Interesting followup on package theft, a topic we’ve visited before. Gonna take some teamwork, people. With rampant package theft still an ongoing problem, Speak to Dave is here to help you — just contact Jeff or Asa if you’ve experienced issues. We’re all in this together, let’s stay vigilant!
Illustration by Kevin Whipple
For neighbors in the author’s East Village walk-up, “Have you had anything stolen?” turned out to be a great conversation starter.
Originally published By Julie Besonen | Feb. 19, 2021
A yellow note fluttered down like a leaf when I opened the door to my apartment one day last fall. Handwritten, it read in part:
“Hello — My package was stolen on 10/1/2020. I came home to find the empty box (item removed) in the trash. It was a nice, gray women’s blazer. Please return to 5C, no questions asked.”
This veiled accusation set in motion a building-wide campaign to stop the petty theft afflicting the lobby of my unattended East Village walk-up, where I have lived since the 1990s.
Package theft wasn’t an issue when I first moved in during the Grunge years, although crack vials routinely littered our stoop. Sleepy addicts sometimes blocked the door. But these entryway inconveniences were minor compared with the constant robberies, which rapidly escalated last year.
My building was not alone. Forty-three percent of Americans shopping online experienced package theft last year, up from 36 percent in 2019, according to a recent market research study. Of that 43 percent, almost two-thirds reported packages having been stolen more than once. The New York Police Department does not keep data to that level of specificity, I was told, and the most recent figures available for the city estimated that 90,000 packages had disappeared every day in 2019. This number was bound to be higher in 2020, considering the thriving online economy.
Credit Roshni Khatri for The New York Times
But back to 30 years ago: Aside from the stoop problem, our building was a neighborly haven, owned by the same family for generations and monitored by live-in supers, a couple from Malta named Agnes and Tony. Our ensemble of residents (Bill, Bob, John, Pat, Tom) worked unflashy jobs — mailroom clerk, museum guide and so on — and stayed for decades, giving me the chance to grow fond of them, including nuisances like Edith and Victor (secretary, janitor), who banged on my ceiling when my music blared. It only took them 14 years to trust me enough to water their plants when they traveled.
The poignant exodus of these characters, through death, eviction, buyouts and, most recently, the pandemic, made way for my current neighbors, variously named Summer, Kennedy, Madison, Kayleigh, Mackenzie, Hannah and Charity. They pay rents that seem exorbitant, upward of $4,000 in some cases, reflecting the East Village’s own hypergentrification.
When I started to cross paths with this new crop last fall, their eyes were often trained on their phones. Why bother trying to get to know them? I might be a lifer, but I did not want to become the next Edith, so I silently endured their music thumping through my walls and their habit of leaving empty boxes all over the lobby.
My attitude softened on the day I read the yellow note from 5C and saw it stuck in other doors down the hall. A real estate group owns our building now, our live-in supers are long gone and our security camera feed was disconnected years ago during multiple gut renovations. I decided to reach out to my new neighbors. “Have you had anything stolen?” turned out to be a great conversation starter.
Harper Gray, 22, who worked at Belmont Park racetrack, said that within a week of moving into our building at the end of August, a new dress, ordered online, had been stolen. Within two months, she and her roommate had lost roughly $2,000 worth of items, she said.
When Amielle Morris, a college student, ordered a new table, the tabletop arrived separately from the legs, which were stolen, leaving her with a legless table. She was often out, working double shifts as a restaurant hostess when she wasn’t in class, and said seven other deliveries had been stolen. The one that hurt the most was a care package of clothes, local honey and avocados from her mother in California.
These were young adults, after all, establishing independence in a city that had been hit hard in a number of ways. Of course their parents were sending them care packages. Parker Zinn, 19, told me she was “freaking out every 15 to 30 minutes” while expecting a delivery from her family in North Carolina.
Ralitsa Kalfas, 23, also from North Carolina, found an empty cardboard box instead of winter coats and sweaters sent to her from her family. A vintage jacket that once belonged to her grandmother was stolen too.
My empathy for these young women grew, realizing they weren’t that different from me when I first moved to New York, my shyness sometimes interpreted as unfriendliness. With no Covid-related travel constraints back then, my family simply visited, bearing suitcases of goodies instead of sending care packages.
The new neighbors and I exchanged phone numbers to text one another when anything was left unattended. Sarah Byron, 24, panicked when she saw a giant new TV screen propped up on the first floor, addressed to Kennedy. She lugged it up three flights of stairs for safekeeping until Kennedy got home.
And then what happened?!
Well kids, let’s click the button and find out: