Mail, package thieves hitting Kitsap neighborhoods

PORT ORCHARD, Wash. -- They’re not only after your packages this holiday, thieves are also rifling through the mailboxes.

Neighbors in central Kitsap County said it’s becoming a huge problem and at least one homeowner caught some of those crooks on camera.

“It’s been happening around the area week after week, after week, after week,” said homeowner Tiffany Bartley, “It’s crazy.”

One look at the scattered letters and advertisements littering the ground near Bartley’s house and you can understand why she believes mail thefts in her neighborhood are getting out of hand.



Just a few days ago, Bartley’s surveillance cameras caught a car driving through a heavy rainstorm, in the middle of the night, rummaging through her mailbox on Westminster Drive.

Bartley isn’t alone. Only two weeks ago, on the other side of town, Stephanie Orr said she spotted thieves swiping her neighbor’s package from the front door.

Instead of yelling and screaming, she calmly grabbed her phone and snapped crystal-clear images of the suspect’s car as they tried to leave her Port Orchard neighborhood.

“The car actually drove back towards us so I pulled out my camera, my phone,” Orr said, “Luckily they’re not the brightest folk that we have around here.”

Orr shared the pictures with neighbors and police.

Now that thieves are ransacking mailboxes just a few miles away, Bartley hopes the crooks will think twice considering her cameras are always recording.

“Eventually you’re going to get caught,” she said.