More than 100 mailboxes
damaged in the Clear Lake area

Mailbox baseball may be fun for drunken rowdies after the bars close, but it has no fans in Clear Lake.

The box bashers have smashed more than 100 mailboxes in the Clear Lake area at the last count by Skagit County sheriff’s deputies. If the miscreants are ever caught they could face a federal criminal charge that carries a potential $250,000 fine and a prison term of up to three years.

The “game” involves a bat-wielding passenger in a vehicle that passes a rural mailbox close enough for the slugger to lean out and take a swing.

A recent game was no swing and miss as the culprits hit a grand slam off Burl Fox’s and his neighbors’ mailboxes and solar-powered lights.

Fox, who has lived off of Beaver Lake Road in Clear Lake since 1936, said the game of mailbox baseball didn’t become popular in the area until the 1980s.

“The last 30 years, you can’t keep a decent box up,” he said.

One of his neighbors recently installed the three mailboxes along with two solar-powered lights. The work was done on a Monday and the mailboxes were dented and the lights completely demolished by Wednesday, Fox said.

“Whoever does it I’d say is a coward,” he said.

While Fox said he didn’t even bother reporting the incident to the sheriff’s office, many others in the Clear Lake area have reported a recent rash of mailboxing.

Skagit County Sheriff’s Chief Criminal Deputy Will Reichardt said in June a deputy tallied more than 80 mailboxes in the area with damage.

“I would estimate that for every call we receive from a victim advising their mailbox was damaged, there are probably 10 more people who didn’t call it in,” Reichardt said. “Since we have gotten dozens of calls you can do the math. … we have lots of victims.”

Drive down Beaver Lake Road and it’s easy to witness recent at-bats. There are also many new mailboxes — many of them likely replacing boxes demolished by the batting vandals.

D.R. Monty, postmaster of the Mount Vernon Post Office, said he’d read about the vandalism in the sheriff’s blotter but hasn’t had a single report. The Mount Vernon Post Office handles mail for rural routes south of Clear Lake.

Monty said folks can do a number of things to help deter vandals.

The biggest deterrent seems to be visibility, Monty said.

“Sometimes that’s the easiest thing to do,” he said.

Clearing away brush or moving the mailbox near a residence can prevent damage because juveniles are often afraid of getting caught if they’re seen by someone, Monty said.

“Or they can put up mailboxes you couldn’t unearth with a Sherman tank,” he said.

Cluster mailboxes often help, Monty added, but as with Fox’s incident sometimes it doesn’t.

For Fox, it all comes down to letting youths who do the damage know it puts folks in a bind.

Reichardt said people in the area are tired of having to replace their mailboxes.

“Mailbox baseball may seem like just juvenile hijinks but it’s not,” Reichardt said. “Yes, there are a lot more serious problems we are focused on but if you have been a repeat victim it can become very annoying and costly.   
  
“Sometimes something like this can cause people to reach a breaking point. I recall a case west of Mount Vernon several years ago where kids were throwing pumpkins at mailboxes from a moving car. A homeowner ended up taking a shot at them with a rifle.”

While Fox wouldn’t react that extremely, he did say if he had his way, those responsible would have to stand on the side of the road near the mailboxes with a sign saying what they did.

If they had to do that just once, Fox said, they wouldn’t ever want to play this type of baseball again.

He said when he was a teenager, most youngsters didn’t have a car at their disposal to wreak this type of damage.

But even if they had, they wouldn’t have had the time.

“We had to work,” he said. “We didn’t destroy things.”

Tips to prevent mailbox vandalism

Rural area mailboxes are vulnerable to vandalism because they are usually isolated, located on public thoroughfares and frequently not visible to the box owners from their homes. City residential mailboxes are vandalized to a lesser degree.

Mailboxes are considered federal property, and federal law (Title 18, United States Code, Section 1705), makes it a crime to vandalize them (or to injure, deface or destroy any mail deposited in them). Violators can be fined up to $250,000, or imprisoned for up to three years, for each act of vandalism.
Postal Inspectors recommend these actions to protect mailboxes and any mail that may be inside it:

• Immediately report theft, tampering or destruction of mail or mailboxes to the local postmaster. Residents will be asked to complete PS Form 1510, Mail Loss and Rifling Report, or PS Form 2016, Mail Theft and Vandalism Complaint. The forms help the Postal Inspection Service determine whether the problem is isolated, or one frequently experienced in the area.

• Obtain Label 33 from the Postal Inspection Service and affix it to mailboxes. The sticker warns that willful damage to mailboxes and theft of mail are crimes.

• Keep mailboxes in good repair, and make sure they are properly installed. This may help prevent theft of the mailbox itself.

Call the Postal Inspection Service at 877-876-2455 or visit https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/ to report mailbox vandalism.

• Source: U.S. Postal Service.