USPIS leadership has prioritized winning a labor dispute over protecting the mail and the workers who move it, writes the author. Image: PJ McDonnell/Shutterstock.com
By: Frank Albergo, Postal Police Officers Association“ The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists.” — Isaac Asimov
When the federal agency charged with protecting your mail denies that mail theft is a crisis — despite mountains of data showing otherwise — something is deeply wrong.
In 2010, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) reported just 2,251 high-volume mail theft attacks . These attacks involved criminals stealing massive quantities of mail from blue collection boxes, neighborhood cluster box units, apartment panels, and postal delivery vehicles.
By 2023, that number had exploded to 49,156 — a staggering 2,083% increase. In a single month, more high-volume attacks were recorded than in entire years just a decade earlier.
Confronted with this surge in postal crime, USPIS had a choice: respond with urgency — or deny the crisis altogether. USPIS chose denial.
The Denial Was Documented
Five years ago, internal USPIS data made one thing clear: mail theft was surging out of control. A recent CBS News investigation confirmed that USPIS logged 273,474 complaints in 2020 — more than quadruple the number reported in 2018. And yet, in the midst of the crisis, USPIS publicly downplayed the spike, dismissing its own statistics as unreliable.
A NBC News headline documented the denial: “Is mail theft surging in the U.S.? Postal Service Inspectors Don’t Know.” Specifically, in 2020 — NBC News obtained USPIS data through a Freedom of Information Act request which revealed a staggering 600% increase in mail theft complaints over just three years — from roughly 25,000 in 2017 to nearly 177,000 by August 2020. Yet when pressed to explain the surge, USPIS backpedaled, claimed its own data was unreliable, and denied that a mail theft crisis existed at all.
So instead of responding with urgency, USPIS deflected. Rather than admit a crisis, USPIS denied what its own data clearly revealed. Then, astonishingly, USPIS made matters worse. In August 2020, USPIS issued a directive banning Postal Police Officers (PPOs) from patrolling anywhere off postal real property. In effect, USPIS sidelined its most effective tool to combat mail theft — the Postal Police Force — during the worst postal crime wave in modern history.
No law required the decision.
No risk analysis justified it.
No oversight body recommended it.
No legitimate explanation was ever offered.
Project Safe Delivery: Rebranding Failure as Success
In May 2023, USPIS launched “Project Safe Delivery ,” a public damage control campaign aimed at addressing the very crisis it had long denied. USPIS highlights “ more than 2,400 arrests ” since the project’s inception . But when the numbers are parsed, USPIS is only averaging two mail theft arrests per state per month. Put another way, about one mail theft arrest per Postal Inspector per year — hardly a serious deterrence campaign.
Even if one generously assumes that all 2,400 arrests were made directly by USPIS which they weren’t — as Postal Inspectors routinely “claim” credit for arrests made by other agencies — the numbers still reflect a dramatic decline in effectiveness. In 2006, with Postal Police Officers still on patrol, USPIS made over 5,000 mail theft arrests . By 2018, that number dropped to about 2,500 mail theft arrests . And by 2023 — despite mail theft reaching historic highs — arrests had plummeted to just over 1,300 .
Meanwhile, the surge in stolen arrow keys — universal postal keys that unlock entire ZIP Codes’ worth of mailboxes — continues unabated. Key thefts rose by 150% from 1,374 in 2020 to 3,437 in 2024 , yet under Project Safe Delivery — only 183 keys were recovered , a dismal 5%. And even when a key is recovered, there’s no telling how many counterfeit copies were forged while it was in the hands of criminals.
USPIS also extols a 27% drop in letter carrier robberies as proof of progress — but without context, the number is deeply misleading. Since 2019, robberies have surged by an astonishing 781% . A modest dip from an all-time high isn’t a sign of success; it’s damage control, repackaged as a win.
USPIS somehow credits the slight dip in robberies to Project Safe Delivery. But the more credible — and far more troubling explanation is that criminal networks have simply adapted and evolved.
Why risk a violent robbery when you can: buy stolen or counterfeit arrow keys on the black market ; bribe or collude with compromised postal employees ; reverse-engineer keys from locks ; break into postal delivery vehicles ; and/or harvest mail from the millions of unprotected neighborhood cluster box units across America .
In short, if you already have a key or bag-loads of stolen mail — there’s no need to attack a letter carrier.
