Erath County S.O.

[KD5NRH]

Grrr...somebody got the mailbox again tonight. Smashed the neighbor's flat as a pancake, but they were only able to break the flag off ours. I hope they at least got a sore wrist from the shock when they smacked it.

FWIW, it's the heavy-duty (Tuff Box was the name, IIRC) 20+lb box that Home Depot carries for ~$65. Money well spent, since we don't use the flag much anyway, and they probably offer replacements cheap.

[stevie_d_64]

Grrr...somebody got the mailbox again tonight. Smashed the neighbor's flat as a pancake, but they were only able to break the flag off ours. I hope they at least got a sore wrist from the shock when they smacked it.

FWIW, it's the heavy-duty (Tuff Box was the name, IIRC) 20+lb box that Home Depot carries for ~$65. Money well spent, since we don't use the flag much anyway, and they probably offer replacements cheap.

Dirn, this has been going on for a while...

Are they just getting yours, or does it appear the "bored" kids are running around tagging others in your area???

Hope you got a statement (report) getting filed soon with your local law enforcement...

[Humanphibian]

Grrr...somebody got the mailbox again tonight. Smashed the neighbor's flat as a pancake, but they were only able to break the flag off ours. I hope they at least got a sore wrist from the shock when they smacked it.

FWIW, it's the heavy-duty (Tuff Box was the name, IIRC) 20+lb box that Home Depot carries for ~$65. Money well spent, since we don't use the flag much anyway, and they probably offer replacements cheap.

If you have the right surrounding to make this work....get you a Game Camera. They are great, even work in total darkness. Get it mounted up high enough they cant get to it then wait.....After their next visit, take the pics to the S.O.... the Newspaper, and then call the FBI or you local Postal Inspector's Office! Tampering with mail, or destroying a mailbox are both FEDERAL CRIMES punishable by 3 years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine.

[KD5NRH]

Dirn, this has been going on for a while...

Are they just getting yours, or does it appear the "bored" kids are running around tagging others in your area???

Hard to say; ours is in a somewhat convenient spot, and far from the house, while a lot of folks on this road built with short driveways on the assumption there would never be much traffic. The vandals are apparently bright enough to avoid the ones within easy pistol range of houses, so I have to guess where they went next to find out if we've been singled out each time. The last two times at least, there have been others hit.

So far, the connection is still that they hit right at the beginning or end of the month. Every time was the last or first of the month, except the time I was watching until the 3rd, and they hit it the next night. If I do surveillance again, it'll be in full camo with a very discreet setup.

Hope you got a statement (report) getting filed soon with your local law enforcement...

Two so far, and the last one with a detailed statement of two hits since the first. This one will go in a list for next time, since our damage is negligible. If the neighbor decides to call them, I'll make sure he has copies of my previous statements so they can keep everything together.

[KD5NRH]

If you have the right surrounding to make this work....get you a Game Camera. They are great, even work in total darkness. Get it mounted up high enough they cant get to it then wait.....After their next visit, take the pics to the S.O.... the Newspaper, and then call the FBI or you local Postal Inspector's Office! Tampering with mail, or destroying a mailbox are both FEDERAL CRIMES punishable by 3 years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine.

Unfortunately, the ones I've looked at don't have the flash range I need. I have a low-light video camera, but I have to have 110 available for the VCR since it's well out of wireless range. I'm thinking of combining an IR game camera and some IR LED illuminators scattered around, but we'll probably be moving by the time I get around to assembling all that.

[austin]

Grrr...somebody got the mailbox again tonight. Smashed the neighbor's flat as a pancake, but they were only able to break the flag off ours. I hope they at least got a sore wrist from the shock when they smacked it.

.

My grandmother was having the same problem when I was in high school.

So I got two mailboxes, one bigger than the other.

I removed the door from the smaller one, put it inside the larger one, and poured cement around it. It now weighed 100 pounds.

I mounted it on the skinny pole.

Some of her neighbors were similarly inspired.

A few nights later the police followed the radiator fluid to the kid's house.

If they are into baseball bats, it may yank them out of the vehicle.

[HankB]

Years ago, in a suburb NW of Chicago, one of my aunt's neighbors had his mailbox run over repeatedly - my aunt told me how he handled it.

He got an 8" pipe about 8' long, sank it in concrete, filled it with more iron pipes and more concrete, and set a mailbox on top. Wrapped the post with ivy, so it wouldn't look bad.

That very weekend, he heard a crash - sure enough, a car with 4 local high schoolers wrapped itself around the post. Drunk, and with marijuana fumes coming out of the car. All were a bit battered from the collision. (This was before the days of mandatory seat belt use, and long before air bags.)

