TACOMA, Wash. (WSVN) — Jaireme Barrow became fed up with porch pirates stealing packages from his front door. So he decided to invent a device that would scare thieves away and deter them from ever coming back.
“I got tired of all my packages coming up missing,” Barrow told Q13 Fox. “I’d be at work and I’d get home and they wouldn’t be on my front porch and I’d watch my surveillance and see someone running away with them.”
That prompted Barrow to invent the Blank Box. It’s an empty, booby-trapped package that is left by the front door, rigged with fishing wire and a 12-gauge shotgun blank.
“It’s just like any alarm system. It’s just a loud noise and it deters theft, but it just happens to be a 12-gauge blank in this case,” Barrow said.
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A year after he first came up with the idea, he says business is booming as he sells his invention online.
Barrow says his fellow neighbors support what he’s doing as well.
“It deters people from coming on their porches, too, cause, you know, they never know what they have on their porch is a a blank box or a legit package,” he said. “So my hope is it just makes people think twice about what they are doing.”
Police in Barrow’s town, however, warn that this type of scare tactic could backfire: if a thief gets injured by this kind of device, officers said the homeowner could be held liable for injuries.
Tacoma Police told Q13 Fox that it’s safer to file a police report and hand over surveillance video to law enforcement.
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