t repeatedly hit one area. Instead, they move around — hitting multiple victims in an area, then move on to the next. Therefore, she says there is no specific region in Western Washington that gets targeted more than others. Also, data is hard to pinpoint such information since victims sometimes report thefts to the postal service, and sometimes to police, or other agencies.

“It tends to be more about following where these select few are targeting, as opposed to those areas themselves,” she said.

The same could be said for car prowls. But a quick look at the LexisNexis crime map for burglaries from car prowls, one can see where such crimes may be more prominent — shopping centers. There is a lot of car prowl activity around the Southcenter Mall, for example. Or the Lake Sammamish-Issaquah area long I-90.

Though, whether the thief is opportunistic, or prolific, some around Seattle have found their own ways of dealing with the problem, such as this Reddit user who reportedly puts trash in old Amazon boxes and leaves them on the porch.

Here’s some further information about car prowls and porch pirates in Western Washington communities:

Renton

Renton police dove into their crime data to produce a list of hot spots in their area. RPD also notes that package thefts tend to occur in the hours between noon and 4 p.m., with another spike around 8 a.m.

Package thefts happened more frequently in six areas around Renton between January – November 2018.

Renton police note that there are about six areas where car prowls have occurred between November-December 2017.

Porch pirates and car prowls in other areas

Everett

Everett police did not have data readily available for car prowls or package thefts in its city.

According to the LexisNexus crime map, there are more dense areas of car prowls in the downtown area of Everett, around the Twin Creeks neighborhood, and the Glacier View area.

Aaron Snell with the Everett Police Department provided the following tips for package thefts:

• Have packages delivered where you are, to a friend, or locked boxes. Retrieve your packages immediately.
• Place a hold on mail when on vacation.
• Make home surveillance camera visible to deter theft.
• Report suspicious behavior in your neighborhood.

Seattle

Seattle police note nine areas around the city that generally experience more frequent car prowls around the holidays, according to data from 2017. Many of them are around shopping centers, such as Northgate Mall, Ballard, or Belltown. Others are more residential, such as the Roosevelt / Ravenna area.

SPD does not keep data pertaining to porch pirates.

Tacoma

When it comes to Tacoma, locating where car prowls happen is pretty easy — Tacoma. The city’s online crime map shows where car prowls have been most reported over the past few years. In short, reports dot the entire map of the city.

There are a few areas where more notable activity seems to occur:

• Eastside: Just east of Highway 7 and south of McKinley Park
• South Tacoma: Just west of I-5, around the Tacoma Mall, and around shopping centers on the east side of the freeway near 80th Street
• Downtown: Around the county court and corrections facility, shopping centers, convention center, hotels, etc.
• North, Central, West End

Tacoma’s crime map displays where car prowls have been most common over the past few years. (City of Tacoma Crime Map)

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