Package Thieves
These packages never make it to the hands of their owners as the package thief is always on the hunt for unmonitored packages lying idle on the front porches. Upon noticing that no eyes are set on them, these thieves quickly grab the package and make the run, hoping there’s something valuable inside.
Arthur Russell was a victim of these porch pirates. He had suffered long enough and simply could not bear the loss of his packages being stolen like this. He took matters into his own hands.
Teach ‘em a Lesson
Arthur Russell had spent a good while in the forces and just like almost every other man who spends time there, he was a master of discipline. Things aren’t taken lightly in his line of work and his time there surely had an impact on his tolerance for disorder.
Most people in the forces although face tough times during their training, they come out as humble, selfless, and kind human beings. Such was the case with Russell. The man struggled to get where he was at today and watching a thief repeatedly taking his belongings was starting to tick him off.
Take It as if It’s Yours
These annoying porch pirates would take the package regardless of what they contained. Sometimes, Russell would order some plain toilet paper while other times it would be something expensive, such as car parts. While these products got delivered in his absence, a thief with no honor would come by and steal the package.
There was no way Arthur would let this slide. He tried contacting the local authorities but they would pay no heed to these ‘insignificant’ thefts. It didn’t take long for Russell to realize that he was on his own to deal with these rats.
I Am Vengeance
A couple of calls to the police station turned out to be a waste of time. The police simply showed little to no interest in Russel’s packages being stolen continuously. Frustrated and angry, the man decided to get payback himself by coming up with a plan.
Next time any of these box bandits would come sneaking around, they’ll be taught a lesson. Russell is a man of commitment and he was about to make sure these thieves realize that they chose the wrong house to steal from.
I Am Vengeance
A couple of calls to the police station turned out to be a waste of time. The police simply showed little to no interest in Russel’s packages being stolen continuously. Frustrated and angry, the man decided to get payback himself by coming up with a plan.
Next time any of these box bandits would come sneaking around, they’ll be taught a lesson. Russell is a man of commitment and he was about to make sure these thieves realize that they chose the wrong house to steal from.
Time at the Navy
Arthur Russell was trained to be a Navy SEAL. His job was to execute life-threatening missions in Unconventional Warfare. It would be foolish to doubt the abilities of a man with training like that of Russel’s. Not only was he physically trained to reach his limits, but he was also a man with a sharp mind.
That’s why the package thieves made a big mistake taking the packages of Arthur Russell out of all the people in the area. Things were about to change.
Time at the Navy
Arthur Russell was trained to be a Navy SEAL. His job was to execute life-threatening missions in Unconventional Warfare. It would be foolish to doubt the abilities of a man with training like that of Russel’s. Not only was he physically trained to reach his limits, but he was also a man with a sharp mind.
That’s why the package thieves made a big mistake taking the packages of Arthur Russell out of all the people in the area. Things were about to change.
Booby Trap
Russell was quite fond of creating and assembling mechanical items, specifically booby traps. He had excelled at this skill and was ready to take his revenge by making the porch pirate fall into his trap.
At first, he thought of making a box, but his plans soon changed as he thought that would be too easy. His aim was to not just make the thief a fool out of himself, instead, he wanted the thief to never steal anyone else’s package again.
Think!
Russell wanted the thief to think twice before approaching even their own packages after this experience. However, he also did not want to hurt these low-life bandits as it would get him into trouble with the authorities.
So, Russell decided to stick to frightening them, enough to make the magic work. How will he do that though? "I was thinking, how could I scare them and make them drop my package and then never come to my front porch again," Arthur explained his intentions.
The Big Bang
After a while of thinking, Russell finally found a solution to his problem. He thought that the best way to scare someone is through a minor explosion. The best part would be the element of surprise when the thief is least expecting it.
So, Russell decided to stick to frightening them, enough to make the magic work. How will he do that though? "I was thinking, how could I scare them and make them drop my package and then never come to my front porch again," Arthur explained his intentions.
The Big Bang
After a while of thinking, Russell finally found a solution to his problem. He thought that the best way to scare someone is through a minor explosion. The best part would be the element of surprise when the thief is least expecting it.
Furthermore, the idea is not dangerous at all. It would only be an explosion and cause no physical harm to the thief. Although a part of Russell really wanted to hurt the thief, it was not in his best interest. So, Russell put on his gloves and started working on his idea.
