Fa-la-la-la-la / la-la-la-la, and ho-ho-ho, and keep an eye on any packages you get delivered to your home in the weeks ahead, because the holidays are prime hunting season for parcel thieves.
Neighbor Chris shares this story from last weekend:
On Saturday I had an attempted theft from my house. Around 1-2pm, a woman wearing a black hoodie and a colorful backpack was spotted by my downstairs tenant trying to steal a package through my security gate. This took place on Heyman Ave.
She had a long piece of metal she had put through the bars and was trying to scoop out the package through the bars of the gate. Luckily my tenant came outside and she ran off.
Currently, I only have a security grill behind the lock for my gate. After this happened, I realized that it would be quite easy for a thief to extract small packages from elsewhere in the gate. I’ll be welding on some more security grill to fix this vulnerability.
If you regularly get any packages or mail delivered behind a security gate/door, go make sure they are truly secure. Bring a metal pole and see if you can fish anything out through the gates.
Stay safe, Bernal!
Barring that (no pun intended), you might also consider having parcels delivered to your workplace, rather than to your home.
IMAGE: FreakingNews.com
Bernalwood 
In addition, this past weekend, a man was seen on Elsie Street attempting to steal packages from Amazon.
A neighbor on my street, who I don’t know and had never spoken to, attempted to take my package from the UPS driver on my behalf! Unknown to her I happened to be home and heard the truck stop in front of my house and was able to take delivery, and tell her that she was not ever to take my packages. I now have UPS Choice and get notifications prior to delivery so I can have them held for me to pick up at their facility. This works so long as UPS doesn’t farm out packages to the USPS, who will slide packages under my gate, or put into my mail slot.
I noticed recently that bufferbox.com now has a location at the 7-11 on Mission by the Walgreens. I haven’t tried it yet, but it’s a free solution. It adds a walk into the day, but maybe that’s good, what with all the holiday snacking to come.
I’ve recently had a package pulled through a security gate on Moultrie near Cortland. Unfortunately for the would-be-thief, they opened it to reveal a vacuum filter, so they did me the favor of leaving it open on the street 20 feet from my doorway. There’s obviously a pattern going on here– I recommend someone that is home during the day set up a sting a la: http://www.missionmission.org/2012/11/27/package-thief-fought-off-with-bear-spray/
We had a vegetable box stolen off our doorstep within an hour of delivery.