Guy called 911, and said something like "Emergency! A car hit my mailbox! Hurry and send someone out!"

About 1/2 hour later, LEO shows up. Was upset to find a car with injured, drunken doper high-school vandals there. Tried to harass the homeowner, saying it was HIS fault aid was delayed, but the guy's response was something along the lines of "I called you guys and TOLD the dispatcher it was an emergency - check the tape! It's not MY fault you couldn't get off your fat butt at Dunkin' Donuts until now!"

(Turned out the cop actually had been at DD . . . )

I saw the post & box about 2 years later - still looked pretty sturdy, even with the decorative ivy around it.

[Reloader]

If he ran your DL, it shows up when got his report.

[dukalmighty]

I think ya need ta put up a fake mailbox made outta concrete and painted to look like the real thing,one good swing at that baby and i bet he can't feel his hands fer a couple days

[KD5NRH]

I think ya need ta put up a fake mailbox made outta concrete and painted to look like the real thing,one good swing at that baby and i bet he can't feel his hands fer a couple days

So far, the TuffBox has done fine; I think a determined vandal could get out and hurt it with repeated swings of a hammer, but they haven't done that to this one yet. (That's what did in the first of the normal boxes: 18 impacts from both faces of a ball-peen hammer - about a 16oz, judging from the imprints. The second got smacked and pounded back into shape about three times before we bought the TuffBox, and the night before I went to switch it out, someone stuffed fireworks in it and lit them off - during a burn ban and right after a series of huge wildfires about 10mi north of us. Needless to say, that one got reported as well, and the deputy was *very* annoyed when she found some scorched grass near other mailboxes along the road.)

They must have been annoyed at not being able to dent it with whatever they were using; the flag was about 20ga steel, so it couldn't have been easy to break off.

When we move, I'm planing to set a heavy pipe in concrete to mount it on, though I'm pretty sure the box itself (23lbs, IIRC) would cause a *lot* of damage to any vehicle that tried to run over it.

[stevie_d_64]

Not long ago, when I too was a "bored yute"...

I don't recall the guys and gals I hung out with doing anything this stupid...But if we did do something stupid, it really wasn't anything that effected anyone else...

I guess times have changed, and the bored yute of today seem to just not be as intelligent, even with improving tests scores...

I do like the ideas about "armoring up" your mailboxes though...Very clever stuff!

[308nato]

My neighbor had his box run over several times also in a suburb N/W
of Chicago and reworked his like HankB did only the father of the kid that
hit it threaten to take him to court for distroying his kids car.
After a few of the folks at the time had a serious talk with him he shutup and left not to be heard from again.

[KBCraig]

If you live on a road maintained by TxDOT (any state highway or FM road, for instance), you don't have the option of vandal-proofing your mailbox.

[ELB]

As much as I enjoy seeing self-inflicted justice, as in when a vandal takes on a mailbox tougher than he is, I would be hesitant to install something with the intention, or what would appear to be the intention, of causing (greater) injury to the vandal. I certainly wouldn't write about it on the internet.

I can't find the right link at the moment, but in the past few years a gentleman was sued for putting up a stout barrier (I think railroad ties were involved) after cars had penetrated his fence numerous times (lived at a T-intersection). The first car to encounter the new barrier stopped alright, but the driver (or his survivors, can't remember which) sued him, essentially claiming he made the wreck worse than it would have been without the barrier, regardless of the (ir)responsibility of the driver, his state of inebriation, etc. And Texas, unfortunately, is not a great state for holding people responsible for their own actions when large awards and insurance companies are involved. And whether you ultimately win the lawsuit or not, or the appeals, you lose.

I would stick to game cameras and picking up left-behind license plates.

elb

[KD5NRH]

Thread resurrection; they actually managed to take out the TuffBox last night. I think we got our money's worth, though - for $80 or so, it outlasted the $20 boxes by enough to justify its cost at least twice over.

Whoever did it had to get out and beat on the front of it with some sort of tire iron or similar. It damaged the powder coat in three places, bashed the door in past its reinforcing bar, split part of the hinge weld, and tore out the 3.5" screws holding the box to the chunk of hardwood that mounted to the post. The neighbor's box was gone, but I forgot to check any farther each direction for overall damage.

The S.O. sergeant that took the report also asked for a couple of names from the other direction down the road, saying that there were no boxes visible at several houses, but no easy way of knowing if they'd given up and gotten post office boxes until he could talk to them as well. He also mentioned that, with it being Sunday, a lot of folks might not even notice their box is gone until they go to check the mail tomorrow.

Anybody want to make an offer on 23lbs of good quality scrap steel?