Unchecked Crime Makes the Supply Chain Crisis Even Worse | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the John Locke Foundation. The author of this post is Donna Martinez.

    You've been waiting and waiting for the lamp you ordered to arrive at your home, but still nothing. You've likely chalked it up to Biden's economy and a disrupted supply chain. But it could be something else, something insidious: crime and criminals. In a story featuring a stunning photo, the Los Angeles Times reports what is happening, likening it to "the days of horseback-riding bandits."

    The scene was a stretch of railroad tracks in Lincoln Heights on Saturday: a blizzard of torn plastic wrappers, cardboard boxes and paper packaging attesting to a wave of rail car thievery that officials say has been on the rise in recent months.

    Several scavengers picked through the debris, hoping to find electronics, clothes or whatever valuables thieves left behind.

    "Everything comes on the train - cellphones, Louis Vuitton purses, designer clothes, toys, lawnmowers, power equipment, power tools," said a 37-year-old man who declined to give his name. He said he comes to the tracks regularly and once found a Louis Vuitton purse and a robotic arm worth five figures: "We find things here and there, make some money off of it."

    It's not just rail cars that thieves are targeting. It's delivery trucks as well. Watch the CEO of UPS, Carol Tome, explain to CNBC's Squawk Box what happened to a UPS driver.

   

"He was stopped at gunpoint. He was zip-tied, thrown into the back of his feeder car and they took the packages."@UPS CEO @CarolBTome on the growing problem of package theft. $UPS pic.twitter.com/RWX91fJot9

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) January 14, 2022

    Where are the cops? Why isn't President Biden holding public meetings with law enforcement and prosecutors to denounce this blatant crime and send a warning to the thieves?