Epidemic of parcel thefts

NYers see rise in box bandits

Pandemic porch pirates. They’re a new breed with a new M.O.: more brazen and pickier, ripping open packages, grabbing the priciest stuff and leaving the boxes and bubble wrap behind.

Tens of thousands of other NewYorkers have seen their deliveries either picked over or stolen outright — sometimes while they were working from home.

The thieves are hitting most often, at least anecdotally, in Manhattan’s wellto-do neighborhoods and across Brooklyn.

“Every single neighborhood,” said Jennifer Chused, 49, an interior designer who lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. “Every single person I talk to is talking about their packages getting stolen.”

The NYPD doesn’t separate out package thefts from other larcenies so there aren’t statistics to back up the stories. But many victims blame the apparent spike on the coronavirus, which has left a high number of New Yorkers jobless and also spurred a big bump in online shopping.

Adelaide Spence (pictured), an NYPD sergeant, was on the job at One Police Plaza when bandits hit her Brooklyn Heights apartment twice in mid-September. She’s certain her long work hours and her non-doorman building made her an easy target.

“Easy pickings,” Spence, 39, said. “Easy pickings.”

Two of her packages vanished. Two others were rifled through. Pants, a scarf, a watch, boots — worth $350 in all — were stolen. The thief didn’t want her new frying pan, though.

“It sucks,” said Spence, who now pays $150 a year to rent a post-office box.

A few weeks ago, Sebastian Shapiro noticed packages left “helter-skelter” in the lobby of his nondoorman building on the Upper West Side. A few packages had been emptied, but the Shapiro family’s reptile-tank lights went untouched.

“I’ve never seen anything like that, and I’ve been in this building four or five years,” said Shapiro, 47, who works in analytics.

Alex Morton, a 34-year-old actor/restaurant manager, had a $70 blazer and a $45 blouse from Banana Republic ripped off at her non-doorman building in Fort Greene. Now she has everything delivered to her workplace.

“At least the chances of getting your packages at work are higher than at home,” she said.

The thieves’ brazenness is what Chused can’t believe. She has been hit four times in the past four months. LED light bulbs and children’s clothing vanished. Everything totaled: roughly $1,000.