Package thieves new holiday Grinches
Gifts being pilfered from porches across the area
Lauren Kribbs expected to find a package on her doorstep in the Heights when she drove home Thursday evening with her 10-yearold autistic son, Hunter. It was a Christmas present for him — drawing notebooks because he likes to make his own comic books. She had gotten the alert from UPS at 1 p.m.
By 4:30, when she pulled into the driveway, the box was gone.
“Hey!” she yelled out to a neighbor boy on the sidewalk. “Have you seen anybody come to my porch? They stole something again today . ... It’s the package thieves again.”
Just days after Cyber Monday shoppers broke records for online orders, package thieves — Grinches, as they were called on social media — began hitting neighborhoods across the Houston area, scoping out trucks as delivery workers plopped packages from Amazon, eBay and other retailers on doorsteps in
“I’m so upset right now. There’s nothing there. There’s nothing anywhere.”
Lauren Kribbs, Heights resident
broad daylight while people were at work.
It was the second day in a row that package thieves stole a Christmas gift for Hunter that Kribbs had ordered on the Internet. On Wednesday, a Nintendo-themed board game went missing.
And Kribbs was far from the only one targeted — at least 15 neighbors in her area complained of missing boxes.
The Houston Police Department did not have an exact tally of the total reports of stolen packages this week, but spokesman Victor Senties said officers were aware of an uptick in reports in the Heights area and planned to meet with several of the victims. They also are meeting with delivery-truck drivers at UPS and FedEx to train them to spot possible thieves on their tail.
Neighbors began chattering about the stolen packages on the Nextdoor app, sharing videos or photos they had captured of the thieves running onto front porches. Sometimes they rummaged through the boxes, taking what they wanted and leaving other empty boxes behind to make it appear nothing was stolen, said Caitlin Bowers, who lives in nearby Woodland Heights and whose security camera captured a theft at a neighbor’s home.
For some residents like Kribbs, a single mom who said the several presents she bought online were about all she could afford this year, it seemed the Grinches had quite literally stolen Christmas.
“I’m so upset right now. There’s nothing there. There’s nothing anywhere,” Kribbs said, just after a failed look around the back porch for the box. “The people on Nextdoor earlier today were thinking that the thief must be following the UPS guy on foot and just picking (the packages) up. It makes so much sense.”
It seems this year’s thieves have been operating under the same MO.
Stepping up security
TreyBerniard, who lives in Oak Forest, also lost a Christmas gift this week to package thieves — perfume, he said — and described the same thing that Bowers caught on video in Woodland Heights: The thieves had left a random empty box on his doorstep that belonged not to him but to a neighbor down the block, whose packages were taken, too.
He posted the news in his homeowners’ association Facebook group, and several other neighbors responded that they also got hit. One woman was even sitting at home when she got the UPS alert and checked 10 minutes later to find the box was already gone.
Lt. Johnny Gonzales, in HPD’s burglary and theft division, confirmed at least four reports in the northeast Houston area — a fraction of the thefts, no doubt. The Harris County Precinct 1 Constable’s Office confirmed another three since Tuesday.
Gonzales said HPD will often increase patrols in areas where reports are pouring in, he said.
“During the holidays there’s an increase just because of the volume of packages being ordered,” he said. “Security cameras are a great way to avoid being a target, because it deters the person from stealing, and if we do get a picture — a lot of neighbors post them on Nextdoor — usually we can always follow up and make it a priority to get the person charged.”
Rather than relying on the cops to catch the thieves redhanded or after the fact, though, plenty of neighbors and area business owners have taken prevention into their own hands.
Business owners in the Oak Forest area have started allowing customers to use their addresses for deliveries, storing the packages in the back room until they can grab it later on in the evening. Hartz Chicken Buffet on Pinemont, Haum Salon on Oak Forest Drive, Papa Murphy’s on 43rd Street, and Surfhouse thrift shop on 34th all put out an open invitation this week.
“We thought was probably one of the best opportunities to pay back customers,” said Naro Mak, manager at Hartz Chicken.
Gonzales recommended that those who work during the day and are expecting holiday packages take advantage of the various services offered by companies like Amazon or UPS. Online shoppers can schedule deliveries in advance for a time when they are home, or use Amazon Locker, in which customers can send their package to an Amazon kiosk where it will be stored until the customer can pick it up.
Amazon also recently rolled out Amazon Key, which authorizes Amazon delivery men and women to go into people’s houses using an electronic software that includes a security camera to capture the delivery — a software that costs $250 for Amazon customers.
An Amazon spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment about Amazon’s efforts to prevent package theft.
Neighbors help neighbors
Despite the thefts, Kribbs said Christmas may turn out better than she thought.
After friends and even strangers had heard of her son’s first stolen presents on Nextdoor, dozens of people reached out asking for her address: They wanted to replace the gift themselves. Many asked for Hunter’s full-fledged Christmas list, Kribbs said. Others already sent her and her son Christmas cards.
“It felt like the whole neighborhood reached out,” she said. “Hunter and I just want to thank everybody. I want to thank my full neighborhood for really banding together.”
Neighbors in Oak Forest responded to the thefts with a similar attitude.
They’re all on high alert now, Berniard said, and those who are at home during the day have agreed to watch out for boxes.
“It’s just neighbors helping neighbors,” he said.
Just after Berniard’s package was stolen Monday, he got a call from a friend down the block.
“He said, ‘Hey, I got hit, too,’” Berniard said. “‘But I have your box.’”
It was empty.