Man enters guilty plea in ‘porch pirate’ case

FORT SMITH — A man caught on a home surveillance video taking postal packages from a porch in the fall pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to possessing a package stolen from a mail route.

John Michael Clement, 25, entered his plea to the single felony count before U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes III. He’ll be sentenced in about six to eight weeks following completion of a pre-sentence report. He could be sentenced to up to five years in prison and fined up to $250,000, according to his agreement

with the government.

Court records show police were called Nov. 20 to the home of a woman, identified in the plea agreement as S.E., who lived on South O Street in Fort Smith. The woman reported several Amazon packages left on her porch had been stolen.

She provided a video of the thefts to the officers showing a man pulling into her driveway in a gray fourdoor car, walking up to her porch and leaving with the packages. The man’s face was visible on the video, and a police detective recognized the man as Clement.

Three days later, Fort Smith police received a tip Clement was seen around the 3400 block of Duke Avenue.

The caller said he recognized Clement from the video images broadcast in a television news report.

Police spotted a gray car at the Duke Avenue location similar to the vehicle used in the thefts but didn’t see Clement. They set up surveillance near the car and waited until Clement and another person arrived, at which time they were arrested.

Clement’s plea agreement said he confessed to stealing packages from S.E.’s porch.

Under U.S. Postal Service regulations, a porch can be treated as an authorized depository for mail material.

Holmes said there was a federal court case elsewhere in the country that questioned whether a porch was an authorized depository for mail.

But he pointed out the indictment against Clement stated the packages on the porch on South O Street were taken from a mail route, or the path where mail is collected and delivered. Since the addressee hadn’t collected the packages, he said, they were still considered to be part of the mail route.

Thefts of packages delivered to residences around the holidays last year increased with the heavier use of online purchasing. Federal and state officials announced in mid-December the Postal Service was partnering with Arkansas law enforcement and federal prosecutors in an initiative called Operation Porch Pirate to target thieves who swipe packages off doorsteps.