New York, Oct. 2018: Members of the US Postal inspection service respond to a suspicious package found at a post office. Image: Christopher Penler/Shutterstock.com
By: Frank Albergo, Postal Police Officers AssociationFor 50 years, Postal Police Officers (PPOs) — the unformed division of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) — protected the Postal Service’s most important assets; its employees and the mail — no matter location. PPOs had police authority to patrol anywhere connected with postal assets, whether at mail-processing facilities, public roads used to transport mail, or letter carrier routes prone to violent crime. In short, PPOs were—and still are—the most effective tool to prevent postal-related crime.
The best illustration of the effectiveness of PPOs in preventing postal-related crime was the Postal Police Letter Carrier Protection Program. For instance, in 2013, after a series of violent crimes targeting letter carriers in New Jersey and Puerto Rico, USPIS instituted a comprehensive intelligence-led policing program wherein PPOs were equipped with smart technology that could pinpoint the location of letter carriers in real time. PPOs were then strategically deployed using crime mapping to protect those letter carriers. The results were astounding—assaults and robberies of letter carriers plummeted by 88%.
The Postal Police Letter Carrier Protection Program was so successful that USPIS began an initiative to equip ALL postal police law-enforcement vehicles with intelligence-led policing technology so that PPOs could patrol letter carrier routes more effectively. USPIS records indicate that PPOs conducted well-over one hundred thousand off-property patrols to protect letter carriers and the mail in 2016 and 2017.
Despite the enormous success of postal police crime prevention patrols, in the summer of 2020, USPIS issued an internal memo referencing “postal police utilization” — whereby the Agency decreed that “Postal Police Officers may not exercise law enforcement authority in contexts unrelated to Postal Service premises.” In effect, the Postal Service banned all postal police street patrols designed to prevent mail theft and to protect letter carriers. In so doing, 50 years of postal police operational history was erased with a stroke of the pen.
The decision to bench the Postal Police Force has proven to be disastrous. Mail theft and violent attacks targeting letter carriers have exploded to the point that even the Postal Service itself announced it was “combating a crime wave.” Specifically, in its quarterly magazine, The Eagle, the Postal Service warned:
“Combating a Crime Wave: Over the past three years, the Postal Service has witnessed a significant rise in mail theft and crimes against postal employees. The evidence is striking. Reports of high-volume theft from mail receptacles rose from 20,574 reports in fiscal year 2019 to 38,535 reports in fiscal year 2022, an 87 percent increase. In a more concerning trend, letter carrier robberies in the same period grew more than sixfold, from 64 cases in fiscal year 2019 to 412 in fiscal year 2022. Check fraud is big business. According to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, reports of check fraud in 2022 were nearly double the 2021 rate, which was already markedly higher than 2020. Annual losses attributed to check fraud are now valued in the billions of dollars.”
In response, Congress has introduced a number of bipartisan bills to stem the unprecedented tidal wave of postal-related crime which is fueled by check fraud and identity theft. The most important of these bills are the Postal Police Reform Act and the Protect Our Letter Carriers Act.
The Postal Police Reform Act (S. 3356) was introduced by Senators Durbin and Collins, along with 10 original cosponsors. This bipartisan legislation would restore the policing powers of PPOs so that they could once again protect letter carriers and prevent mail theft. Representatives Garbarino and Pascrell introduced a House version of the Postal Police Reform Act (H.R. 3005) which currently has 76 cosponsors. It too would restore postal police jurisdictional authority.
The Protect Our Letter Carriers Act (H.R. 7629) was introduced by Representatives Fitzpatrick and Landsman. This bipartisan legislation would provide $7 billion in funding to replace the antiquated USPS arrow key locking system with a new state-of-art electronic version; ensure that the Department of Justice appropriately prosecutes crimes committed against letter carriers and amend sentencing guidelines for such crimes.
Rep. Fitzpatrick’s press release for the bill said, “In building on the important work of supporting Postal Police Officers and legislative efforts to get our postal police back in their communities, this legislation will play a meaningful role in hardening targets like mailboxes and electronic arrow keys.”
Congressman Fitzpatrick, a former FBI agent and Federal Prosecutor, understands a very important point. Although the Protect Our Letter Carriers Act is critical legislation that will go a long way to protect letter carriers (hence the name) it is very unlikely to stop mail theft as criminals are sure to find other ways to exploit the Postal Service and steal mail if PPOs remain benched.
Similar to when the Postal Service hardened blue collection boxes to combat mailbox fishing, which ultimately led to more mail theft as criminals simply began to rob letter carriers for Arrow keys, if the Postal Service installs electronic locking systems on all blue collection boxes—while simultaneously keeping PPOs benched—then expect to see a significant rise in cluster box break-ins, USPS vehicle break-ins, letter carrier push-cart theft, USPS dock theft and perhaps even an uptick in post office robberies and burglaries.
