Don’t want to dampen the prevailing good cheer around town these days but we’re getting tons of calls about suspicious cars and people and suspicious cars with people and people apparently bent on taking what’s out on our porches this Holiday Season.
Martinez police, tipped by an alert neighbor in their city yesterday, located a woman on Parkway Drive and ultimately arrested her for identity theft and a violation of probation yesterday, Dec. 1.
Officers in Martinez urged citizens to be aware of deliveries, to take them in as quickly as possible, and to watch for those taking in inordinate interest in parcels or mail pieces left on porches or in mailboxes – but that admonition extends to all local cities and towns as gifts arrive and it should come as no surprise that some folks have no problem snatching them from their rightful owners.
There’s a free service that may be of interest to some of you that the US Post Office offers.
A service called ‘Informed Delivery’. You sign up for it online at their website. Then each morning they will send you email of pictures of the actual mail it will be delivered to you that day.
It can help by tipping you off as to what you will be receiving in the mail that day, and also saves the problem of sitting around waiting for a letter to come in the mail, only to have waited and not to have it arrive that day.
Just hope they don’t get to your credit cards. That’s a real nightmare.
It’s almost like sport for them now.
I think they’re following the delivery trucks and snatching packages as soon as the driver is out of sight.
Why do I think this is going to get worse before it gets better? Most of the snatchers are stealing to support a habit and all the good jobs are gone at Google.
Beginning to look like Christmas!
Not very sporting. Pray my neighbour doesn’t catch you! He doesn’t like people like this very much at all.
I suggest that Santa bring everyone an Arlo or Ring camera so we can at least get these guys on video and catch some more of them.
Sorry to be on the downbeat here folks, but this is going to get worse because of proposition 47 which deemed thefts under $950 are not punished anymore. You know that personally I find this abhorent .. for I was raised to believe that stealing is wrong. But there’s a lot of those out there who think it balances the scale of justice by letting a lot of people loose from jail. Hopefully it will be seen soon as it’s not working and it’s not really helping those individuals either but only in embolding them into Deeper Life Of Crime. And pity the rest of us.
I’m voted no on prop 47 but it wasn’t pulled out of thin blue air. The Supreme Court gave California a choice. Build more prisons or find a solution. They presented it to the voters, and 59.6 percent of CA voters voted yes. Whether it was by choice (or default) CA does NOT have the money to house low level offenders. It passed because the voters are aware of this – period. I would like to see prop 47 repealed, but it’s not going to happen.
If you have several million dollars (annually) to house these prisoners please send a check to the state of CA. They could use the money to build the prisons and house the prisoners. Otherwise, we’re all in it for the long run. All we can do is take preventive measures. I’ve been doing it all my life, and it’s working out well.
I read the headline as “Elvis” and was disappointed to realize it wasn’t him scurrying around town.
@Tom – Now that would be some video!