It Was Right There on the Porch
Protecting Your Deliveries During the Busiest Shipping Season of the Year
By Ted Toedte, CPD, Crime Prevention Specialist, WCSO
The notification pops up on your phone at 1:14 in the afternoon. Delivered. Front porch. You’re at work, and you figure it’ll be fine until you get home.
At 1:40, a car rolls slowly down your street and stops in front of your house. Someone walks up the driveway, picks up the box, and drives off. The whole thing takes less time than it took you to read this paragraph.
By the time you pull in, there’s nothing on the porch but the doormat.
Package theft is one of the easiest crimes there is to commit, and November and December are its busiest months. SafeWise’s 2025 package theft report estimates that more than 104 million packages were stolen nationwide during the period studied, a loss of roughly $15 billion. The same report found that more than 30 percent of people had a package stolen in that year, with the typical stolen package worth about $143.
Here’s the number that bothers me most. According to Security.org, fewer than one in four package theft victims report it to local law enforcement. That means most of these thefts never land on anyone’s radar. I’ll come back to that.
The good news is that porch piracy is a crime of opportunity, and opportunity is something you control.
Start with the simplest fix. Don’t let packages sit. Track your deliveries and get them inside as soon as you can. If you won’t be home, ask a neighbor to grab them, and return the favor. Many retailers let you pick a delivery day, require a signature for higher-dollar items, or ship to a store or locker for pickup. If your employer allows it, have packages sent to work. And if you shop online a lot, a lockable package box by the front door is money well spent.
Now look at your front door the way a thief would. That’s the idea behind CPTED, (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design), and it’s how we look at every home during our free security assessments. Can your porch be seen from the street and from your neighbors’ windows? Or is it tucked behind overgrown shrubs where nobody would notice a stranger standing there? Trim the landscaping so the entrance is visible. Make sure the porch is well lit, because in November it’s dark by suppertime, and a package dropped off at 4:30 can sit in the dark for hours. If you have a side entrance out of view from the street, tell the carriers to leave packages there instead.
A doorbell camera or porch camera is a strong deterrent, especially when it’s easy to see. It won’t stop every theft, but it gives deputies something to work with. If your camera views the street, consider registering it with the Sheriff’s Office at waltonso.org/camera. That lets investigators know a camera is there, so they can reach out and ask for footage if something happens nearby.
Apartment and condo residents deal with this on a bigger scale, with dozens of deliveries a day landing in breezeways and at mailroom doors. If you manage a community, a secure package room or locker system pays for itself quickly. Our team can look at where packages end up on your property and how to make that area more visible and better controlled, at no cost.
Now, back to reporting. If a package is stolen, report it, even if it was only worth twenty dollars. File with the seller or carrier to get your refund, then file with us at waltonso.org/online-reporting-system or by calling (850) 892-8111. If you have video, save it. People who steal packages rarely stop at one house, and a single report with a good camera clip can tie together a whole string of thefts across a neighborhood. If we don’t hear about it, we can’t connect it.
And if you see someone walking up to porches who doesn’t belong there, or a car following a delivery truck through your neighborhood, call us. That isn’t being nosy. That’s being a good neighbor.
Those gifts are supposed to end up under your tree, not in somebody’s trunk. Bring them in, light up the porch, and keep an eye on the house next door.
Ted Toedte is a crime prevention specialist with WCSO and has more than 30 years of law enforcement experience in Florida and California. He can be reached at toetheodore@waltonso.org. The Crime Prevention Division can be reached at crimeprevention@waltonso.org or (850) 892-8111. Learn more at waltonso.org.
