The USPS and the Postal Inspection Service are cracking down on robberies and mail theft. Attacks on mail carriers and thefts from blue collection boxes are increasing, and the companies are promoting the installation of collection boxes with high security and electronic locks. The rise in online package orders has caused thieves to steal packages from hunches and doorways. This has been an ongoing problem for years. However, there is another issue that is less talked about. Thieves are targeting the postal worker himself. Robbers who specialize in financial fraud schemes are stealing mail directly from the hands of postal workers and stealing mailbox keys.
As a result, the U.S. Postal Service is implementing new policies and security initiatives to limit the worsening of the problem. They have announced a joint project called Project Safe, effective as of Friday. It is an initiative aimed at protecting employees and improving mail security amid rising cases of mailman robberies across the country.
The program includes installing high-security collection boxes, replacing obsolete locks with electronic locks, preventing address change fraud, and cracking down on counterfeit mail. Under the program, the USPS will install 12,000 high-security mailboxes in high-risk areas and make it more difficult for criminals to access the contents of those mailboxes. They also plan to replace 49,000 obsolete arrow locks with electronic locks, making it more difficult to break into boxes and commit crimes such as check fraud.
The USPS is enhancing their targets both physically and digitally, making them undesirable to thieves and working with law enforcement partners to target perpetrators,” said U.S. Postal Inspection Commissioner Gary Barksdale in a statement. “We are trying to bring them to justice.”
The theft of packages is now a felony in eight states, as lawmakers begin cracking down on rising theft in the e-commerce era. They introduced a bill last year called the “Pouch Piracy Act” that would extend this policy to all delivery services.