Video: Bold Bucktown Box Thief Caught In Broad Daylight

By Jim Bochnowski in News on May 11, 2015 8:30PM

Last Friday, Gene Pierson was working at the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Bucktown when he spotted a man walking off with $50 worth of boxes from a stranger's home during the middle of the day. Luckily for us, he had his cell phone running. and he took this video to share with the world.

In the video, Pierson confronts the man about the boxes he is carrying. The thief loudly asserts that he's simply making a delivery, even though he was pretty clearly spotted carrying them from a resident's front porch. Pierson catches the man's license plate number and then the video, sadly, ends.

The security camera footage from the Church shows the thief walking off from the home carrying boxes which, pretty clearly, are not his, no matter what he says.

Pierson has subsequently handed this information on to the police, which is conducting an investigation of the incident. But for Pierson, this was simply a matter of watching out for his own community. "While I was working I saw a gentleman walking down the street that looked very suspicious. I kept my eye on him," Pierson told ABC7 Chicago. "I live in the neighborhood. I work in the neighborhood and I care about the people around me. It's the right thing to do."

Bucktown Community President Steve Jensen told ABC7 that he is advocating for members of the community to keep an eye out for suspicious activity during normal working hours. "They know that a lot of the people in this neighborhood are at work, away from their homes and the opportunity is there for them to steal stuff either off the front steps or kick in the door and find whatever they can find within a minute."