What Project Safe Delivery offers in optics, it lacks in substance. There’s no national deployment of visible postal police, no clear metrics for success, and no evidence of sustained operational impact. USPIS press releases praise “partnerships” and “targeted enforcement,” but with mail theft still rising and carrier robberies only slightly declining from historic highs, the campaign is engineered to manage perception — not crime. Smart policing starts with prevention. “Project Safe Delivery” starts and ends with a slogan.
A Law Enforcement Agency Without a Mission
Both the Government Accountability Office and the USPS Office of Inspector General (OIG) — have repeatedly sounded the alarm: USPIS lacks basic staffing metrics; fails to track arrow keys; and routinely ignores oversight recommendations on data, resources, and strategy.
For instance, in May 2024, the GAO issued a damning report urging USPIS to begin documenting critical workforce decisions — especially as postal-related crime shifts from postal facilities to the streets.
Despite formally accepting all three of the GAO’s recommendations, USPIS has failed to implement even one — more than a year later. I n a recent interview with Raw Story — a GAO official said USPIS offered “no timeline, no details — NOTHING” in response.
Likewise, in a scathing audit report , the OIG laid bare the Inspection Service’s systemic failures in addressing mail theft:
“[T]he Postal Inspection Service has not finalized their strategy to address mail theft… has not conducted a national personnel assessment and assigned staffing resources for the Mail Theft Program… did not require postal inspectors who solely worked mail theft cases to complete specialized mail theft training… and did not clearly define the purpose or establish metrics for overseeing the Mail Theft Analytics Program.”
Remarkably, USPIS did not finalize its mail theft strategy until March 2024 — four years after its own internal data showed theft was spiraling out of control.
This is more than bureaucratic inertia — it’s a fundamental failure of mission. Rather than focus on protecting the mail and those who deliver it, USPIS has drifted into redundant investigations like cybercrime, money laundering, narcotics, child exploitation, and even immigration enforcement — all domains better handled by agencies like the FBI, DEA, and DHS.
The result is textbook mission creep — and the tragic abandonment of a statutory responsibility at a time when the American public needs protection, not excuses.
USPIS is Still Misleading the American Public
A recent ABC News investigation used geospatial mapping to reveal a disturbing trend: a disproportionate number of violent attacks on postal workers are occurring in the very cities where Postal Police Officers are already stationed — but inexplicably not deployed. Rather than acknowledge this clear and troubling pattern, USPIS issued a stunningly dishonest statement, claiming the Postal Police Officers Association was “legally and factually incorrect” in asserting that PPOs are being blocked from doing their jobs.
But a federal court has already rejected that argument. In a ruling from the U.S. District Court for D.C., the judge affirmed that the Postal Service has full authority to assign PPOs to protect any postal property — not just buildings — calling that interpretation the “ most commonsense ” reading of the law.
The problem isn’t the law — it’s the Inspection Service’s refusal to enforce it. Regrettably, USPIS leadership has prioritized winning a petty labor dispute over protecting the mail and the workers who move it.
Five Years of Failure
- A nationwide mail theft crisis.
- Thousands of attacks on letter carriers.
- Thousands of arrow keys stolen, counterfeited, and sold — with few ever recovered.
- A federal police force benched by bureaucratic fiat.
- Millions of Americans falling victim to check fraud with billions of dollars lost.
- OIG reports collecting dust.
- GAO recommendations ignored.
And through it all, USPIS has chosen spin over accountability — hoping no one notices the mail keeps getting stolen.
A Call for Leadership and Reform
Postmaster General Steiner — for five years, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has clung to a narrative that defies logic, public safety, and reality. It voluntarily sidelined its own uniformed police force. It stood by as a nationwide mail theft crisis escalated in plain view. And now, faced with overwhelming evidence of failure, it hides behind a public relations campaign — hoping that optics will succeed where enforcement has failed.
You have the rare opportunity to break a long pattern of waste and abuse in the U.S. Postal Inspection Service . Reinstate Postal Police patrols, and refocus the agency on its core mission: protecting the mail and the workers who move and deliver it. The tools exist. The authority exists. What has been missing is leadership.
Reform will not be easy, but it is necessary. Americans deserve a Postal Inspection Service that is transparent, accountable, and effective — not one that deflects, delays, and denies. Should the status quo persist, mail theft will continue to surge — and USPIS will continue to fail — all while pretending nothing is wrong.
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.
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