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Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Mail theft hits too close to home in Duluth
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I live in a beautiful townhome community in Duluth. It is a storybook community that is a melting pot for the different ethnic groups that give Gwinnett its unique flavoring.
We have a walking trail, our own lake, and two sets of grand gates that stand as fortresses at the north and south sides of our pristine community. And until a few weeks ago, some of us who live here were deluded enough to believe that those gates and the amenities behind them separated us from the ugliness and inconvenience that affect everyone outside.
In February, a woman in our community called me (I work with the homeowners’ board) to report that she had seen two young women foraging inside community mailboxes. The neighbor did not call 911, but she did make a report to the postman. He said he would not be surprised if it was theft, since there had been several reports of mail theft in Gwinnett over the first few days of the month.
The next morning on the news, I heard that two women had been arrested for foraging in mailboxes in Doraville and Norcross, but there was no mention that they had been going into mailboxes in Duluth.
However, I thought it was too coincidental and called the police to report that I believed that the two women in custody for the alleged mailbox thefts in those two cities may also have been involved in mailbox thefts in my community.
Local police referred me to a United States Postal Service inspector in charge of the case. To my chagrin, I fell personally and deeper into this story than I could have imagined.
I had left bills to be paid in my mailbox with the red handle in an upward position to alert the postal courier to pick up letters. Instead, the handle became a red flag to the mail thieves that there was a good chance that checks were in the mailbox — and the women had stolen the checks from those bills.
I felt a mixture of anger and relief when the postal inspector told me that they had my checks in their possession and that they were now federal evidence against the duo. Luckily, the checks had not been altered or negotiated, so all that I had to do was to reissue checks to my creditors.
What a wake-up call this scenario was for me.
I would like hear from others who have gone around in a naive fog thinking that crime happens everywhere — except in their beautiful Gwinnett suburban community. What is your story? And what can be done to prevent mail theft?
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