Items including credit cards are being taken from mailboxes.

Sticky fingers are targeting island mailboxes and the post office and police need residents to help nab the culprits.

“It is definitely a problem and it’s just getting worse,” U.S. Postal Service station manager Steve Blakeslee said.

“There are a lot of high-dollar-amount thefts on the island,” Bainbridge Police Lt. Phil Hawkins said. “We’re a high-end target (and) we need absolutely all the eyes we can get out there in the community.”

Valuable items and anything that’s negotiable — such as checks — attract thieves, who know that Bainbridge has many home-based businesses, Hawkins said.

Pilfered credit card statements allow unscrupulous characters to charge items and have them sent to the cardholders’ residences. Then the thieves cruise by the homes and pick up the boxes.

“We’ve never really been able to catch anybody,” Winslow postal clerk Syd Cox said. “A neighborhood watch kind of thing would help.”

Thieves are pulling up in cars and emptying mailboxes in front of homes, he said. They rifle through the pile and discard what they don’t want.

“A lot of people have found their mail in the bushes down the block,” Cox said.

Homes are the primary target, not apartments, which often have locking boxes. A locking mailbox purchased at a hardware store would help home dwellers, too.

“We don’t need a key to deliver the mail,” Cox said. “We can put the mail in the slot and it is USPS approved.”

This is a good idea for people who are doing business out of their homes and getting a lot of checks, he added.

Locking boxes would alleviate “probably 99 percent of those thefts,” Hawkins said, adding another solution is using a post office box.

Residents who have regular mailboxes should pick up their mail as soon as possible.

“Almost everyone knows when the mail carrier comes,” Cox said. “Don’t wait until 7 o’clock to get your mail.”

Blakeslee also said residents should not leave outgoing mail in their mailbox with the flag up. Rather, they should bring it to the post office or put it in a drop box.

Islanders should try to get a glimpse of what people at mailboxes are doing and report suspicious activity to the police at 842-5211.

“Maybe if people know stealing mail is a federal offense, they’ll stop,” Cox said. “A couple of years ago, a middle-age resident with children in college got caught. She did do time.”

Mailbox thieves randomly move from one neighborhood to another.

“It’s very easy to do and the odds are very much in favor of the thief,” Hawkins said. “A lot of people drop off ads and flyers in mailboxes and it doesn’t raise suspicion.”

But residents should be more security minded and suspicious of anyone they don’t recognize on their street.

And they should remember there’s nothing seasonal about mailbox thievery — it occurs year-round.

“If at all possible, get a license number. It’s the one thing people and officers who are off-duty are more lax on. It’s even better than a description,” Hawkins said. “We can at least put the vehicle there and then put the people in the vehicle.”

The police department, he said, doesn’t mind getting a lot of false tips to get to the real ones.

“It never hurts to write down a number. This is such a target-rich area,” he said.