U.S. Postal Service Benches Its Police Officers Before Election

Wall Street Journal ^ | 10/16/2020 | Rebecca Smith

[aimhigh]

An order by the U.S. Postal Service to pull its uniformed police officers off city streets has sparked a legal battle pitting it against a police union, when the agency is already under scrutiny for delivery delays in a presidential election that could hang on mail-in ballots.

The agency’s unilateral order ended daily patrols meant to prevent robberies of blue collection boxes and mail vehicles, and has left letter carriers without escorts on unsafe routes in some of the nation’s biggest cities, according to interviews with police officers and union representatives opposed to the change and a copy of the directive, titled “Postal Police Utilization,” reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Mail thieves, in the past, often targeted mail for credit cards and checks. Now, the postal police officers said the fear is that thieves also will get ballots, which could be ditched.

[aimhigh]

Article is free of paywall. 455 officers amounts to 10 for each state.

[Parley Baer]

So is the USPS aiding and abetting cheating? I have never heard of this before.

[ASA Vet]

I'd never heard of any uniformed Postal cops after the two we had in Grand Rapids had their jobs eliminated in the early 80's.

Their only function was to enforce parking in the customer lot, and to walk around in the building occasionally. They were armed with old revolvers.

They never went off postal property.

[Parley Baer]

Hmmmm. I have heard of Postal Inspectors. Why would they “ground” the Postal Policemen?

[NYAmerican]

“Article is free of paywall.”

When I click on your link I get “To read article, subrscribe, sign in”, with two different browsers. What am I doing wrong?

[faithhopecharity]

not sure at all that we need postal police forces.
or for that matter any of Obama’s additional armed agents
(in what he wanted, his “domestic Army stronger than our regular defense department army”)

but as long as we have a postal police force, the timing of this order (and indeed the order itself) is very suspicious

[ASA Vet]

Postal Inspectors don't wear uniforms.

I surely can't explain why postal management decides, but it's usually about cutting employee costs so they can get a bonus.

[aimhigh]

“Article is free of paywall.” When I click on your link I get “To read article, subrscribe, sign in”, with two different browsers. What am I doing wrong?

No idea. A friend posted the article on Facebook, and it comes up full. Here, it doesn't. Bizarre.

[fireman15]

We have had persons fill out change of address cards twice, so that our mail begins being delivered to another address. Not only do they continue delivering mail to the fraudulent address for days after the problem is reported... they will not tell you where your mail has been being delivered to. They are the definition of an incompetent government agency.

[Terry L Smith]

The USPS has been a ‘money pit’ for many years. It’s time for a major overhaul. I suggest a restructuring, to include a re-vamping of their retirement system, their management, and their union.

[ml/nj]

Why does the Post Office have its own police force? Does the Passport Office also have a police force? Or the Government Printing Office?

ML/NJ

[Robocop5626]

I worked as a PPO for 14 yrs. We were the uniformed branch of Inspection service. PPOs have police power only on property owned or controlled by USPS. We did building security at main office and went to burglar alarms at local offices after hours. The Inspectors believed they were equal to FBI agents. But an investigation into employee mail theft using paid informants went awry. They failed to fully corroborate the informant claims and fired many employees. At court most employees were exonerated and ordered reinstated. That was when the USPS was placed in the OIG system. Major postal inspector duties were given to the OIG. Most inspectors left for other federal agencies. There are some PIs still about but way fewer overall. I certainly don't miss wearing the black uniform in the summer along with the Kevlar vest. We swapped the old revolvers in early 90s for semiautomatic pistols. Don't miss the gun and badge work, especially in today's environment.

[NYAmerican]

Who knows, they have all kinds of tracking code, cookies, etc which may allow one person in while locking others out. In my experience WSJ generally enforces their paywall.