ABC 11 – A Seattle, Washington man who was tired of packages being stolen from his front porch, has come up with his own anti-theft device. It’s an empty box, made to look like a package, but it’s rigged with fishing wire and a 12-gauge shotgun blank that goes off when the box is lifted.
From surveillance video it seems to work. Would be package thieves have been sent running by the loud bang. A warning though if you’re thinking about making your own device – If you rig a package like this, and it injures a thief, you could be held liable.
This is absolute genius. It’s sad, but when we get to Christmas time it seems we hear lots of stories about people having packages stolen off their front porch. This guy decided to take matters into his own hands, with hilarious results. Though I’m not a fan of the fact that if someone is trying to steal from you and are injured by your security measures – security measures not designed to physically hurt anyone – you can be held liable. They’re on your property, trying to steal something that belongs to you. If they get hurt by being started by a loud noise, that should be on them.
And of course there was no way I could read this story without thinking of this classic Ron Swanson scene from Parks and Rec.
