UPS stops deliveries to Juniper Acres, citing safety concerns

UPS Inc. has stopped delivering packages to Juniper Acres, a rural community in Central Oregon, over “safety concerns.” Instead, they are being dropped off at the Alfalfa Store.

Juniper Acres is an off-the-grid community east of Bend. Up until a few days ago, UPS had been delivering packages there.

But on Friday, the company gave the following statement to NewsChannel 21:

“UPS has made arrangements for residents in the Juniper Acres subdivision to pick up their packages at the Alfalfa Store, located at 26161 Willard Rd., because of safety concerns for our drivers. Juniper Acres residents also can request to pick up their deliveries at the UPS Customer Center in Bend.”

The manager of Alfalfa Store, Justin Green, said he sees both sides of the issue, but he said UPS didn’t explain its reasoning to him.

“They didn’t really say one way or another,” Green said. “Going out there at dark, sometimes they were kind of concerned because, previous years, the guy that retired a few years back did have a gun pulled on him. Understandable in a way, because those people are just trying to protect what they have. You see somebody strange coming up your driveway in the middle of the desert and you’re wondering, ‘OK, what’re they doing?'”

But Crook County Sheriff John Gautney said Juniper Acres is no more dangerous than the rest of the county.

If we thought that it was a dangerous situation, we would tell people it’s not safe to go in there, but we don’t have that in this situation. The calls that we have up there is like any other part of the county that we go on,” Gautney said.

Gautney also wanted to clarify that the sheriff’s office would never tell a private business where it could or could not conduct business.

“That was a business decision on UPS’s part, whether to go in there or not, and I think they based that decision on the fact that they told us some of their drivers have been threatened by firearms,” the sheriff said. “One driver had a dog sicced on him. That was not reported to us at the time or we would have investigated. So they made their business decision based on that.”

UPS said its drivers will be dropping off packages for Juniper Acres for residents at the Alfalfa Store indefinitely.