David WilliamsApparently it’s open season on mail carriers and postal customers. Postal carrier robberies increased by 30% to 643 in 2023, and robberies resulting in injuries doubled to 61. The San Francisco Bay area has been hit especially hard with three armed robberies of carriers in March. A Las Vegas-area mail carrier was maced and robbed while making deliveries on March 11. On March 13, a mail carrier had his arrow key (the key that allows access to mailbox clusters and collection boxes) stolen from him while making his final delivery of the day.
Some progress has been made by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) in cracking down on mail crime. There have been more than 1,200 arrests since the launch of Project Safe Delivery in May 2023, and 40,000 collection boxes and receptacles have been secured. But, far more needs to be done to make mail carriers and consumers feel safe again. Delivering the mail should not be a harrowing, life-threatening ordeal.
One simple solution to increasing mail carrier safety is to bolster police presence on mail carriers’ routes. The USPIS has about 700 police officers, and strategically deploying them to hot-spot areas can go a long way toward addressing crime. Initial postal police deployments to troubled cities such as Chicago have already yielded promising results. Unfortunately, postal police deployments are limited by bizarre USPS interpretations of the law. During a May 17, 2023, House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee hearing, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin, D-Md., asked Postmaster General Louis DeJoy whether the USPS has “continued to prevent Postal Police Officers from doing their jobs … by traveling to wherever the problem is taking place?”
DeJoy responded by invoking 18 U.S.C. § 3061, which states that the USPS, “may employ police officers for duty in connection with the protection of property owned or occupied by the Postal Service or under the charge and control of the Postal Service, and persons on that property, including duty in areas outside the property to the extent necessary to protect the property and persons on the property.”
USPS leadership has taken the position that postal property is limited to physical and agency-operated infrastructure such as post offices, but this narrow reading of the law makes little sense. Because the USPS claims a monopoly over what goes inside of mailboxes, it is reasonable to infer that the agency effectively controls that property even if mailboxes are privately owned. Furthermore, if mailboxes meet the definition of protectable property under the law, postal police are surely obligated to patrol mail carriers’ delivery routes.
The Postal Police Officers Association (PPOA) has been fighting the USPS to embrace a wider role of postal police jurisdiction, and the issue may soon be resolved. In February, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia punted the issue to a third-party arbitrator to “hash out the parties’ differences.” Fortunately, the arbitrator overseeing the case already ruled in 2023 that the postal police have broad jurisdictional bounds. A similar ruling this time around would enable the postal police to do their jobs and safeguard the carrier community.
Congress has also leapt into the fray with proposed legislation that would steer taxpayer dollars toward securing routes and collection boxes. Reps. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., recently introduced the Protect Our Letter Carriers Act (H.R. 7629), which would give the USPS $1.4 billion per year to install higher-security collection boxes and distribute electronic keys to mail carriers.
The truth is that the agency does not require taxpayer dollars to fund this needed effort. The USPIS has a budget of roughly $500 million per year, but uses that money to spy on Americans and open up investigations unrelated to postal security. Lawmakers should urge the USPS and USPIS to spend their money on fighting crime instead of squandering it on dubious operations. It’s time for America’s mail carrier to delivery safety and security to workers and consumers.
David Williams is the president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
When I was younger, “Going Postal” meant that the PO workers (in the PO’s) had to watch their backs; otherwise other postal employees might kill them.
Now we find out that customers are robbing the postal employees and injuring them. So today they have to look both ways when crossing the street; and they also have to look over their shoulder-to make sure that those going postal aren’t going to go postal on them.
This is considered “progress”?
I have a feeling that the ones robbing and injuring postal employees learned how to rob the in this way by being involved in ballot fraud in the 2020 election. They either participated in it (and saw the holes in the integrity-net in the postal service), or knew someone who did these ballot infractions and taught them the tricks of the trade.