@missleman.
A friend had a similar experience living on a corner lot. The same people would just drive accross his lawn, spin their tires and tear up his grass. There was a steel boundary maker that was well marked for pedestrians above the area nearer the road. He just set a large strategically place rock on his property in the area where the cars went through. Just two days later, while avoiding the rock, the offending driver tore his oil pan and left 5 quarts of oil on the side of the road after running over the boundary marker. He was some upset for having run over the stake…twenty feet off the road. My neighbor just smiled during his rant. When he finished, he just politely offered to call a tow truck for the offender. No more damage ever occurred again.
@Bing
I no longer use a mailbox for that exact reason. A lady blasted it one day during a storm while we were at work and we never recovered important pieces of mail until what was left that spring. Fortunatly the post office is on the way to work now.
If the cops don’t like you calling in a property damage complaint, especially one like this where it very likely involved a drunk driver, then the cops need to be fired.
Post a pic of the mirror, OP.
As for the mailbox being federal property myth/nonmyth, you guys are both right. Yes, the law says they’re federal property. But in practice, they’re not because the homeowner has to replace their mailbox when it gets damaged. If they were federal property in actual practice, then the government would replace them.
A mailbox being “considered” federal property for the purpose of regulating its use does not make it legally federal property in any common sense meaning of ownership (purchase, repair, etc.).
"A mailbox being "considered" federal property for the purpose of regulating its use does not make it legally federal property in any common sense meaning of ownership (purchase, repair, etc.)."
+1
The two reasons that they are…technically…federal property are…to prevent objects being placed therein that were not delivered by The USPS…and to discourage vandalism or theft.
I have used the first one to get local nuisance establishments to stop putting their flyers in my mailbox. “You don’t REALLY want me to file a complaint against you with the local postmaster, do you?”, has effectively ended the blizzard of junk flyers in my mailbox.
If we could enforce that…our town would go bankrupt because of all the mailboxes destroyed by the plow drivers this past winter.
In my town, they will replace the mailbox & post w/in 3 days if one of their plows has destroyed it. Of course, they install the cheapest sheet-steel boxes, so the usual practice in my neighborhood is to allow them to put in the new post and box, and then to immediately remove the crappy box and replace it with a good-quality box.
As for the mailbox being federal property myth/nonmyth, you guys are both right. Yes, the law says they're federal property. But in practice, they're not because the homeowner has to replace their mailbox when it gets damaged. If they were federal property in actual practice, then the government would replace them.
Oh, I freely admit it’s a bit of a technicality. Like ROW/easement, it’s where ‘ownership’ starts getting odd and mushy.
The two reasons that they are...technically...federal property are...to prevent objects being placed therein that were not delivered by The USPS
That’s the exact point I was citing when explaining WHY they were USPS property: the legal reason why you can’t just stuff fliers in 'em.
More to OP’s point: A box (that you have to pay for and provide, despite not owning it) costs…$30-50, plus an hour or so of assembly, right? What sort of “make whole” action are you going to take that costs you less and/or takes up less of your time?
You’re entering “cutting off nose to spite face” territory. The most direct route between where you are, and where you want to be, involves buying and assembling a new mailbox.
You're entering "cutting off nose to spite face" territory.
My mom lives alone. One night a number of years ago her neighbor came over and asked if she was OK. She didn’t know what he was talking about until he took her outside and showed her the 8 foot pine tree that she’d had planted 12 years previously. It was snapped off at the base and lying against her house. Her mailbox was down too. She lives on a large piece of property, and the tree is probably 50 feet in from the road. The tire tracks showed that had the tree not been there, he’d have crashed into her garage. The layout means he had managed to turn at about a 75 degree angle to the road between the mailbox and the tree.
She called the cops to report a property damage incident. They came out and immediately suspected who had done it - a guy who lived in her neighborhood who, turns out, was notorious for driving drunk.
They camped outside of his house and the next morning when he headed out to work, with tree branches still stuck in his truck’s grille and two big dents in his bumper, they pulled him over and gave him a breathalyzer.
He was still drunk.
She wasn’t worried about the expense of replacing the tree or the mailbox - she has more than enough money to never have to worry about buying pretty much anything, ever. But she didn’t want drunk idiots weaving down the street and possibly killing someone, so she was just fine when he was made to pay for her damages and then tossed in jail.
That’s what can come of reporting property damage when people hit things on your property that no sober person would ever hit unless they were having a stroke. As such, reporting these incidents is important - it might just get a dangerous idiot off the road, at least for awhile.
I would suspect that the person who owns the hit and run car with a missing mirror has found a replacement mirror on eBay and has now adopted the Alfred E. Neuman “What? Me worry?” defense.
As to mailboxes I would suspect that the resident is the one liable in every phase for the physical box itself and the USPS is the one calling the shots only on the acts of tampering and vandalism.
