Kent resident Debbe Carson wants residents to know that people do steal mail out of mailboxes. She’s had mail taken twice in June, for a grand total of five times over the last three years.<\/p>\n
“You just can’t put something in the mailbox anymore – it’s not safe,” Carson said Tuesday at her home on the East Hill near Kent-Kangley Road.<\/p>\n
Debbe and husband Bruce Carson finally bought a locking mailbox. They hope that helps solve the problem after losing cash, checks and a debit card to mail thieves.<\/p>\n
But a locking mailbox has its own complications.<\/p>\n
“There’s no good answer,” Debbe Carson said. “Locking boxes are great, but you can’t put packages in them. We run to the post office to pick up packages.”<\/p>\n
So far this year, Kent Police have received 28 reports of mail theft, said Lisa Price, public information officer for the Kent Police.<\/p>\n
Officers made one arrest in May for mail theft when a resident called in to say he saw someone stealing mail. Responding police found the man with a backpack full of more than 200 pieces of mail.<\/p>\n
Sara Wood, a public-education specialist for the Kent Police, said there are several things you can do to slow down a mail thief.<\/p>\n
These steps include:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Pick up delivered mail as soon as possible from your personal mailbox. Never let it overflow. This is a giveaway that you might be out of town and thieves will be more likely to choose your box.<\/p>\n
\u2022 If you are away, give a neighbor your mailbox key, and have them pick up and safely store each day\u2019s deliveries.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Put outgoing mail into an official U.S. Postal Service collection box. They are hard to break into, are in a more public setting, and postal employees monitor them at pickup times.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Avoid putting outgoing mail into your own personal mailbox.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Watch for thefts in progress and report them immediately to 911.<\/p>\n
The Auburn Police arrested a woman for investigation of mail theft in connection with mail taken from the Carson mailbox in June.<\/p>\n
“We got a call from a detective in Auburn that a woman had tried to ditch a debit card and it was my husband’s card,” Debbe Carson said.<\/p>\n
No charges had been made on the account because the card had yet to be activated.<\/p>\n
When the Carsons moved into their Kent neighborhood about four years ago, neighbors were canvasing the area to buy a block of locking mailboxes. The Carsons didn’t buy one because the cost was about $150.<\/p>\n
“It was too much to spend, but it probably would’ve been a really good investment,” Debbe Carson said.<\/p>\n
About a year later, the thieves came calling. Carson had mail, including a check from her mother, taken from her box. Police ended up arresting a neighbor in connection with that case. That neighbor no longer lives in the area.<\/p>\n
The repeated thefts have left the family leery about their mail activities.<\/p>\n
“We’ve stopped sending anything out of the mailbox,” Debbe Carson said.<\/p>\n
Debbe Carson’s parents live out of state, so they’ve sent checks or cash to their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. But not all of that has made it to the family. Thieves struck in December in 2008, putting a headache in their holiday season.<\/p>\n
“They (mail thieves) know people send checks at Christmas,” Debbe Carson said.<\/p>\n
The Kent residents says she wants residents to know mail thieves strike so more people keep an eye out for the problem.<\/p>\n
“Maybe with some vigilance we can help catch some of these mail thieves,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kent resident Debbe Carson wants residents to know that people do steal mail out of mailboxes. She’s had mail taken twice in June, for a grand total of five times over the last three years. “You just can’t put something in the mailbox anymore – it’s not safe,” Carson said Tuesday at her home on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":13925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-13924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13924"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13924"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=13924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}