Controversial USPS chief Louis DeJoy faces pain over 'crime wave'

Amid nonstop grilling by U.S. senators about the nation’s shambolic mail system, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy had jokes.

After Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) relayed a constituent’s question about the manufacturing of ubiquitous blue mail boxes on America’s street corners, DeJoy cracked that Johnson's constituent wouldn't want to steal from one of those blue mailboxes … would they?

“Pardon?” Johnson said.

“It’s not somebody who wants to break into 'em, is it?” DeJoy repeated with a smile and a laugh.

“I don’t think so. This is a cooperative type of question,” Johnson said, not seemingly amused.

Curbside blue mailboxes are indeed prime targets for raiding by criminals, particularly as the U.S. Postal Service is in the midst of a self-described “crime wave” that includes a 543 percent increase in letter carrier robberies over a three-year period, a recent Raw Story investigation found.

Criminals are increasingly robbing letter carriers for their “arrow keys” that provide widespread access to what’s inside those blue mailboxes, including paper checks, cash and other valuables.

During the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Senate Committee hearing on April 16, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) asked DeJoy and Tammy Hull, inspector general for the United States Postal Service, for their support of a bill known as the Postal Police Reform Act of 2023. Blumenthal, a co-sponsor of the bill, said the legislation would address the “growing problem” and “very troubling trends” of rising mail thefts and letter carrier robberies.

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The spike in letter carrier robberies coincided with the time of a 2020 directive from the United States Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the Postal Service. The memo clarified postal police officers could only work on Postal Service properties, unable to intervene in off-property crimes.

“In Connecticut, I've heard from postal employees, lots of them, about the serious impacts of assaults, robbery. They’re increasingly vulnerable. These attacks have far reaching effects,” Blumenthal said. “I don’t need to tell you, hardworking civil servants are afraid to do their jobs, and Americans’ confidence in our mail system is undermined.”

DeJoy didn’t directly answer the senator’s question about supporting the bill, which Blumenthal said “clarifies an authority for postal police officers that can help address the threat of violence, assault and robbery.”

DeJoy said he would read the bill. But he emphasized that the Postal Service’s own uniformed police force, known as postal police officers, “protect our facilities where our people are and the mail is” — not on the streets.

Since the 1970s, some postal police officers patrolled the streets to deter and intervene in high-crime areas where letter carriers delivered until the 2020 directive.

DeJoy, who maintained the Postal Service has “done a lot over the last year” to address postal crime, said there aren’t even enough postal police officers to patrol mail facilities such as post offices and regional sorting centers.

“I have 600 postal police officers in the country. It's hardly enough to have any impact on the 260,000 routes and 300 [thousand] carriers I have running around the country.”

“There are places where we have a thousand people and no security, so that’s where we’re trying to redirect it,” DeJoy said.

Blumenthal pressed on DeJoy, asking if he thought the issue of mail crime “remains a problem.”

“I think that crime in the city streets …” DeJoy said before Blumenthal cut him off.

“No, I’m talking about crime against your employees, your civil servants,” Blumenthal interjected. “They’re being assaulted. Are they not?”

DeJoy concurred, “They are,” but pointed to the Postal Service’s use of postal inspectors in cities and partnerships with local police and local prosecutors to address crime. Postal inspectors are different from postal police in the similar way that police detectives are different from uniformed officers, postal employees told Raw Story.

“Do you think the Postal Service is doing enough?” Blumenthal asked DeJoy.

That’s when Hull jumped in to discuss a report, “U.S. Postal Service’s Response to Mail Theft,” that the Postal Service’s independent Office of Inspector General released in September.

The report noted that while the Postal Service is attempting to improve security measures around collection boxes and arrow keys — universal keys that open blue boxes and communal mailboxes in a given zip code — the Postal Service still lacks notable guidelines for its mail theft initiatives and accountability for arrow keys, which are frequently targeted in carrier robberies, Raw Story reported.

“We identified some additional things that the Postal Service could do to address the mail theft issue. We did not specifically address the postal police problem because we wanted to see more locally what was happening locally in various locations,” Hull said, noting that the team is investigating the issue in Queens, N.Y.

“Isn’t better law enforcement key?” Blumenthal said.

“It is, and that’s actually one of the things that we talked about in that higher level work, and so some of it, there’s local partnerships that are critical to this, as the postmaster general mentioned," Hull said. "We’re looking into what the postal police situation is when we do the local work.”

‘We can make a difference’

The main response of the Postal Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to letter carrier robberies and mail thefts has been “Project Safe Delivery.”

The plan, launched in May 2023, focuses on modernizing postal mailboxes and keys to deter criminals and reduce violent attacks on letter carriers. But the program’s plan to replace 49,000 antiquated arrow keys is just 0.5 percent of 9 million arrow keys overall — in other words, only one out of every 200 arrow keys will be replaced, Raw Story reported.

So far, the Postal Service has deployed 15,000 high security blue collection boxes and more than 30,000 electronic locking mechanisms, said David Walton, a spokesperson for the Postal Service.

In a press release on March 12, the Postal Inspection Service reported more than 1,200 arrests for letter carrier robberies and mail theft since May 2023 — 213 arrests were for postal robberies and more than 1,025 were related to mail theft, Walton said.

Postal-related robberies in the first six months of fiscal year 2024 went down by 21 percent when compared to the same period last year. Walton said. Mail theft complaints compared during the same time periods decreased by 35 percent, and arrests for postal-related robberies are up by 72 percent over the past six months when compared to the previous year, Walton added.

"These security enhancements to mail receptacles have been deployed strategically for maximum effect to all 50 states. Postal inspectors and other personnel have conducted law enforcement surges consisting of enforcement and outreach/education efforts in various cities across the country," Walton told Raw Story via email. "Project Safe Delivery’s multi-faceted approach appears to be having the intended result."

