Postal police reducing staff while mail crimes, fraud and carrier robberies increase
Philadelphia PA July 5th, 2022
Frank Albergo, national president of the Postal Police Officers Association reports that postal law enforcement numbers are down while theft of mail, fraud and other mail crimes are increasing.
Its members make up what the Postal Service calls its “elite police force,” trained in mail theft prevention and the protection of postal boxes, offices, and mail processing centers and the 600,000 workers who connect us with more than 10 billion pieces of mail every month.
The officers Albergo leads are the uniformed police who work with the better-known, higher-paid postal inspectors, the detectives of postal crime.
The numbers of the force are continuing to decrease and currently there are just 450 postal police officers left in the U.S. That’s down 130 in the past three years, just half as many as in 2008, and one-sixth the number who patrolled the mail system in the 1970s. (There were around 2,100 postal inspectors in the late 1990s; there are now around 1,300.)
As of late June, there are no postal police working the day shift in Philadelphia, due to “lack of manpower,” Albergo says. That marks an end to “50 years of having postal police operations 24 hours a day.”
The US Postal service during the past three years have acknowledged staffing issues like many other police agencies.
The Postal Service’s public-affairs office recently confirmed that it made a “risk-based operational decision to redirect law enforcement” away from daytime policing. The agency blamed “attrition” and its inability to train new officers during the pandemic for the drop in police staffing but promised to resume training new ones in August.
The uniform police force is responsible for protecting postal properties, staff and customers said retired officer James Hamilton. We enforce the laws, makes arrests and conduct traffic stops just like any law enforcement agency and we assist in investigations as needed according to Hamilton.
It’s not new that union leaders advocate for more members and more money. But the reported crime numbers strengthen Albergo’s case: Pennsylvania is a hot spot for check theft, with 871 checks stolen from Pennsylvanians turning up on the Internet’s thieves’ corner, the “dark web,” just in May, according to data collected by the Evidence-Based Cybersecurity Research Group at Georgia State University.
There were more Pennsylvania checks for sale to fraudsters than from California, Florida or New York, which are more populous states. Indeed, Pennsylvanians lost more stolen checks, given its population, than any state but Missouri. New Jersey and Delaware aren’t far behind.
With postal cops ordered to stand down, Albergo says it’s no surprise that gunpoint robberies of letter carriers are a serious problem. At least 11 carriers has been robbed in different states from June 9 to 21.
A report by the Postal Service inspector general found during one year from when the pandemic started, March 2020 to February 2021, mail theft complaints more than doubled, to 300,000, compared to the same period in 2019-2020. But only around 1,000 mail-theft cases were prosecuted, fewer than in the previous year.
Every armed robbery of a letter carrier can leave hundreds of “mail theft, check fraud, and identity theft victims,” Albergo says.
And crimes against postal workers, on postal property, or against the US Postal Service are federal crimes.
“In short, the Postal Inspection Service has abandoned its mission,” Albergo contended. Inspectors are still working with other agencies on “high-profile” national cases, but they are no longer around much to “protect the U.S. mail and postal workers” or “prevent postal-related crime from happening.”
Staff cuts have been going on for years, but Albergo says the pivotal change dates to Aug. 25, 2020.
That’s the day — in the run-up to the Trump vs. Biden presidential election, just as Americans were worrying about the safety of mail-in ballots — when Postal Service leaders chose to end police patrols along mail routes, claiming that after all these years they had the legal responsibility only to protect Postal Service property, not mail carriers.
The Postal Service acknowledged that “like the rest of the nation, crimes have increased, and the Postal Service has not been immune.” It pledged to “aggressively pursue perpetrators.” But it also confirmed the recent focus on defending Postal Service property, along with employees, customers, and mail while they are on it, rather than mail or mail carriers on the road.
Police are being withdrawn, depleted, or restricted from performing their duties leaving many Americans victims, sometimes, more than once.
