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Landscape Crews Around Ridgewood Are Bolting GPS Trackers to Mowers and Trailers After a Spring of Equipment Thefts

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The trailer was parked where it always gets parked, against the curb in front of a corner property in Glen Rock, while the crew worked a backyard two houses down. The owner of the operation, a second-generation landscaper who took the business over from his father nine years ago, figures the whole thing took under three minutes. Whoever took it knew trailers, because the hitch worked alone, backing on, dropping the coupler, setting the pin, went quickly enough that nobody on the crew heard a thing, and the trailer left carrying two zero-turn mowers, a walk-behind, three trimmers, and a pair of backpack blowers. He put the loss at a little over 24000 dollars once the trailer itself was counted, and none of it has been seen since. It happened in the third week of April, with the season barely open and every machine already promised to a route, which made the calendar nearly as expensive as the equipment.

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Dog poop, GPS trackers and security cameras: Cracking down on Christmas package thieves

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file photo by Boyd Loving

They operate in the middle of the day, when many residents are at work and the delivery vans are making their rounds.

They tend to follow FedEx, UPS and U.S. mail workers down streets, on the lookout for packages they can nab. Some even dress in uniforms to avoid suspicion.

As Internet retailers make big gains against shopping malls this holiday season, “porch pirates” have been out in force stealing their piece of the pie.

Customers are increasingly using Amazon, EBay and other retailers to buy goods they previously purchased in stores — especially around Christmas, when UPS delivers more than 30 million packages per day in the week before the holiday.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-package-thefts-holidays-20161223-story.html