The brown box sat on a porch in Cordova for exactly 11 minutes. A Ring doorbell camera caught the whole thing. A gray sedan pulled up, a man walked to the front door, picked up the Amazon package, and drove away. The homeowner was at work on Germantown Parkway. She watched the footage on her phone during lunch.
This is December in Memphis.
Nationally, porch piracy has become a $19 billion annual problem according to a 2022 study from Security.org. Around 49 million Americans had at least one package stolen in the past year. In Memphis, the numbers are harder to pin down because most thefts go unreported. MPD doesn’t track porch piracy as a separate category. It falls under theft of property, a catch-all bucket that includes everything from shoplifting to vehicle break-ins.
What we do know is this: package theft complaints to Memphis police spike between Thanksgiving and Christmas every single year. This year is no different. If anything, it’s worse.
Why Memphis Gets Hit Hard
Three factors make this city a target for package thieves during the holidays.
First, the sheer volume of deliveries. The Memphis metro area is home to the FedEx World Hub at Memphis International Airport, the busiest cargo airport on the planet. The irony isn’t lost on locals. The city that moves more packages than anywhere else in the world can’t keep those packages safe on front porches.
Second, the sprawl. Memphis is geographically huge for its population. Residential neighborhoods stretch from Bartlett in the northeast to Southaven across the Mississippi line, from Germantown in the east to Whitehaven in the south. Single-family homes with front porches, long driveways, and no line of sight from neighbors are the norm. That’s a porch pirate’s dream setup.
Third, economic pressure. Memphis has a poverty rate above 24%. When consumer goods are sitting unguarded on doorsteps throughout neighborhoods, the temptation is there. I’m not excusing it. I’m explaining why theft of all kinds tends to climb during the holidays here.
The Neighborhoods
Not every part of Memphis deals with this problem equally.
Hickory Hill (38115, 38118) has some of the highest property crime rates in Shelby County. The area south of Winchester Road and east of Mendenhall has been a hot spot for package theft and vehicle break-ins for years. Residents in the apartment complexes along Hickory Hill Road have reported packages stolen from leasing office holding areas and from outside apartment doors.
Cordova (38016, 38018) might surprise people. It’s a suburban area with newer construction, two-car garages, and community pools. It’s also full of dual-income households where nobody is home between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Packages sit on porches all day. Thieves have figured this out. Multiple Cordova residents told me they’ve had packages taken this month, and several Nextdoor groups in the area post doorbell camera footage of theft almost daily.
East Memphis (38117, 38120) sees its share. The neighborhoods around Poplar Avenue and between Park and Walnut Grove have been dealing with property crime that residents say has gotten worse over the past two years. Package theft fits the pattern. Thieves target the older homes along tree-lined streets where front doors sit back from the road.
Bartlett (38134, 38135) has lower crime rates than the Memphis city average, and the Bartlett Police Department operates independently from MPD. Still, porch piracy has increased here. The subdivisions off Stage Road and along Bartlett Boulevard have active neighborhood watch groups that regularly share doorbell camera footage of suspicious vehicles.
Germantown (38138, 38139) is one of the wealthiest suburbs in the metro area, which makes it a target for a different reason. Higher-value packages. Germantown police have issued seasonal warnings about package theft, and the city’s community engagement officers have been doing presentations at neighborhood association meetings this month.
What the Cameras Show
Ring and other doorbell cameras have changed the package theft conversation. They haven’t stopped theft, but they’ve made it visible.
A Cordova homeowner shared footage with me from November 28 showing a woman in a red jacket walking up the driveway at 1:47 p.m., grabbing two boxes, and carrying them to an SUV parked on the curb. Total time on camera: 23 seconds. He posted the video on Nextdoor and got 200 comments in a day. Several neighbors recognized the SUV.
The footage is useful, and it’s also frustrating. MPD doesn’t have the resources to follow up on every porch theft, especially when the city is dealing with a homicide count that’s approaching 300 for the year. When your stolen Amazon package is competing with aggravated assaults for detective time, you’re not getting a callback.
Ring’s own data tells a national story that maps onto Memphis. Their 2022 report found that package theft peaks between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays, with December 15 through December 23 being the worst stretch of the year. Most thefts happen within two hours of delivery.
