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Would-be thieves planning on stealing packages from front porches in Daybreak might be in for a surprise: some of them, now, are decoys.

Some residents of the South Jordan community, made up of 4,000 homes, said it has a reputation for being a popular target for package thieves, said resident Jeff Stay. So Stay, who receives a lot of deliveries at his home because of his job, shared an idea on the Daybreak Facebook community page: put empty boxes on as many porches as possible to deter the thieves.

Stay said Monday he hoped that thieves "would see so many boxes that they would be completely overwhelmed and head elsewhere, they would give up."

The concept took off. Stay doesn't have an exact figure for how many of his neighbors are participating, but of the 100 to 150 comments on his post, most of those were from people saying they wanted to try this, he said.

People even took Stay's idea and made it their own, putting useless or used items in the boxes "just for shock value," Stay said. The thief would open the package, only to find "some old clothes, or whatever the case may be."

Kroger Menzer, who has lived in Daybreak since the community was first built, said that he and his neighbors aren't doing this to catch or confront thieves.

"If 100 houses in Daybreak, or 200 houses in Daybreak, all have boxes on their front porch," thieves won't want to waste their time figuring out which ones are real, Kroger said. He added that "all of the police in South Jordan do a great job here. There's always a strong presence. We're just doing this because they can't be everywhere."

Twitter: @MikeyPanda