"USPS only concerned with mail theft on USPS premises" Topic

"the USPS leader "declared that Postal Police Officers should no longer be assigned to investigate or prevent mail theft or protection of letter carriers" unless it occurred on Postal Service premises."
So if someone steals your mail from your mail box, who do you call. I thought it was a federal crime. Do I call the FBI.

I'd start with local LEOs… BTW, is there a news source for a citation?

This quote is in this Politico piece: link

It's a quote, so it may appear in others too.

That is just absurd.

Not surprising from a government organization, but ridiculous nonetheless.

We just got information about USPS investigating a shooting of a postal carrier out west. Sounds suspiciously like election year BS.

Surely, once the mail has been delivered, it is no longer their responsibility. If your mailbox is insecure I'd have thought it was the owner's problem.

A bit difficult to compare with the UK as most of us get our mail delivered through a letterbox so it is less vulnerable to theft.

Yes, porch pirates are a police matter. We are getting more home deliveries, and not only by USPS, and more thieves following the delivery trucks. We also have more home cameras seeing the crime.

I do a few eBay sales and for any item over $100.00 USD I require a signature. This both protects my sale and insurers someone at the address gets the item.

Most mailboxes in new subdivisions have centralized mailboxes. You get the key for your mailbox from the Post Office. There is an expectation that the mailbox is secure and your mail is safe.

We've had problems in San Antonio with people breaking in to these boxes.

Much ado about nothing. If someone steals the mail from your box, you call the police. There might be 1,000 postal inspectors in the entire country -- they are not getting involved with something getting stolen off you porch. They concentrate on major crimes, and provide assistance to local law enforcement as needed/requested. They have deferred minor postal related crimes to local law enforcement for decades. They don't have the people to investigate it, and the federal court doesn't want those cases in their system.

Really LTG? The postal service has been bleeding money for decades without any real overhaul. had 8 years to fix it and nothing happened. It needs to be run like a business, not a charity. Local theft off of a porch is not something that they should follow. The local police can take care of the charges, etc. It should stop bleeding money before they add more programs, etc.

Most mailboxes in new subdivisions have centralized mailboxes. You get the key for your mailbox from the Post Office. There is an expectation that the mailbox is secure and your mail is safe.

We've had problems in San Antonio with people breaking in to these boxes.

Of course, letter carriers have the keys to those centralized mailboxes, for subdivisions as well as apartment buildings. It's how they deliver everyone's mail.

Letter carriers on their routes get robbed for that key, as well as for the checks, drugs, and documents useful for identity theft that they may be carrying.

Also, there are letter carriers who are themselves criminals. An important job of the postal inspectors is to catch criminals within the postal service, whether out in the field or in mail facilities.

It needs to be run like a business, not a charity.

Businesses are not required to fund post-retirement health care costs for 75 years into the future, but the postal service is. Congress started crippling the post office financially by imposing that requirement in 2006.

link

It should stop bleeding money before they add more programs, etc.

I agree. The post office should stop bleeding money into a fund that it can't use for operations.

The post office is a service run for the common good. It helps bind the country, it's citizens, and businesses. But there are those, to include the new postmaster general, who want to shut down the post office and one way to do that is to cut back on services. The post office will never pay for itself; if it goes away, what replaces it?

The post office makes money on operations and then goes under becasue of the pension nonsense.

Let them fund their pension sanely, they'll turn a profit every year.

79th PA is right.
Local police have handled local crimes for decades. They notify the Post Office but unless it is major they don't get involved. When they do get involved they are very helpful.
Put them on Social Security like everyone else and the pension problem is solved.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

At the centralized mailboxes areas in our development the postal employees distribute mail to the individual mailboxes from an indoor area. Mail is put in the box from the rear. Packages that don't fit are put in a locked package locker and the key is left in your personal mailbox.

The USPS has to deliver to every location in the US no matter how remote and does not charge more. Some people live far off the beaten path, especially in the Western US. UPS and FedEx would charge way more or not even deliver to these places. If the USPS was privatize, no business would be able to accept the same rules. They'd have to vastly increase what they charge for these locations.

Politico is not an unbaised news source. It is an opinion publication with a political agenda. So, anything they post should be viewed with a bucket of salt.

They'd have to vastly increase what they charge for these locations.

Sounds fair.

Fair is a four letter "F" word, as I used to tell my teenagers. If that's the only argument you have, you've already lost. :-)

The issue isn't fairness. We still need to make sure the nation is tied together. Commercial enterprise only tie us together if they make money…which is fine, to a point, but it will leave people out as mentioned previously.

Umm, y'all know that all mailboxes have to be certified by the USPS and stealing mail from a certified mailbox is explicitly a federal crime? The sentences under federal law for stealing mail are vastly more than the petty theft charge for stealing some pieces of paper prosecuted by a city attorney.

The sheer threat of the draconian sentences was the great deterrent to stealing mail for a long, long time.

This was also the huge advantage of sending letters USPS vs FedEx or whoever. Somebody steals a signed contract that has no actual value from FedEx, you're out of luck. They steal it from your mailbox, they face serious punishment. Sure, they might get away with, but at least you have a sledgehammer handy!

Same thing with mail fraud, by the way. Fraud by FedEx is much less serious than fraud by USPS. My father was on a jury in a mail fraud case decades ago where there was a huge pile of small amounts involved. It was like the Matterhorn falling on those guys. When the nun they'd tried to defraud testified, everyone knew it was over. She'd been canny and sent them a check for $1 USD so she could see the endorsement, what account it went into, etc. Turns out you can spend a lot of time in prison for a $1 USD fraud!

"It needs to be run like a business, not a charity."

The problem is that Congress is involved. That alone makes it unprofitable.

The part that gets me the most is the number of people, who file a claim with E-bay immediately. They claimed it was stolen. Then get a refund and The item then show up, but forget getting your money back.

It not a charity and it's not a business, it a service, like fire departments, libraries and the military.

The USPS is not expected to make a profit like a business, it is a service. Libraries, mass transit, police, garbage collection are all services that in most locals don't make money. Government is not a business.

I served on a federal grand jury for a few months. Most of the cases were filed by the Postal Inspector. Most of those cases were people stealing mail from people's mail boxes. In some cases they stole the entire mail box.

We have one of those central mail boxes in my neighbourhood. They are broken into every so often. They just take a crowbar and rip the front of the entire box. They don't bother using a key.