Sting uses fake Amazon boxes, GPS to catch would-be thieves

The explosion in online shopping has led to porch pirates and stoop surfers swiping holiday packages from unsuspecting residents. The cops 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 Tuesday for someone to take the bait.

“We had a box out on the street for three minutes before it was taken,” said police Capt. James Crecco, who is overseeing the mission. “We thought it was a mistake at first.”

The suspect was caught, Crecco added.

Exact figures on porch thefts are hard to come by. A company commissioned by comparison-shopping service insuranceQuotes. com surveyed 1,000 people and extrapolated that 26 million Americans have had a holiday package stolen from their home. That would be nearly one in 12 Americans.

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

“We absolutely report them to local law enforcement when we hear of them, and we encourage our customers to do the same,” UPS spokesman Glenn Zaccara said.

Amazon declined to answer questions about the anti-theft program but said in a statement, “We appreciate the increased effort by local law enforcement to tackle package theft and remain committed to assisting however we can.”