Postal crimes raise fear, concern -- but are they rising?

Mar. 11—Laura Hill had just paid hundreds of dollars to have a locking mailbox installed in front of her home in the Bakersfield Country Club area when two of her neighbors came up to her to break the news: They'd tried the same thing. It didn't help.

"My mail has been stolen so many times I've lost count, along with almost all my neighbors," the executive recruiting business owner said.

It's not just mail theft. Postal crime hurts Kern County residents in a variety of ways, some costly, some potentially violent, all of them deeply frustrating.

Though mail-related crimes are as old as the U.S. Postal Service itself, it seems as though criminals are coming up with new or novel offenses. Stolen or counterfeit mailbox keys seem to be a hot item lately, along with breaking and entering post offices to get at other people's mail.

But is mail-related crime actually on the rise? It's hard to say. Authorities either don't collect statistics on such crimes or they fail to report it in a way that might give a clear picture of whether the national mail system is more or less secure than it used to be.

What little data there is suggests something counterintuitive: that postal crimes, or at least the reported enforcement of related laws, has decreased in recent years. The decline has been sharp, by some measures.

A spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the USPS, said no data is available on the incidence of mail-related crimes locally or statewide, and he could not provide even national figures that can be compared over time. Spokesman Matthew Norfleet was unable to say whether any type of postal-related crime is up or down relative to any time in the recent past.

In its annual report, the agency does state figures on mail-related crimes, but because of its inconsistent presentation of statistics, trends are difficult to discern. That said, in its most recent annual report, the agency said arrests for all kinds of mail-related crime totaled 5,141 in fiscal 2021. That was 7 percent fewer than it cited in a summary released 10 years earlier.

The number of arrests made on suspicion of mail theft during that period were also down — by 40 percent, settling in fiscal 2021 at 1,511.

Local law enforcement was of limited help. The Kern County Sheriff's Office said by email it does not keep records on mailbox break-ins or postal vandalism or identity theft from stolen mail or attacks on postal carriers.

But in the only readily available indication of trends in local mail-related crime, the KCSO reported cases of mail theft have dropped in the last five years — by a lot.

The agency said it handled 115 mail theft cases in 2018, and that the number declined to 95 a year later. By 2020, the total came to only 34, then 31 in 2021. In 2022, the Sheriff's Office said, it handled just 15 mail theft cases. That's a decline of 87 percent since 2018.

The Bakersfield Police Department was unable to provide any information on postal-related crime rates during the same two-day period it took the KCSO to round up its data. The agency's spokesman, Sgt. Robert Pair, could offer only a qualitative assessment: "It's been an issue for a long time."

Bakersfield Postmaster Maricela Luna did not respond to a request for an interview about local mail-related crime.

In January, the Postal Inspection Service notified local news media of two separate knife attacks against Bakersfield mail carriers. No one was injured.

The agency added that it was continuing to investigate two similar knife attacks that occurred last year in Bakersfield, as well as two gunpoint mail robberies in the city in 2022. A news release said the target is often keys that can be used to gain access to private mailboxes.

Norfleet recalled a situation last year in which a group mailbox unit had been pried open such that it couldn't be locked properly. No one noticed it was susceptible, and so the thief or thieves returned more than once to gather up mail belonging to unsuspecting residents.

One recent incident stands out as a particularly outlandish example of what law enforcement is up against.

Earlier this month, a man broke glass at the downtown post office on 18th Street and was able to force his way into the building's lobby. After postal workers who were sorting mail in the back called police, he was found naked and asleep. Norfleet said the man was promptly taken into custody for psychiatric evaluation.

Blue boxes of the kind stationed at street corners for mail deposits sometimes get tampered with, Norfleet said, or thieves fish out mail dropped inside.

Noting there's generally a balance to be struck between convenience and security, he offered several tips for minimizing risk of postal crime.

"First off, don't leave the mail in the mailbox any longer than you need to," Norfleet said. Because mail thefts usually occur in the dead of night, he said, it's best to set out mail in the morning.

He recommended putting vacation holds on mail deliveries by setting up an account at the Postal Service website, USPS.com. The same website can be used to divert sensitive mail to the nearest post office, he added.

Rather than taking postal delivery for granted, consumers should take an active role in looking out for mail carriers, Norfleet said. The agency offers a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of an assault on a postal worker, and up to $10,000 for equally effective information on mail theft.

Don't try to confront someone committing mail crime, though, as such people are likely armed. Instead, he said, call postal inspectors any time of day or night at 877-876-2455, or place an online report at USPIS.gov/report.

Hill, the recruiting executive living near the country club, has tried to limit her exposure to postal crime by having her mail delivered to a post office box. But even that hasn't provided full protection.

Last summer, she noticed windows at her nearest post office, on Crestmont Drive, were being smashed on a regular basis, typically more than once weekly. Employees had them boarded up, but she said the perpetrator or perpetrators would simply shatter a different door or window to gain overnight access to people's post office boxes.

The outcome for her was beyond inconvenient. Checks sent by her clients were going missing, then they were reported as cashed. She had to track them down and ask for reprints.

Norfleet acknowledged the situation at the post office on Crestmont, saying security equipment was added after burglaries were reported. He said no arrests have been made.