Shopping Time
Russell listed down the ingredients and equipment he would need to make his little explosion solution work. He gave the nearby hardware store a visit and got everything he wanted. However, the stares from the cashier had him wonder whether they found his shopping suspicious.
It would look weird to see all that stuff bought at once. Can’t be for home repairs, right? Thankfully, he didn’t have to explain his intentions and neither did the cashier confront him about it.
Setting Up the Attraction
Now that Russell had all the ingredients, he needed to make his magic box work, it was now time to assemble it. Not only did he have to put the pieces together, but he also had to make the box look like just another delivered package.
After finishing up the trap box, Russell looked at it with a smirk. It was now time to put the box through a test to see if it would work. So, in his backyard, Russell tested his bait and found it to operate just as he wanted it to.
Passing the Exam
During the first test of the box, Russell found out that the noise was loud enough to temporarily deafen his ears. In the second test, he made sure to cover his ears so that doesn’t happen again. All of the tests proved to be successful.
Excited to see his plan become a success, Russell gave the local store one last visit for an item that was supposed to be the cherry on top. You didn’t think he would plant his trap without installing a security camera, right?
Say Cheese!
Since the homeowner spent most of his day at work, he would not want to miss out on the visual of the culprit falling for his trap. Therefore, Russell installed a small camera that was capable of giving him a clear picture of the silly porch pirate.
Once the camera was installed, there was nothing else to do besides planting the bait and waiting for an unlucky thief to come by. Russel’s expectations turned out to be true as the thief didn’t keep him waiting for so long. On that same evening, Russell got his first hunt.
Just Dropping By
The camera was placed above the door and had a small size, which made it barely noticeable. As the first package thief came by, Russell saw them clearly through his phone which was connected to the camera.
He thought the thief would have acted a bit suspicious in terms of body language. On the contrary, the thief just casually came towards the porch as if it’s their own property. It was at that time Russell realized that his first culprit is actually a female.
Ring Ring
Surprised by the approach of his first potential victim, Russell gazes at the woman with wonder. She comes near the front door and rings the bell to see whether anyone’s present at the house or not. Upon noticing the motion sensor light, she becomes hesitant and walks back away from the house.
Russel’s attention is caught by the getaway car that was parked in front of his house. Turns out that the woman was accompanied by a man, who was now pushing her to go back.
Bang!
After being persuaded by the man to go back and pick the package, the woman turns around and approaches the porch for a second time. As the man eagerly waits for her return, she takes a quick glance at the surroundings and picks up the box. That’s when a loud bang was heard.
The woman gets scared to death and runs back to the car screaming like a child. She was so frightened that she dropped her cell phone on Russel’s porch. Russell, on the other hand, sits on his couch with a smile of content.
What’s in the Box?
Russel’s booby trap box consists of a plate that keeps a firing pin from being launched. The pin is linked to his front door’s knob, which provides optimal security for the box. You can move the box around without picking it up, but as soon as you lift it in the air, the plate detaches and a loud bang is heard.
The trigger sets off when the plate is lifted upwards with the box, resulting in the firing pin shooting a blank 12-gauge shotgun tip. Even though the working might seem to be a bit dangerous, all it does is make a loud bang. The real question is whether this was legal or not?
Verdict of the Police
Unfortunately for Russell, his state’s law clearly prohibits the assembly of such mechanisms that result in an explosion for individuals who don’t have a permit. Police spokeswoman Loretta Cool says: "Even though it's a blank, the way the device is made is actually illegal."
Despite caring for the greedy thief’s well-being and safety, Russell was not given a green light from the boys in blue. The police took notice of his booby trap and responded negatively to a homeowner taking things into his own hands.
Trouble Call
"Even more than him crossing the line, I'm not sure if people realize that, even though this person is stealing something, he can't intentionally set them up to be hurt", Loretta stated. Basically, the problem was the risk of a person getting hurt through this trap.
Loretta also stated that Russell can get into serious trouble if a porch pirate gets injured or presses charges against him. Although both of these possibilities have almost zero probability of happening, Russel’s actions were clearly rejected by the authorities.
As Safe as It Can Be
Despite the box scaring the souls out of those greedy porch pirates, the fact that it is safe remains the same, according to Russell. He believes that there’s no reason to doubt the box’s safety as he has put it through several tests before laying the bait.
