WASHINGTON — They prey on neighborhoods across D.C.
“I guess the best term, or the most common term is porch pirates," said DC Metropolitan Police's 5th District Commander Sylvan Altieri.
Altieri is making sure these thieves think twice before snagging someone else’s property.
Police are now putting decoy packages on doorsteps across D.C. Inside is something to give it some weight, some padding, a tracking device and a dollar bill.
"The reason we put money in it isn’t to enhance the penalty of the crime, but the U.S. Attorney’s Office, who has been very cooperative with us on this as far as prosecution, it helps us to say in court definitively this is our property. We can prove this by this manner," said Altieri. "In this case, with dollar bills, it’s easy because there’s a serial number. We pre-record the serial numbers ahead of time so it’s in there."
Since this program’s launch in February, Altieri said they’ve made over a dozen arrests and theft in the 5th District is down.
“The purpose is really to change the behavior of the criminal," said Altieri. "To have the person wonder, if this is the day I’m stealing, is this the day someone’s going to come, and the police are going to lock me up for this?”
It wouldn’t be possible without volunteers from the community that allow their porch to be a part of the sting.
“The thing that’s great about a program like this is I think it gives them the ability to be involved by letting us use their property to put the items on, by calling and suggesting areas," Altieri said. "I think it helps give them involvement and a buy in."
He said the department tries to work with people who have a home security camera.
"If we can catch it on camera, like with a Ring camera, we can actually do a theft case," Altieri said. "If we don’t catch it on the Ring camera, don’t actually catch the crime on camera, we catch the person out of the block with the package with the funds in it that we know are ours, with the air tag we tracked, we can charge them with receiving stolen property."
Commander Altieri knows the department’s most pressing issue is combatting violent crime, so why would the department use resources trying to stop porch pirates? He said community members are asking for it.
“No matter what other crime is going on people still have this need, because everybody wants their stuff to get delivered and no one wants to get their items stolen," said Altieri. "It was really, how do we solve that? Or how do we get some relief?”
If you would like to volunteer your property to be used in a police operation to combat porch pirates, you can reach Commander Altieri at sylvan.altieri@dc.gov.
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