Doorbell cameras, GPS thwart ‘porch pirates’

The explosion in online shopping has led to ‘‘porch pirates’’ and ‘‘stoop surfers’’ swiping packages from unsuspecting residents. The police in one New Jersey city are trying to catch the thieves with some trickery of their own.

Police in Jersey City, across the Hudson River from New York, are teaming up with Amazon to install doorbell cameras and plant dummy boxes with GPS tracking devices at homes around the city.

They didn’t have to wait long yesterday for someone to take the bait.

‘‘We had a box out on the street for three minutes before it was taken,’’ said Captain James Crecco, who is overseeing the operation. ‘‘We thought it was a mistake at first.’’ The suspect was caught.

Exact figures on porch thefts are hard to come by. A company commissioned by comparison shopping service insuranceQuotes.com surveyed 1000 people and extrapolated that 26 million Americans have had a Christmas package stolen from their home. That would be nearly one in 12 Americans.

Amazon – which is providing equipment free for the Jersey City programe – declined to provide figures on how many packages are reported stolen or missing, as did UPS and FedEx.

Jersey City Police Chief Michael Kelly said the locations for the cameras and boxes were selected using the city’s crime statistics and mapping of theft locations provided by Amazon.

‘‘Most of the (previous) package thefts we’ve made arrests on revolve around [closed-circuit TV] or private surveillance cameras,’’ Kelly said.

No homeowner is immune. Crecco said his mother was a victim of a package theft. So was Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, according to his spokeswoman.

Members of the police department who live in the city volunteered to have the cameras and boxes placed at their homes.

–AP