Update: posted wrong story: One of the new Canada Post community mailboxes in Repentigny was vandalized early Saturday morning.
A photo posted on Facebook shows a box on Lavigne St. with black paint thrown on it.
The new mailbox has been in place for less than one month.
“Whether it is community mailboxes, street letterboxes (red boxes) or relay boxes (grey ones), these things do happen unfortunately” said Canada Post spokesperson Anick Losier. “I can tell you they are rather rare occasions, thankfully, but ones where we have a process to rectify immediately.”
In the picture some doors are untouched while a small number of boxes are completely covered with paint.
“Upon notification of the vandalism in Repentigny, we dispatched our crew to have it cleaned” said Losier.
Update: posted wrong story: Thieves pried open a community mail box in West Kelowna Friday night, accessing several people’s personal information.
Cst. Hall with West Kelowna RCMP said there have been at least 12 similar incidents in the Central Okanagan in the past three weeks.
West Kelowna residents found opened mail scattered on the ground nearby Saturday morning.
“The main door was pried open which gives access to all mailboxes at once,” Hall said. “Particularly when these community mailboxes are in secluded or rural areas, people see them as opportunities.”
Hall said with the proliferation of online shopping, mail theft is becoming increasingly common.
They are also difficult crimes to investigate forensically since so many members of the public access the boxes.
“Unless we can pinpoint an area that the general public doesn’t normally have access to, as far as finger printing, it’s a nightmare.”