What is vandalism and mail?
Answers
Vandalism: Deliberate damage to something.
Mail: Letters and parcels sent by post.
Answer:
if you live in an urban or suburban area you have had to deal with mailbox vandalism of some type. People who live in rural areas suffer even more damage in many cases because the mailbox is usually located a good distance from the home and there aren't many neighbors around to keep a watchful eye.
I guess even the fact that tampering with or damaging a mailbox is a federal crime doesn't stop some people from destroying them. I have a neighbor who lives on the corner of a main road in our subdivision whose mailbox has been destroyed several times in as many months!
So what can you do to protect against mailbox vandalism? Well, you could sit on your front porch with a shotgun. No, not very realistic is it? You could mount a surveillance camera on your property so you could at least identify the culprits. Prices on surveillance systems have come down quite a bit these days.
Another thing that I have seen that works very well is to invest in a better mailbox. It is the cheap galvanized or aluminum mailboxes that I have seen targeted by vandals. Why? Because they are easier to destroy. Most of these vandals are teenagers out joyriding and looking for something destructive to do. They ride down the rode with the passenger hanging out the window with a baseball bat and when they come up on a weak looking mailbox they give it a good whack. You won't see them hitting a brick mailbox with a bat, nor will you see them take a shot at a sturdy, solid steel mailbox.
If you own your home it just makes sense to invest in a better mailbox to ward off would be vandals and to protect your mail. There are even new high tech mailboxes that allow the postal carrier to drop your mail in a slot but the mail can only be retrieved via an electronic keypad. This helps prevent another kind of vandalism as well as identity theft