SAN JOSE — Describing more than a year and a half of mail regularly being stolen out of the cluster mailboxes at the Yerba Hills Court neighborhood in southeast San Jose, residents and local politicians called Thursday on the U.S. Postal Service to do more to prevent the mail thefts.
The San Jose neighborhood has been hit between 20 to 30 times by mail thieves since the residents started recording the thefts in early 2023, said Jonathan Young, a director of the housing complex’s homeowners association.
As a result, Rep. Jimmy Panetta, a Democrat who represents a region stretching from south San Jose to Santa Cruz and Monterey County to northern San Luis Obispo County, promoted his bipartisan MAIL Theft Act to address mail theft by allowing for more coordination between law enforcement agencies. The bill was co-written with Orange County representative Young Kim, and they are pushing to get a hearing for the bill in the oversight committee.
Panetta said USPS declined an invitation to send a representative to the press conference. A request for comment from the postal service was not immediately returned Thursday.
Panetta said that the cluster mailboxes in the residential community had been broken into several times. Young said personal mail, packages, credit cards and even medications have been stolen from the mailboxes.
San Jose Councilmember Domingo Candelas said that the mail thefts have resulted in break-ins, property damage and identity theft. One resident at the news conference, who asked that she only be referred to by her last name, Meyer, said that she had credit cards and bank statements stolen. She said she realized she was a victim of identity theft after she noticed that new bank accounts were opened and her credit cards racked up more charges than she knew of. She said she lost thousands of dollars after fully paying off the credit cards.
“I was very upset, especially when I knew specifically that in that three-day time frame, I should be getting such-and-such bill or such-and-such product (in the mail). And it’s gone, and when I follow up, I find it out, ‘Oh it was already sent to you.’ ” Meyer said.
Between 2019 and 2022, high-volume mailbox theft increased nationwide by 87%, according to the USPS’s quarterly magazine.
Panetta said that it was possible the suspects stole the keys to the mailboxes by robbing mail carriers, a problem that has increased over the last few years. According to the USPS and U.S. Postal Inspection Service, arrests for robbing letter carriers increased 73% this year. Panetta said that in 2023, there were 30 robberies of mail carriers in the Bay Area, which makes up 61% of robberies of mail carriers in California.
“That’s an issue. That demonstrates to me that thieves are targeting the Bay Area, therefore targeting my congressional district, therefore targeting this community when it comes to this,” Panetta said.
After the first break-in in the neighborhood, USPS replaced the locks on the cluster mailboxes with new ones, but that solution only lasted until the mailboxes were broken into again.
“After sharing the ineffectiveness of the strategy with USPS, we were met with alternating bouts of complacency and hostility,” Young said. “Response ranged from flat-out denial to accusations that we ourselves were the perpetrators or that we somehow deserved this.”
The MAIL Theft Act would increase coordination between federal and local agencies investigating mail theft. Panetta called for the USPS to replace the conventional locks with electronic keys for cluster mailboxes. He also demanded that postal police officers patrol the streets to protect mail carriers and the community.
Santa Clara County Undersheriff Ken Binder advised residents to check with their local postal officials to upgrade their mailboxes if it’s advisable and collect their mail as soon as possible. He also advised the community to install security cameras wherever possible and use USPS’s informed delivery services to get alerts for certified mail. Binder also said that residents should require signatures for any packages they might receive and report any suspicious activity in the area.
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