During the holiday season, anyone with a neighborhood app on their phone was treated to an alarming number of videos and reports of packages snatched from porches, sometimes within minutes after delivery. But these guys are mere amateurs when whole train cargo containers are being emptied.

Thieves have been raiding the cargo containers, taking packages that belong to people from all over the country from retailers like Amazon, REI and others.

The refuse left behind, like home COVID test kits, are items that the robbers did not want or did not think were valuable enough to take.

This is not your great grandpa’s Great Train Robbery. This is dirty, nasty, lawlessness that is out of control. Take a look at some of these videos from the Lincoln Heights area of Los Angeles and understand that the mounds of empty boxes and stuff thieves didn’t want is only a 30-day accumulation. Union Pacific had cleaned the area one month ago.

Keep hearing of train burglaries in LA on the scanner so went to #LincolnHeights to see it all. And… there’s looted packages as far as the eye can see. Amazon packages, @UPS boxes, unused Covid tests, fishing lures, epi pens. Cargo containers left busted open on trains. @CBSLA pic.twitter.com/JvNF4UVy2K

— John Schreiber (@johnschreiber) January 13, 2022

This opened package from @REI destined for Bainbridge Island, WA was taken off a train. Typing in the @UPS tracking # and it obviously lists it as “delayed.” We found lots of opened packages bound for the Northwest along this section of tracks. pic.twitter.com/dO82QoJhTT

— John Schreiber (@johnschreiber) January 13, 2022

A few things to note: Railroad yards, trains and right of way are not under the law enforcement jurisdiction of local police. Rail companies maintain their own security. However, any arrests are processed at local jails and reports referred to county District Attorney offices for prosecution. At the time of this report, it appears that Union Pacific had not requested any assistance from LA PD. Not that we are surprised, this is George Gascon‘s Los Angeles and property crime is just not something he is interested in prosecuting.

Is it any wonder that criminals felt comfortable to up their game from porch to train?

Please don’t dismiss this as just another California problem. The port of Los Angeles processes about 20% of all cargo brought into the United States and trains are the major factor in shipping logistics. This swarm targeting of shipping containers at sections where the trains slow or stop on their journey to the port affects many people and businesses across numerous states. At about the 2-minute mark here, the reporter uses the tracking number on a discarded package to find the woman in the state of Washington who shipped it.

Like the apocryphal saying from Willie Sutton that he robbed banks “Because that’s where the money is”, today’s porch pirate now targets a container representing several hundred porches.

featured image, cropped, illustration by N.C. Wyeth, in the public domain