As a matter of fact, Russell even put a tomato inside once to see if something happens, and the tomato turned out to be fine. “It never hurt me once. It didn’t hurt the tomato in there either,” Russell told an interviewer.
Be Careful
Russell knew that he was not the only one sick of porch pirates. Now that his story had gotten quite some eyes on his idea, he advised everyone to make sure they don’t run into legal trouble. A booby trap can be dangerous if not created the right way.
In the aftermath of all this, Russell thought the best way to deal with all this is to put a “No Trespassing” sign on his property and stick a note on the bang box that says “Beware”. Now if anyone still chose to touch the package, they will have no one to blame but themselves.
The Mission Continues
Arthur Russell was, as we mentioned previously, a man of commitment. The joy he had experienced through catching these greedy devils was unlike any other joy, and he wanted more of it. Many would have stopped after running into legal trouble but Russell wasn’t backing away now.
He loved seeing thieves get what they deserve. The bang box was working perfectly fine and it had not injured a single soul yet. So, there was no reason convincing enough for this clever homeowner to give up setting his porch pirate traps.
You Get What You Deserve
It wasn’t long until Russell once again laced up his boots and planted another bang box to scare a thief package away. A couple of days later, someone was lurking nearby the unattended package and made the mistake of picking it up. Once again, Russell was successful in his mission.
His satisfaction was simply off the charts and for good reasons. Long had he watched his hard-earned money being thrown away like this, it was time for some payback. “I know it’s crude, but there’s nothing scarier than a 12-gauge,” Russell stated.
Porch Pirate Hunt
Of course, the police were still not happy with what Russell was up to but they also could not do anything about it. That’s because no one had pressed charges against Russell. Surprisingly, they started giving importance to Russel’s calls and reports of his stolen packages.
Until now, Russel’s clever idea had resulted in over 20 potential package thieves being frightened away. Not to mention their identity being saved through the doorbell camera, which led to the police tracking down the greedy people.
Culprit Caught
If you’ve ever had something precious taken away from you, you can relate to what Russell felt when his packages were stolen. However, now that he had cracked a solution for this, the satisfaction of teaching these individuals a lesson was beyond any other pleasure.
With the help of the captured footage, the police and Russell were successful in finding some of the individuals that were tempted by these unattended boxes. Russell continued scaring these criminals away and giving the police his door cam’s footage.
Assistance From Boots
The funny thing is that Russell was not always the only one after these porch pirates. Since he used to live with his cat Boots who was eight years old. Boots had always been there for Russell. The cat had a quiet personality and mostly kept to itself.
When Russell found out that Boots can be of assistance in his mission, he was amused. It looked like Russell had found a partner that was going to help him scare the package thieves. So, what exactly was Boots’ job?
Meow Dung
Boots' job was to do nothing but eat and defecate in the litter box. Afterward, Russell would shift the kitty litter into the package box and wait for a suspect to stumble across the box. Imagine the look on the face of a porch pirate when they find a cat’s feces in the package.
Back at the time when Russell was testing his booby trap, he thought of adding Boots’ litter into an empty Amazon box from older packages. He couldn’t wait to see what happens.
Plan Went South
Russell placed the Amazon package on his porch and waited for his victim. Soon a man dropped by and grabbed the Amazon package he thought would contain something valuable. Russell looked at him with amusement as he went away.
However, there was a problem. Russel’s neighbor found the box laying a couple of blocks away from his house. The potential porch private had opened the box midway and threw it away after noticing what’s inside. After seeing Russel’s address on the box, his neighbor was not pleased.
Sticky Notes
Russel’s neighbor also read the note in the box that Russell had left for his porch pirate victim. It said: “Hi, you’re on camera. F-you thief. Hope you like cat crap” Now things made even more sense to the neighbor.
He realized that Russell was trying to teach the package thieves a lesson. Similar to the case of Russell, the neighbor was also quite tired of these sneaky package hoarding maniacs. However, besides despising these individuals, the neighbor was also not a fan of garbage lying in the street.
Do Better!
Arthur Russell was then approached by his neighbor with the box and gave him a piece of friendly advice. He told Russell that there’s very few chances of this prank becoming a success, so he should do something better and get creative. The neighbor also asked Russell to share his ideas when he gets one, as both men were tired of porch pirates.
Russell gave special attention to the advice of his neighbor and started brainstorming once again. An attempt was made when he filled another box with garbage, but the end was as same as the last time. Until finally, a bulb lit up above his head.
