Mail theft continues to be a concern in our region and across the country as it leads to stolen identities, compromised bank information and fraud.
The News 3 Investigative Team continues to speak to those on the front lines of this issue.
Frank Albergo is the National President of Postal Police Officers Association.
“Mail theft has since just exploded. The attacks on letter carriers have absolutely exploded. Every day there's another letter carrier having a gun stuck in his or her face, and they're demanding the arrow keys,” said Albergo.
A letter carrier was robbed in Chesapeake last October, according to federal court documents. His arrow key, which is a special key used by the postal service to unlock mailboxes, was ripped from his hand by a man with a gun.
Experts say they can open many blue boxes or other mail receptacles in specific area codes, adding that they are sold on the dark web and go for thousands.
WATCH: More United States Postal letter carriers are getting robbed while trying to deliver your mail
Albergo wants more done to protect the public when mailboxes have been compromised. He said, “Those boxes should be taken out of service if they've been compromised. Why would you allow people to mail letters in them?”
While problems have increased with mail theft across the country, arrests and convictions across the country have decreased over the last few years, according to data from the Annual Reports from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service dating back to 2016.
We reached out to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. They provided the following statement regarding our questions:
Many courts are still working through a backlog of cases coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. As far as the number of mail theft arrests declining, the number of cases initiated stays more constant (1,278 in 2019 and 1,124 in 2022). As the Inspection Service has noted before, the type of mail theft crime we see has changed over the past few years. What we see more frequently now is a more organized approach to mail theft, with more large volume attacks on mail receptacles than in prior years. Our agency is prioritizing high quality, high impact cases and arrests. Instead of charging and arresting individual actors, and those low on the criminal organization hierarchy, we strive to develop cases to charge and arrest those at the top of criminal organizations who are robbing letter carriers, stealing mail and perpetrating financial crimes.
The Inspection Service has 1,200 inspectors who are federal agents that investigate crimes and 450 postal police officers who are uniformed officers stationed at certain postal facilities.
“In the summer of 2020, the Inspection Service decided that we should be confined to postal buildings. We should no longer protect mail in transit, we should no longer protect letter carriers,” said Albergo.
He and certain lawmakers in Congress support legislation to give postal police more power. H.R.3005 - Postal Police Reform Act of 2023 is currently in Committee and being discussed among lawmakers.
“They have a police force, a highly trained, effective postal police force which they refuse to use. It makes no sense whatsoever. H.R. 3005 would restore our jurisdictional authority. It's bipartisan legislation, and it just makes sense,” said Albergo.
As part of its statement, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service released the following information:
Postal inspectors along with our local and federal law enforcement partners actively investigate crimes committed through and towards the Postal Service and its employees.
The relevant statute, 18 U.S.C. 3061(c)(1), provides that “[t]he Postal Service may employ police officers for duty in connection with property owned or occupied by the Postal Service, or under the charge and control of the Postal Service, and persons on that property, including duties in areas outside the property to the extent necessary to protect the property and persons on the property.” Congress codified this language in 2006, as section 1001 of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, or PAEA.
While some Inspection Service divisions utilized PPOs to conduct patrols and perform other duties off Postal Service property since passage of PAEA, questions were raised about whether these patrols conformed to the law and whether they were effective. The Postal Service Law Department advised the Inspection Service that PPOs’ law enforcement authority relates to the protection of Postal Service real property. In response, Postal Inspection Service leadership began to comprehensively curtail the use of PPOs for law enforcement outside the immediate environs of Postal Service real property. Given the lack of statutory authority for PPO law enforcement activity off postal premises, stopping such use of PPOs was necessary to protect individual PPOs and the Postal Service more broadly from legal liability. In 2020, a federal court confirmed, in response to the PPOs’ contrary assertions, that the Postal Service’s determination of PPOs’ jurisdiction constituted a reasonable interpretation of the law.
From a more practical perspective, we also question the effectiveness or appropriateness of expanding the role of PPOs beyond the protection of real property, given the structure of the Inspection Service. The Inspection Service is made up of three categories of employees: (1) postal inspectors; (2) professional, technical, and administrative employees; and (3) PPOs. Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 3061 (a) and (b), postal inspectors are federal agents charged with investigating any crimes with a Postal Service nexus regardless of location, including mail theft and robberies occurring outside of Postal Service real property. Professional, technical, and administrative employees provide investigative and administrative support for postal inspectors. PPOs are uniformed officers stationed at facilities with many employees, contractors, and customers, and that offer various services or contain large amounts of mail. PPOs play a vital role in protecting the people, mail, and facilities on those properties, but as noted, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 3061 (c)(1), that role is legally limited to law enforcement activity on postal premises.
PPOs are assigned to certain facilities because the Inspection Service has determined that these facilities require the presence of uniformed, trained, and armed officers. At those facilities, PPOs enforce order and act as a deterrent to criminals or employees who may wish to compromise the U.S. Mail or potentially harm the people inside. Removing those officers from Postal Service property, where a significant concentration of mail and employees exist, would put at risk not only postal facilities, but also the employees and customers who use those facilities every day.
Furthermore, 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. This is consistent with the differences in jurisdictional authority of postal inspectors and PPOs pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 3061.
Click here for more information if you are a victim.
Brianna Lanham contributed to this story.