There’s an upside to this. Better to run over the flowers than the gardener…
18 U.S. Code § 1705 - Destruction of letter boxes or mail
Whoever willfully or maliciously injures, tears down or destroys any letter box or other receptacle intended or used for the receipt or delivery of mail on any mail route, or breaks open the same or willfully or maliciously injures, defaces or destroys any mail deposited therein, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
^Cause you’re not looking at the right place. My quoted text was taken DIRECTLY from the US Postal Inspection Service’s website; the “ownership” was their writing, not mine.
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.
Look: you (rudely) accused me of spreading “urban myths” while (foolishly) failing to do Due Diligence prior to making your accusation. You were put in your place. The wisest move, at this point, is to put the shovel down and stop digging in deeper!
P.S. How do I select billboard-sized font? Perhaps then @insultful might actually SEE the bolded text…
All I know is you sure don’t want to mess around with the Postmaster. Those folks have no sense of humor at all. And if they tell you to clear the snow from in front of the mail box or they won’t deliver your mail, you had better do it. Nice folks but they take the mail seriously.
@Vitol your photo compounds what I thought. Very few folks except drivers who need help install blind spot mirrors except folks who really need the aid(elderly or extremely safety conscious). Likely a elderly person hit your box and may not have realized it and considering someone mentioned an Elantra(small car). I watched an elderly person break a mirror off her car and scrape a parked car with no realization of it happening. A person flagged her down (not easy) and she was a tad confused.
My ex neighbor who visits regularly really is old has these mirrors when on the car and all sorts of dents/scrapes as he really can’t drive well.
Thanks to everyone for their help and input. I know I might not get justice or compensation, but sometimes it’s good to let someone know that you know.
"The cops need to be fired"
I am sure you don’t mean that explicitly but in general…
What calls the police department answers is at the discrimination of the philosophy of the police department in general and not individual police. If you have a relative who does not receive satisfaction in a case like this, go to the town office and arrange a meeting with the chief of police, not individual police officers. If you don’t get satisfaction, go to the police chief’s boss, the town officials, selectmen, board or mayor. You would do this for any employee in any situation you feel you are being mistreated in.
While taking my wife on a Home Health visit during bad weather I tried to park at a house She had to visit,There was an old decripit flower planter you couldnt see about 8" tall,when I pulled up to get out of the road I couldnt see it and scraped over it.the daughter and wife were ready to attack me(it was an honest mistake) if the daughter had left a little room to park,there wouldnt have been a problem anyway.people need to accomadate people that are taking care of them,if they would have jumped me they would have got it back in scads.
I dont mind people damaging my property as long as they are person enough to own up to it.If a snow plow damages something around here,nobody seems to care. I finally had to start putting barriers up along a rightway,that crosses my little pencil scratch of land,the cheapskate neighbors would sooner encroach on my grass then pay for driveway repairs and believe Me some of them fly up and down that little dirt strip.If I damge someone elses property I make a reasonable effort to recompense-My advice just let it go,it was probaly an accident,no malicious intent intended.
"The cops need to be fired" / I am sure you don't mean that explicitly
Actually I do. Any cop that “is not happy” and shows it when someone reports a crime to him needs to be fired. Dunno about your state, but in my state there are hundreds of fully qualified, certified applicants who would absolutely love to be a cop but who can’t get a job because the positions aren’t available.
Around here the cops also tell you to call 911 any time you see something that you think isn’t right. Even if it’s just some strange dude selling window replacements who knocks on your door and you get a weird vibe off him, they want you to call 911 and a cop will come out and make sure he’s licensed to peddle and not casing houses for later burglaries.
If a law enforcement officer is going to fuss at citizens for asking them to enforce the law, especially when it involves a clearly dangerous situation as in OP’s case (if you’re so impaired that you hit a mailbox, then you’re impaired enough to hit a person), then that officer should be replaced by someone more willing to do the job.
If the entire department’s philosophy is “fuss at people who call us on property damage crimes” then the first one out the door needs to be the chief, and he/she needs to be replaced by someone who will enforce a department-wide change in philosophy.
My mother lives in a town with a PD that has a BS philosophy like that. They’ve flat out told their residents that if someone isn’t being robbed, raped, hurt, or killed, don’t call them because they won’t come out. She had her RV broken into, a bunch of crap stolen out of it, and 80 gallons of gas siphoned out of the tank, and they told her not to waste their time. All those cops do all day is sit behind bushes on the highway conducting traffic stops for 5 over in a 55. The entire department needs a house cleaning starting with the chief, because they aren’t cops, they’re gold miners.
Mailboxes are not property of the government. They are the homeowners property. Title 18, United States Code, Section 1705 deals with federal law regarding willfully damaging a person’s mailbox.
If someone damages your mailbox accidentally, as may be the case in the OP, the federal law would not apply.
