Daybreak is just down the way, and last I heard the non/mormon split in the valley is something like 65%/35%.
Every community has thieves, and this problem isn’t about faith.
Ugh. The stupidity of humans knows no bounds. The problem is that thieves follow the delivery truck. All the thief has to do to differentiate between decoy and real is not fall asleep while the driver drops the package.
On a plus side, all that money wasted spent on decoys will help the local economy.
The LDS population out here is about 35% (on paper! Who knows how many take it seriously?).
That’s way down from the 80s, but since then the business sector in SLC has brought the world to us.
Daybreak is a new development, and young people there are likelier to be non-LDS.
This story isn’t a religious one any more than thefts in a predominantly Catholic community would be.
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Well, since that’s when I last lived there, that explains a few things.
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That’s fair. You and I were here during that time and saw what there was.
And it was a religious state. Top-to-bottom, almost. There were outliers but they were rare, and usually outgoing about their non-belief. I wonder if you, like me, were advised to stay away from others outside the faith.
This is not the Utah of the 80s though.
I remember accidentally breaking a friend’s vodka bottle and going to the liquor store to replace it, still very much believing. The experience taught me how much nobody gives a shit about my religious upbringing, they just have a fucking job to do.
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Well, I grew up Catholic so my religious education was hangin’ with the homeys and their abuelas. Not a lot of white folks at mass in Midvale.
I visited in 1992 and saw the first actual espresso place!
I have visited once since in…2008…for a week over Thanksgiving with my mom. She lives down by Liberty Park and is a Dianic Witch. 
Lots of fun with the Mormons, her. Her boyfriend was ex-communicated.
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They sound like a fun bunch. 
My brother only finally escaped to Seattle about three years ago. He was living somewhere north of West Jordan on what seemed like the edge of forever nothingness.
Mom always wants me to visit, when she does, over the holidays. I’m like “Mom, I live in California. Why the hell would I come to Utah in November or December? I don’t even know how to drive on snow.”
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I’m glad he did what was right for him.
I would leave, but the roots (on both sides of the family) run deep, and my viewpoint is needed here.
Eventually I’d like to move us to Europe. Germany and Sweden seem like good options. It’s all just fantasy for now. That could maybe change in the next 3-5.
eta - That viewpoint thing. Lady SB’s brother thinks Cruz is the bestest. And he’s afraid of the word “Socialism”. Even though he drives on public roads and sends his kids to public schools and so forth many times over.
I know I seem crazy to that bunch. I did say that “towel-head” wasn’t funny during a family meeting around a Christmas tree about eight years ago, and I’m still dealing with the fallout from that.
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…and kids in Midvale Middle School used to make jokes about black folks and boat people (who were settled and in school at the time). I don’t expect a lot of racial sensitivity when I go to places that are like 85%+ white historically. The only black kid in my school must have had it rough.
My mom’s ex-communicated boyfriend still thinks he’s in the GOP and makes all kinds of comments about “Obama the socialist” until you ask him “WTF?” but he seems to have caught on about gay rights which is good since mom is queer.
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Lockable boxes which can take most apart from the largest packages and can be affixed to porches are available. Without wishing to justify ‘alf-inchin’ little toerags this type of crime is mostly opportunistic and the property owner does bear some responsibility in minimising risk.
Then again obviously the roof is the place to leave packages if no-one is home.
I’m going to order a big box of rocks from Amazon and leave it on my porch.
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I’ll take a gross of these:
These could work too, but I don’t know how to make sure they take the whole box with them some distance away before trying to figure out what they stole:
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Especially given the ever-increasing popularity of ye olde e commerce; you’d think that newer ‘planned communities’ might take package receiving into account. I’m sure that the solutions could be made less ugly if you didn’t need a decent-size lockbox per-house.
In the meantime, a lot of the people I know just have particularly valuable/weather-sensitive stuff shipped to work. Unless the office is really tightly wound, nobody minds, and commercial establishments are commonly a pretty well-oiled machine when it comes to moving packages in and out.
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Amazon Lockers. I know that as-is, it’s only convenient if you live or work in a decently sized city, but they’d solve this kind of delivery problem, assuming you can get to a locker bay within however long they leave the shit in the locker before clearing it out. Those locations are pretty secure with cameras, and proximal businesses and cameras and such, but are accessible 24 hours.
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If you got together with your neighbours and each of you ordered a subcritical mass of a fissionable material, you could give thieves a huge surprise.
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I find it strange that people are surprised that packages get stolen when they wouldn’t leave bikes, cars or windows unlocked and unattended. The sellers, delivery companies and buyers need to work together and give each other more consideration. Unfortunately online sellers entice buyers with the offer of free delivery and then the courier companies put in impossibly low bids to maintain/increase market share. The buyer is caught between the two. The real contentious issue is that drivers are paid per parcel no matter how many attempts at delivery are made so they are incentivised to cut corners and leave parcels in random places (sometimes very random such as bins) or lob them over fences. When placing orders you should be able to leave special instructions for the driver and designate a safe place to leave packages. The best couriers in the UK now text you once they have received and scanned a parcel giving you the date of delivery and name of your driver and allowing you to select an alternative date and address if they are not convenient. Drivers can then be guaranteed to be able to deliver parcels at the first attempt for most deliveries. The worst companies give up and return parcels to the sellers sometimes even before any delivery is attempted simply to reduce their workload. Online sellers are definitely losing money in the UK as the most egregious and largest of our delivery companies is boycotted by many people refusing to buy from sellers who use them.
I’m really not understanding why my post appeared to be prejudiced against a particular religion.
According to the article, “a tight-knit community of about 4,000 homes and 15,000 people who all know each other very well well” is having a theft problem, and as a community they thought up a scenario: “the idea is that thieves will steal them, take them home to find they’ve got garbage instead of shiny new products, and swear off stealing other people’s stuff for good.”
There is no neighborhood I know of, in the several states I’ve lived in, where this thought process would ever happen. The only communities in the U.S. that I know of – from visiting friends/relatives, etc. – which would be this cohesive in their belief of the inherent good ethics of all humans are Amish, Mennonite, and Mormon. Since the community is in Utah, I assumed horses rather than zebras.
It’s not a dig against Mormons or any other communities of faith.
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So is leaving packages outside the front door in clear view normal in the US? In the UK, packages are either left with a neighbour, or you get a card to either rearrange delivery or collect from the local sorting office. Very occasionally you’ll get a card to say it’s been left in a “safe”/hidden place.
Anyway, that’s why I tend to get most things delivered to my place of work.
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Not sure how to react to victim blaming with regard to a non-sexual-violence crime. Progress? Deeper into the mire? Who knows?