A Shiny Surprise
This new idea he had gotten was later on going to inspire his 12-gauge blank shotgun box idea. Russell thought of creating a box that held a balloon filled with glitter and confetti inside. As soon as the box would open, the balloon would pop and our silly thief would look like a clown once again.
This plan didn’t seem to be so bad. The working involved a pin attached to a lever that would trigger whenever the box was opened. Unfortunately, it was not as effective as Russell intended it to be.
Worst Kind
There’s no denying that those who have suffered from being victims of package thieves have a better idea of how these bandits should be treated. As a matter of fact, many of these victims believe the name “porch pirate” is deceiving. They believe these thieves should be called out with a more insulting name.
This is because of the frustration one faces when they watch their hard-earned money in the form of packages being taken away right from their porches. Similar to the case of Russell, Christine Hyatt also had enough of these sneaky criminals.
Too Soft
Although the glitter idea was overall better than the trash and cat litter one, it was still far from being able to make the thief run out of fear. Nonetheless, the addition of blank shots compensated for this shortcoming.
Unfortunately, Russel’s ideas sparked controversy on the internet as people started to quarrel about whether his actions were ethical or not. Some assumed that Russell was going too far in taking revenge while others believed he was right to do so.
Have Some Decency
The US is facing a massive wave of porch piracy as we speak. No effective solution against these thieves has been put out yet. Christine Hyatt has been a victim of porch piracy countless times and if you have a soft spot for these thieves, wait until you read her side of the story.
Christine is the mom of a girl suffering from diabetes. Her dependency upon online means of acquiring equipment and medicine for treating her daughter is too high. Unfortunately, the products she orders rarely make their way to her.
Thieves With No Honor
Christine has reported over 20 packages being stolen from her front door this year. Around six packages amongst the stolen had medicine and equipment for treating her daughter. Can you imagine the frustration of this mother?
How long will she stand by and watch her packages get stolen like this? Driven by anger, Christine decided to make bait boxes like Russell and found a bit of inner peace through the results they brought. Her entire neighborhood was suffering from these criminals and the homeowners were sick of it.
A Lurking Threat
The affliction of porch pirates on a locality poses great harm to the well-being of the residents. These unknown people have the nerve to crawl into your property and steal your belongings, who knows if they would take one step further and break into your property?
This thought popped in the heads of both Christine and Arthur Russell, who took it upon themselves to show resistance. Otherwise, these criminals would assume that the homeowners are too dumb to take action. Not everyone approved the approach of Russell and Christine, however.
Moral Debate
Topics like these usually get discussed a lot on social media platforms such as Reddit. A thread was dedicated entirely to this subject and people argued whether the actions of homeowners were right or not. Surprisingly, many defended the package thieves.
Below are some of the statements from Reddit users:
“It's all fun and games until one of the would-be robbers sues for PTSD.”
“I don’t get this. You’re placing your property out there. It’s not the thief’s fault if he decided to take it and then gain access to its contents”.
“It's all fun and games until one of the would-be robbers sues for PTSD.”
“I don’t get this. You’re placing your property out there. It’s not the thief’s fault if he decided to take it and then gain access to its contents”.
Senseless Points
It’s absurd to believe these people have the nerve to defend porch piracy. Some of these comments might even be coming from thieves themselves. On social media, you just never know what to expect. Many of the users against the stance of homeowners presented false analogies and arguments built around invalid premises.
Anything that is present on the homeowner’s territory belongs to them. Even if it’s a package on their porch meant to be delivered to them! You would be a thief to take anything from another person’s property even if it’s a flower from their backyard.
Waiting for a Solution
Don’t be alarmed by the views of these people, though. There was also a vast number of social media users that sided with Christine and Russell. All of these homeowners expressed their unimaginable amount of hatred for porch pirates.
Moreover, they also discussed how the police usually fail to catch these bandits and punish them properly. Justice being served would send a message to all potential thieves. Out of the fear of getting caught, they would not trespass on properties that are not theirs.
What’s Your Take?
What would you do in a situation like that of Christine or Russell? Would you take matters into your own hands or stay back and let the police do their job? Perhaps, you have a solution that prevents these packages from being stolen in the first place?
Even though the police might not be getting their job done, you don’t want to put yourself in the backseat of a cop’s car. So, the safest way is the one that doesn’t get you into legal trouble.