What MPD Says
I reached out to MPD’s community outreach office for comment on holiday package theft prevention. They provided standard guidance:
- Require signatures on high-value deliveries
- Ship to your workplace if possible
- Use Amazon Locker or similar pickup points
- Ask a neighbor to grab packages when you’re away
- Install visible cameras (Ring, Nest, Arlo)
- Don’t let packages sit overnight
All reasonable advice. None of it addresses the root cause, which is that millions of dollars in consumer goods are left unattended on doorsteps every day in a city with high property crime.
MPD also pointed residents toward their online reporting system for non-emergency theft. File a report, get a case number, move on. The realistic outcome for most package theft is an insurance claim, not an arrest.
What Residents Are Actually Doing
Forget the official advice for a second. Here’s what Memphis residents are doing on their own.
Package lockers are showing up in newer apartment complexes and HOA communities. Parcel Pending and similar services install bank-style lockboxes where delivery drivers place packages. Each resident gets a code. The boxes are weatherproof and tamper-resistant. A property manager in Germantown told me two of her communities installed these in 2022, and package theft complaints dropped to near zero.
Neighborhood watch groups have shifted their focus. Several groups in East Memphis and Cordova told me they’ve moved from general “suspicious activity” alerts to specific “watch for delivery trucks and check your porch” protocols during December. One group in the Fox Meadows area has volunteer porch watchers who sit on their own porches during peak delivery hours and keep an eye on neighbors’ houses.
Amazon Hub Lockers at Whole Foods on Poplar, the 7-Eleven on Union, and several other locations across Memphis give residents a free alternative to home delivery. Usage has gone up significantly this year according to a manager at one of the Poplar Avenue locations.
FedEx Hold at Location and UPS Access Point services let customers redirect packages to staffed retail locations like Walgreens, Dollar General, and local pack-and-ship stores. It’s inconvenient, and that’s the trade-off. You drive to Walgreens on your way home. Your package is there.
Porch lockboxes from companies like Bench Sentry and Yale have become popular gifts themselves. A steel or heavy-duty plastic box bolted to your porch gives delivery drivers a place to secure packages. They aren’t cheap, running $150 to $400 depending on size. One Bartlett resident told me she bought one after having three packages stolen in November. “I spent $200 on the box. The stuff that got stolen cost me way more than that.”
The Bigger Picture
Package theft is annoying and expensive, and it’s also a symptom of something Memphis has been struggling with for years.
Property crime here runs well above the national average. The FBI’s most recent Uniform Crime Report put Memphis in the top tier for property crime among large cities. When residents talk about “feeling less safe,” they’re not always talking about homicides. Often they mean the slow erosion of daily security. Car break-ins at the Wolfchase Galleria parking lot. Catalytic converter theft in Raleigh. Packages disappearing from the porch in Cordova.
This is the kind of crime that doesn’t make the evening news unless there’s doorbell camera footage dramatic enough to go viral. It’s also the kind of crime that changes behavior. People stop ordering online. They rearrange work schedules to be home for deliveries. They install cameras and motion lights and package lockers and steel boxes on their porches.
In a city that has spent most of 2022 grappling with violent crime, it might seem trivial to focus on stolen Amazon boxes. It isn’t. Every theft erodes trust. Every unresolved police report tells a resident that they’re on their own. Every Ring video shared on Nextdoor is a small advertisement for the idea that Memphis can’t protect its people.
Practical Steps for This Week
If you’re reading this and you still have holiday deliveries coming, here’s what I’d do right now:
Pick one: Amazon Locker, FedEx Hold, or UPS Access Point. Redirect anything worth more than $50 to a secure pickup location. It takes two minutes to change the delivery address.
If you’re staying with home delivery, coordinate with a neighbor. Trade phone numbers. Text each other when packages arrive. Grab each other’s boxes. This costs nothing and it works.
Check your doorbell camera batteries. Make sure the motion sensitivity is set high enough to catch someone walking up the driveway, not just standing on the porch. If you don’t have a camera and you’re in a high-theft area, a basic Ring Video Doorbell is around $100. It won’t stop a determined thief. It will give you footage and it will deter the casual ones.
Finally, report every theft. Even if you know MPD won’t send a detective. The data matters. When community leaders and city council members talk about resource allocation, they look at reported crime numbers. If nobody reports porch theft, the official numbers say it’s not a problem.
Memphis deserves better than a city where you have to plan your life around whether someone’s going to steal your kid’s Christmas present off the porch. We’re not there yet.