Last week I followed a trail of our mail up the street and found our mailbox in the ditch. I don't think it had been hit by a car, I think it had been taken off and carried and thrown (because the mail was scattered one by one going up the road a ways, and the box was found up the road, across the street, and down a hill into a ditch and it was not damaged). This week both our and our neighbors mailboxes were off the posts again and in our yard.
Our neighbor has had this issue MANY MANY times, I think he is on his 4th or 5th mailbox. No matter what they do it is always knocked off. He is kind of on a curve though, so I thought it was getting hit. But talking to our neighbor she told me last week their mail, still in their mailbox, was sliced in half.
Would you report this to the police? I wonder if it is just kids, I hate to get the police involved for a petty issue, but in this day and age of identity theft, I don't want someone messing with my mail. I also don't want this to be the beginning of an ongoing thing with our mailbox like it has with our neighbors.
Interfering with the mail is a Federal Offense and you need to report it. If it's just kids, they need to learn that this is unacceptable behavior before they move on to something worse.
federal offense.
report it!
khairete
S.
Definately call the police. And the post office. They can hold your mail for pickup at the center until the vandal is caught. Also set up a video camera in a window that can capture the activity. If there are lot of trees around, you also might be able to hide a trail camera. Encourage your neighbors to do the same.
Report it to the police every time.
Around here, sometimes the mailboxes get run over by farm equipment.
There's no trying to prove who did it, but we still report it to the police.
You could try spending some money on one of those brick mailboxes.
It might cost you but they are pretty solid and you'll never have to replace it again.
Maybe you and your neighbors could go in on a deal to get them all done at the same time.
Google 'brick mailboxes' and look at Images - you'll see many designs.
A car could still run into it, but the car would be totaled in the process.
The brick ones around here stand up to just about everything - I haven't seen one fail yet.
And the farmers are more careful around them because the bricks would damage some expensive equipment.
YES report this to the police and the Post Master....what you describe is a felony.
I would also try to get together with the neighbors and set up a surveillance camera.
This is probably one of the neighbors or some older children/teens. Still who ever is doing this needs to be caught.
The post office can give you some stickers to put on the mail boxes about mail fraud.
I think you do need to contact the police about the ongoing vandalism in your area. Tampering with mailboxes or mail IS a federal crime.
We see occasional (like maybe 3 times in 20 years) incidents of "mailbox baseball", where they hit the mailbox with a baseball bat... but nothing like you've described.
My grandma had an issue like that on her street. She got a sturdy metal pole, painted it green put it very securely in the ground next to the mailbox. I think she might have done 2, one on either side. When they come down the street in their car with a bat or whatever they are using to hit the mailboxes, they hit the pole instead and the bat whips back and dents in the side of their car bigtime. No one got hers again, but many of her neighbors still had problems. Thats what I would suggest doing.
YES report it to the police, every time it happens. It's a Federal Offense to mess with mail AND the mail boxes.
Yes, you should report it. Like you said ID theft can start in your mailbox! And if it is kids, then they need to learn that this is not acceptable. Right now, there are no consequences = no reason NOT to do it.
Definintely report it to the police. sounds to me like a few boys driving by in their car with a baseball bat - swatting at the mailboxes cuz it's "fun". I know it happened in our town when I was growing up. If the police know there's candalism happening ain a particular part of town at night they will patrol there more frequently - they can't do it if they don't know about it.
Yes, report it!
It is probably just bored teenagers (we have that here) but you never know.
Some of our neighbors (who have lived here many years) have actually encased their mailboxes in brick or stone columns, because they got sick of replacing the boxes over the years. We've lived here 16 years and have only had to replace ours once, knock on wood!
When I lived in Arkansas, the teenagers with too much moonshine (yes, moonshine. The seller/producer was known as "Bootleg Bob".) would drive over the mailboxes, breaking the post and ruining the mail box. A friend of mine got real tired of this and threats did no good so he bought a rail road tie, cut it into 3' lengths and buried about 2' in the ground. He put his mailbox on a post made of 1" or so chain link fencing top pipe. He then put the pipe in the middle of his railroad ties. He planted 18" shrubs around his railroad tie mail box pipe holder. When the car that was running over the mailboxes hit the railroad ties, it came to an abrupt stop. It was hauled away by a wrecker and the mail boxes were never damaged again. (I don't think it was so much fun any more.)
My boss had a home on a street where the side street came downhill to a stop, like a "T". His home was at the top of the "T". On icy days he always worried about someone not stopping at the stop sign and ending up in his living room. When he had a car in his living room for the second time after an ice storm, he decided to landscape his yard. He dug a hole in his front yard, by the curb. He hired a stone company to bring in a rock (boulder) that weighed about 5 tons and was about 4' by 4' by 6'. They dumped it in the 1' hole he dug with the 6' length running parallel to the street. He then planted flowering plants around the edge. He never had any more cars drive into his living room.
Just a thought. Good luck to you and yours.
I so feel your pain! ours has been smashed 3 times and ripped off 1 time (never found.....middle of night on a Sat so no mail in it.) I heard it get smashed with a bat the last time at 10:30 at night. No clue why and only one on the street, We have 2 sheriff deputies for the largest county in the state.
They wont even come to the house if it has been robbed. So no we haven't reported it....even though we want to, because we know they aren't looking into it.
