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| Tuesday, Aug 22 2006 10:15 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Aug 22 2006 10:59 PM
The blue, sturdy post office drop boxes positioned around town may not be as secure as they look.
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Drop boxes located outside post offices in downtown Bakersfield and on Camino Media in the southwest have been broken into during the past few weeks.
Laurie Kreizenbeck put a check into the Camino Media drop box on Aug. 9. The next day, she received a call from an area market informing her that a woman was trying to cash the check.
Kreizenbeck asked the market employee to stall the woman while she called police. The woman, Tonia Thomasy, was arrested and is now awaiting a preliminary hearing on charges of second-degree burglary and forgery.
Kreizenbeck said she'll be taking her mail inside the post office from now on.
Local authorities think that's a good idea, too.
"Drop boxes, anything that's out in the public could be riskier than taking it inside," Kern County sheriff's Sgt. Richard Wood said. "The safest bet is taking your mail into the post office and dropping it off there."
Wood said the department regularly receives calls about burglarized mailboxes and drop boxes.
Bakersfield police Detective Greg Terry said many mailbox thefts are "financial gain-driven," meaning the thieves will try to fraudulently cash stolen checks or use personal identification information to commit identity theft. Terry said he still believes drop boxes are relatively safe, but mailing checks inside the post office is the best option.
U.S. Postal Inspector David Guerra, of San Francisco Division Headquarters, said stolen mail needs to be reported to postal inspectors as soon after the theft as possible. Victims of mail theft will be asked to complete a form that the postal inspector uses to determine whether the theft was an isolated incident or part of a larger problem.
Roger Hartley, another victim of mail theft, would like post office employees to be more proactive in protecting their customers. Hartley lost 39 business-related checks earlier this month when the drop box at the downtown post office at 1730 18th St. was broken into on two separate occasions.
The drop box was burglarized on Aug. 1 and Aug. 2, Hartley said. About a week after the second burglary, Hartley, in an incident similar to Kreizenbeck's, received a call from an area check-cashing service about a woman trying to cash one of his checks.
The woman, whose name Hartley did not know, was arrested. Hartley, however, expects more to be done in securing the drop boxes.
"All they did was replace the lock that was busted," he said.
An area postal inspector declined comment Monday, instead referring calls to Guerra.
Hartley spoke with a reporter after business hours on Tuesday and no one from the post office was available for comment at that time.