DAVENPORT, Fla. — A 27-year-old Amazon driver was arrested after being caught on camera stealing a package in Polk County days before Christmas.
The Polk County Sheriff's Office said Jose Campos, 27 of Kissimmee, was caught stealing a package from the front porch of a homeowner in the Watersong Resort development near Davenport on Dec. 19.
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According to the homeowner, his Amazon account had notified him that his package had been delivered, but when he got home there was no package by his door. He immediately pulled up his surveillance video, which showed Campos delivering the package he was expecting, taking a delivery confirmation photo and then walking away with the package.
"We were concerned that he was casing neighborhoods and probably stealing much more high-dollar items than soap," said Michael Pagano.
The Sheriff's Office initially thought it'd be easy to get "a dishonest employee off the road" for Amazon, but said when detectives contacted their logistics center Amazon employees would not cooperate.
Despite having video, pictures and information about the crime, the Sheriff's Office says it was told by multiple Amazon managers and even Amazon's loss prevention manager "that Amazon would not cooperate with law enforcement and identify their driver unless the Sheriff’s Office served a subpoena for their records at their corporate headquarters in Delaware."
Wanting to identify and catch Campos before more packages were stolen, the Sheriff's Office ran the tag of his delivery vehicle, which was provided by security at Watersong Resort. It led them to his girlfriend in Kissimmee, who told detectives that Campos uses the car to deliver packages for Amazon.
"The ability to be able to say that you worked with authorities to stop something like that, to me, would seem beneficial to the business," said Pagano. "They took an opposite approach which I still don’t understand and it is disappointing."
While interviewing Campos, he confirmed he was delivering for Amazon at the time, and confessed to it being him in the surveillance video stealing the package.
Campos was arrested and charged with burglary and theft.
“I’m not surprised by much anymore, but this lack of cooperation from Amazon floors me," Sheriff Grady Judd said. "All we needed was a name—they knew who committed this crime in Polk County, and they would not tell us without us serving legal process to their corporate headquarters in Delaware. This is just irresponsible on their part. They apparently don’t care about the ongoing safe and secure delivery of their packages to their customers and exposing other customers to burglary and theft. It is impossible to believe this was this guy’s only theft.”
A spokesperson with Amazon released the following statement:
“We work regularly and closely with law enforcement across the country and are working to understand what occurred here, to make it right and to reach out to Polk County Sheriff’s Office to apologize.”
