Seafood thieves strike again: Pallets of crab worth $42,000 stolen in South Philly

In a predawn heist, a crew of six thieves stole three large pallets of crabmeat worth $42,000 from a tractor-trailer in South Philadelphia early Wednesday, police said, the latest in a rash of cargo thefts across the city.

Officers responded to a report of a theft from the back of a tractor-trailer on the 600 block of Packer Avenue around 3:30 a.m., police said. The 49-year-old truck driver said he was sleeping inside the truck when he felt movement coming from the back of the tractor-trailer.

When he went to check what was happening, the driver told police, he saw six men stealing boxes of crabmeat from the truck. After loading the stolen seafood into three different cars — a white van, a burgundy SUV, and a gray car — the crew split up and fled toward Oregon Avenue, said Police Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore.

Wednesday’s theft of thousands of pounds of crab was not the first seafood heist in the city in recent months.

In April, after attacking a truck driver who was awakened by an alarm signaling a theft, a crew of thieves stole about $30,000 worth of snow crab, police said. The truck driver had been dozing in a Walmart parking lot when about a dozen thieves broke into the truck, assaulted the man, and stole boxes of crab.

And in October, thieves stole about $73,000 worth of crab clusters from a truck on the 1800 block of Germantown Avenue, police said. Officers responded to reports of a theft about 1:45 a.m. on Oct. 5 and found that 184 cases of crab clusters had been hauled from the back of a tractor-trailer.

Police continue to investigate the crimes and no arrests have been made, said Vanore.

Cargo thefts have been on the rise in Philadelphia over the last year, he said, with 110 this year alone. Such thefts can be elusive, and police have made only a dozen arrests in such cases in the last year, he said.

Most of the thefts — which range from stolen appliances and electronics to food and alcohol — are generally concentrated in Northeast Philadelphia and South Philadelphia neighborhoods with warehouses where tractor-trailers load and unload cargo, he said.

In some cases, thieves may be getting tipped off to valuable deliveries, Vanore said, but many of the thefts are crimes of opportunity, with crews grabbing whatever they can get.

“I don’t think they’re picky,” he said. “I think they’re taking whatever they can.”