Study: Seattle one of America’s worst cities for package theft

SEATTLE — A new study from SafeWise.com has ranked Seattle as the fourth-worst metro city in the U.S. for package theft.

According to results from their survey of 1,000 Americans, around 210 million packages have disappeared from porches across the country over the last 12 months.

“Package theft is a crime of opportunity. The more packages left for longer periods of time on a porch, the more likely they are to be stolen. As the Christmas gift season gets into full swing, there will be a significant increase in packages on a porch,” said Ben Stickle, a home security expert. “All of this adds up to easy targets for thieves. Porch piracy is a low-entry crime. There are no special skills needed to walk up a driveway and steal a package.”

To build their rankings, SafeWise.com analyzed 2020 FBI larceny-theft data from metro areas across the U.S. and compared it to Google Trends data in areas with the highest number of searches for “missing package” and “stolen package.”

Here’s their ranking of the top 10 major metros where package theft is rampant:

1. Denver, CO
2. San Francisco, CA
3. Salt Lake City, UT
4. Seattle, WA
5. San Antonio, TX
6. Austin, TX
7. Portland, OR
8. Greenville, SC
9. Raleigh, NC
10. Hartford, CT

Seattle dropped off the list in 2020 after lower rates of theft, but its current ranking is higher than its fifth-place spot on the 2019 list.

More than 3 in 4 Americans have been a victim of package theft in their lifetime, with 53.5% of Americans having had multiple packages stolen in the last 12 months.

©2021 Cox Media Group