Didn't receive your e-commerce package yet? It might have been stolen in Los Angeles

Thieves have found out new and innovative ways to bake their bread often, in one such case, thieves are looting unattended freight trains in the USA taking what they want leaving behind empty boxes on the tracks creating a mess.

The modus operandi of the thieves is simple, to wait for the long freight trains carrying e-commerce orders and parcels to stop, climb on them, and cut open the coaches with bolt cutters when immobile to start the loot. They take away what they want and deem profitable for resale, leaving behind empty packages and unwanted products on the rail tracks creating a mess.

They target the trains in a particular spot where the trains slow down and stop before entering the central warehouse in downtown part of LA. The spot is not under the jurisdiction of the LA police but is managed by private guards of UPS courier service who are in vain to stop these thefts. The packages are from online retailers like Amazon and the loss is estimated to be about 5 million dollars, not taking into account the losses faced by the customers.

The thieves take away what they deem profitable to resale in trucks and vans leaving behind products like furniture, Covid test kits and empty boxes on the tracks, some of the parcels may never reach their intended destination. According to a letter by the freight operator union pacific to the LA police on an average 90 containers/coaches are looted per day, with a sharp increase in thefts in the recent months.

Viral videos and images have emerged of trains running through tracks strewn with empty packages and products with the doors of the container coaches wide open and swinging as the trains move. These viral images have emboldened white supremacists to affirm their confirmation bias for India. Lauren Flayer, a US journalist working in American quasi-autonomous media outlet National Public Radio's (NPR's) invited wrath of netizens for her racist and bigotry fuelled remarks. In a tweet she said “At first glance, I thought this was India," with an attached image of the same viral videos in which trains were passing through tracks littered with opened packages in her tweet.