Battle Ground police work to deliver justice after rash of mailbox thefts

Battle Ground Police are currently investigating a rash of mailbox thefts that hit the city late last month, though by nature the cases often prove difficult to solve.

From Feb. 19 to 22 BGPD had five reports mail theft in the city. The reports were in the east side of town, with all but one being localized to neighborhoods off of Rasmussen Boulevard.

Battle Ground Police Chief Bob Richardson said that it wasn’t unusual to have mail theft, with incidents happening a few times a year. He explained that typically the thefts were of community boxes featuring multiple residences’ mail, making for an easier target than going door-to-door.

“You can pop 10 or 15 of these mailboxes in 10 seconds,” he said. 

Cases of mail theft are difficult to find evidence for. Richardson explained that because of all the people who consistently touch them, getting something like fingerprints to identify a suspect was out of the question. He said surveillance videos from residential cameras can prove useful in helping to identify suspect vehicles at the scene of the crimes.

On Feb. 25 the city posted a surveillance video featuring a vehicle suspected in the thefts, “a darker colored, late model, quad cab, short bed, pickup truck” seen driving at 11:30 p.m. Feb. 22 in the 600 block of Southeast 5th Avenue.

With suspect vehicles identified oftentimes during a traffic stop, an officer could notice mail in the stopped vehicle with multiple addresses which can help determine a suspected mail thief, Richardson said. 

Though the United States Postal Service has inspectors that investigate postal crimes, according to Richardson, they generally don’t focus on low-level incidents involving the theft of valuables or cash.

“They’re looking for fraud, internal theft, those kind of things,” he said.

Further complicating investigations is the fact that mail thieves generally don’t hang around the same city for long. Typically, Richardson explained, they travel between potential break-in sites.

When speaking to The Reflector March 5, Richardson said there hadn’t been any major breakthroughs on the recent thefts. He asked the public to keep an eye out for suspicious activity near their boxes as a way to avoid more thefts in the future.

“If you see something, say something,” he said.