U.S. Postal Police Officers Association president blames USPS for spike in crimes against letter carriers
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — According to the Postal Police Officer’s Association, mail thefts and attacks on postal carriers across the country are on the rise. And while crimes are up, the same organization says, arrests and prosecutions are declining.
Frank Albergo is the President of the Postal Police Officers Association. He told News 2 there is a postal crime wave in this country and he blames the U.S. Post Office. “Mail theft has exploded. And so have attacks on letter carriers. Every day there is a letter carrier who has a gun stuck in their face, robbed, assaulted, attacked. It’s a very dangerous situation.”
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Postal Police Officers (PPOs) are a uniformed federal police force. They have all the arrest powers and equipment of any police officer except they work for the United States Post Office.
“There is a postal crime wave spreading across America. Make no mistake, it is happening,” Albergo said.
According to Albergo, in the late 70’s and 80’s there were close to 3,000 PPOs across the nation. Now he says there are barely 450.
“They’ve stripped us of our jurisdictional authority, basically they are defunding us. It’s a major problem and they are doing this during a postal crime wave. The postal service has used this term, crime wave.”
The union president told News 2 they once used crime mapping strategies to fight crime against mail carriers and post offices. They would travel to those locations, saturate the zone, be visible, and reduce the incidents.
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Now Albergo said PPOs are now restricted to working only on postal property.
According to Albergo, that change came in 2020 when he said the federal government decided that it no longer needed PPOs to investigate crimes against mail carriers or the mail off post office property.
He said the PPO is a highly trained police force and the U.S. Post Office refuses to use that expertise that it pays for.
Alberto told News 2, he’s been a postal employee for 30 years, six as a letter carrier and 23 as a PPO and he has never seen anything like the mail theft epidemic as he calls it. “It turns out that PPO deters postal-related crime. Someone won’t rob a letter carrier, or steal an entire blue collection box if they know postal police officers are in the area.”
According to Albergo when the USPS cut the policing powers of the PPO, crimes spiked. Robbery cases exploded. In 2019 – before the PPO changes, there were 64 letter carriers robbed. In 2022, he said 412 letter carriers were robbed and 610 are projected to have been victimized when the numbers are finalized from 2023.
“It’s a very simple concept. you put the cops where the crime is. Right now the crime is not happening in these postal facilities, it is happening in the streets. You have letter carriers being attacked, you have mail being stolen, and postal police are sitting on their hands doing nothing. We still exist. They are still paying us. So why not use us? And the postal service is like, nope, sorry we can’t do that.”
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News 2 reached out to the United States Postal Service for their reaction to Albergo’s insinuations. USPS spokespeople emailed News 2 reminding us it’s a federal holiday. Yet they didn’t offer any other response.
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