The difference between Postal Police Officers and electronic locking systems is that PPOs stop ALL forms of mail theft, not just a specific type. As the Department of Justice warned, “Technological innovation has the potential to dramatically improve both the efficiency and the effectiveness of the criminal justice system; but it also has the potential to divert critical resources away from more traditional crime prevention and police strategies that may actually make us safer, without the negative side effects.”
Regrettably, no amount of legislation will suffice until Congress forces the Inspection Service to get its act together. According to USPIS Annual Reports, while mail theft has skyrocketed, USPIS mail-theft arrests have plummeted by 49% and USPIS mail-theft convictions have decreased by 43% from Fiscal Years 2018 to 2022.
Even worse, in September of 2023, the USPS Office of Inspector General (OIG) evaluated the Postal Service’s response to mail theft. The OIG did not review Postal Police operations.
The OIG found that:
USPIS does not have deployment timelines with actionable milestones for mail theft prevention and letter carrier protection initiatives.
USPIS lacks accountability for USPS arrow keys, which are often the target in letter carrier robberies.
USPIS has not finalized a mail theft strategy.
USPIS has not assessed and assigned resources nationally to address mail theft.
USPIS does not have specialized training in the investigation of mail theft.
USPIS assigned only 37% of postal inspectors to work mail theft cases in FY2022.
USPIS does not even know the purpose of its Mail Theft Analytics Program and only devotes “minuscule fraction” of its overall analytics contract to mail theft.
Of course, all of the above is in addition to benching the Postal Police Force during an unprecedented postal crime wave.
So how has Postal Inspection Service responded to the explosion in mail theft and letter carrier robberies? Instead of utilizing PPOs to prevent mail theft and protect letter carriers, the Inspection Service now conducts “SURGE operations” where postal inspectors (who are the criminal investigators of USPIS) fly across the Country to cities where there are already PPOs. These out-of-town postal inspectors then conduct after-the-fact investigations which result in very few arrests. Evidently, USPIS would rather investigate crime than prevent it. Indeed, according to the OIG:
“SURGE operations were conducted over a two-week period in Chicago, IL, in May 2023, and Oakland, CA, in June 2023. […] During the SURGE operations, the divisions received a temporary influx of 65 personnel resources to enhance their ongoing activities to address carrier robbery investigations and mail theft, made three federal arrests, and recovered 277 pieces of stolen mail.
SURGE operations are obviously a waste of time and money. If you should ask USPIS why it prefers SURGE operations over postal police crime prevention patrols—this is their response:
“Questions were raised about whether these patrols conformed to the law and whether they were effective. Postal Inspection Service leadership began to comprehensively curtail the use of PPOs for law enforcement outside the immediate environs of Postal Service real property. The Inspection Service already engages in off-site protection of the mail and our letter carriers. Postal inspectors, not PPOs, regularly conduct surveillance and appropriate enforcement actions in areas where high numbers of letter carrier robberies and mail thefts have been reported.”
At this point, USPIS will say anything to defend its inane decision to bench the Postal Police Force.
To make matters worse, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is apparently buying what the Inspection Service is selling. On March 12, 2024, Mr. DeJoy issued a statement regarding a 30-day sentence for a criminal involved in the armed robbery of a letter carrier, saying it “sends a concerning message of encouragement to our nation’s criminals and a message of disregard to our loyal public servants, who deserve better protection and reassurance that the law will take crimes against them seriously.”
Perhaps Mr. DeJoy should ask himself: What sort of message is sent when the Postal Service pays for a highly-trained uniformed Postal Police Force which it refuses to utilize to stop the violent attacks on letter carriers and the plague of mail theft currently spreading across America.
The Postal Service, perhaps America’s most beloved federal institution, is in peril. Postal workers are being attacked and mail is being stolen at unprecedented levels. Make no mistake, despite what it may claim, the Postal Inspection Service is not doing nearly enough to stop it. Indeed, “Project Safe Delivery” may be the first anti-crime strategy in the history of American law enforcement that does not include the utilization of uniformed police officers.
Congress must hold the Postal Inspection Service accountable and pass the Postal Police Reform Act and the Protect Our Letter Carriers Act. If the Postal Inspection Service is left to its own devices, the public trust in the Postal Service and the sanctity of the mail will be nothing more than distant memories.
Frank Albergo is the current national president of the Postal Police Officers Association (PPOA). The PPOA represents uniformed police officers employed by the United States Postal Inspection Service.
*The views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not imply endorsement by FEDweek.
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