Tulsa Police Searching For Mail Thieves

Tulsa Police hope security video can help them find the man who they say was riding through a Tulsa neighborhood on a bike, stealing packages.

Police said catching people who steal packages off porches is tough because these are crimes of opportunity. Security systems like Ring are helping them catch the thieves.

Police said their latest porch pirate was caught on camera riding up to a house on a bike, ringing the doorbell, then taking a package.

"It is a problem that never ends. We see an uptick in it in the holidays when people start shopping for Christmas," Tulsa Police Officer Jeanne Pierce said.

Pierce said even though package theft is more common around the holidays, it happens all the time.

"We see a lot of individuals start collecting packages," she said. "Driving from neighborhood to neighborhood, looking for anything left on a front porch that's available and easy to take, put it in their vehicles and drive off."

Pierce said it looks like the man was riding around the neighborhood, saw the package and then decided to take it.

She said that's why these thieves are hard to stop, it is crime of opportunity.

"We try to be in our neighborhoods, we try to be in our beats, we try to drive around, be seen and hopefully deter some crime. They don't really know what they are getting in any of these packages. They are just rolling the dice that it might be something worthwhile," Pierce said.

Pierce urges people to send their packages to their work or have a friend or neighbor swing by to pick it up.

She said even though it’s a tough crime for police, security systems are making these cases easier to solve.

"They give us an image, they give us a fairly clear image of the individuals committing these crimes and it helps detectives build their cases," Pierce said.

If you have any information that can help police, call Crime Stoppers at 918-596-COPS.