DeJoy’s hearing responses sparked outrage from the Postal Police Officers Association union, which submitted a nine-page statement for the record after the hearing.

Frank Albergo, president of the Postal Police Officers Association, called DeJoy’s answers “either misleading or, quite frankly, silly.”

“The Fraternal Order of Police, the National Association of Police Organizations, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association all support our bill, but the postmaster general doesn't know? He has to take a look at it? Does he think that he knows more than the premier law enforcement organizations in America?” Albergo told Raw Story. “He's already paying for postal police, but why wouldn't he want the option to utilize postal police? I just don't understand it. It's a mystery.”

In the union’s statement to Congress, Albergo called the Postal Service’s publicized 1,200 arrests between May 2023 and March 2024 “unimpressive,” saying that mail theft and letter carrier robbery arrests were reported "pale in comparison” to former numbers reported by the Postal Inspection Service.

In fiscal year 2022, the Postal Inspection Service made 4,291 arrests. Its peak number of arrests in the past 43 years happened in 1992, with 14,578 arrests that year, according to research published by the State University of New York at Albany.

Albergo called on DeJoy to think about how as many as 700 uniformed postal police officers could assist on the streets in the 20 cities they’re stationed in across the country.

“Can postal police stop all mail theft? No, of course not, but we certainly can make a difference in the locations where we're domiciled. That's just common sense,” Albergo said.

'Expansion of our resources would be required'

In a May 17, 2023, hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability's Subcommittee on Government Operations, DeJoy said he was aware of "legislative proposals to expand Postal Police Officer jurisdiction."

"The Inspection Service would likely not deploy PPOs in a different manner than they are used today, even if the jurisdiction of the PPOs was legislatively modified," DeJoy said. "PPOs are assigned to certain facilities because the Inspection Service has determined that these facilities require the presence of uniformed, trained and armed officers."

DeJoy said postal police officers deter criminals who may want to compromise the mail and harm people inside Postal Service buildings.

"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," DeJoy said.

DeJoy insisted that postal inspectors could handle off-property protection of letter carriers and the mail.

"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," DeJoy said.

The Postal Service is generally self-funded and primarily relies on the sale of stamps, products and services to fund its operations. For fiscal year 2023, the Postal Service reported a net loss of $6.5 billion, Reuters reported.

"Given the important role that PPOs play in the facilities to which they are assigned today to deter crime, to protect our employees, customers, contractors, and our real property, and to defend the sanctity and security of the mail, we are certain that this is the appropriate use of the limited resources we have," DeJoy said. "To engage in additional activities significant expansion of our resources would be required, and we do not have the ability to obtain them consistent with our financial self-sufficiency business mandate, nor the organizational, social, and political support to engage in the activities suggested.“

‘If you don’t fix it … I don’t think you’re fit for this job’

Raw Story reached out to a dozen senators on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee who, during the April 16 hearing, questioned DeJoy and Hull — as well as Roman Martinez IV, chairman of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors, and Michael Kubayanda, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission.

All but one senator declined to comment or did not reply to Raw Story’s request for comment.

The lone senator who responded, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), told Raw Story in a statement that “Georgians right now aren’t getting prescriptions in the mail, they can't pay rent and mortgages, and businesses can't receive supplies and ship products.”

“I was deeply dissatisfied by the Postmaster General’s response last week before the Homeland Security Committee,” Ossoff told Raw Story. “There are postal workers who every day are pouring their hearts and souls into delivering the mail on time, but they don't have the management and the infrastructure they need to succeed.”

Ossoff said he would apply “maximum pressure” in asking DeJoy and his team to provide resources and processes to fix the delivery issues in Georgia.

“This is a crisis that the postmaster general needs to meet with the urgency it demands,” Ossoff said.

During the hearing, Ossoff told DeJoy he had “weeks not months” to fix issues with late mail deliveries in Georgia, where 11 Atlanta area plants were consolidated into three.

“If you don’t fix it, 36 percent on-time delivery, I don’t think you’re fit for this job,” Ossoff said to DeJoy during the hearing.

Only the nine-member Postal Service Board of Governors, whose members are appointed by the president with Senate approval, can fire the postmaster general. President Joe Biden cannot directly fire DeJoy, although he would have the power to appoint a new postmaster general if the Postal Service Board of Governors, which by law may have no more than five governors from the same political party, replaced DeJoy.

Then-President Donald Trump nominated DeJoy in 2020.

Kubayanda, the chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, told Raw Story through a spokesperson that he felt the hearing was “timely and addressed urgent and important issues facing the postal system and customers.”

In terms of rising mail crime and law enforcement, Kubayanda said “criminal and safety matters in the postal system” are under the jurisdiction of the Postal Service and the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General.

“The Commission is aware of the concerns regarding crime affecting postal personnel,” Kubayanda said in a statement. “If data indicates that these issues affect service performance and customer experience, the Commission can monitor those issues and provide some additional transparency.”

The Postal Regulatory Commission will release in June its analysis of the Postal Service’s fiscal year 2023 performance report and fiscal year 2024 performance plan, Kubayanda said.

Hull was not available for an interview, said Tara Linne, a spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General.

Linne told Raw Story via email that postal police officers fall under the jurisdiction of the Postal Inspection Service, clarifying that the inspector general’s office has different jurisdiction involving internal crimes, fraud, narcotics offenses and employee misconduct committed by postal employees and contractors.

“The attacks on letter carriers are unconscionable and of such high concern the Inspection Service has launched the Project Safe Delivery campaign,” Linne said.

DeJoy and Martinez were not made available for interviews.

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