All posts tagged "Postal Service"

A former Utah mail carrier dumped about 300 primary ballots in a church dumpster to "lighten his workload," federal prosecutors said.

According to a detention filing, former Utah postman Damon Matai Seei was charged with a single count of secretion, destruction, and delay of mail.

Prosecutors say Seei was covering a colleague's route in Eagle Mountain, Utah, on June 3 when he was "entrusted with delivering mail to at least 300 persons" in the area. That mail included advertisements and hundreds of ballots meant for voters in the state's June 23 primary election....

The U.S. Postal Service has halted work on a computer system central to President Donald Trump's effort to limit mail-in voting.

Postmaster General David Steiner confirmed the stoppage Thursday in an interview with the Associated Press, just days after the Supreme Court rejected the president's executive order for this year's midterms.

"There's an injunction so we're not doing anything," Steiner told the AP....

As thieves continue to attack letter carriers and ransack mailboxes, members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform expressed exasperation at the "disturbing” issue.

On Wednesday, the House Subcommittee on Government Operations called five witnesses from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General, unions and law enforcement to discuss the dramatic spike in mail crime.

According to a Raw Story investigation letter carrier robberies alone increased by 543 percent over three years....

CHICAGO — As a little girl in the 1980s, Khalalisa Norris aspired to become a letter carrier. She’d sit on her front porch in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood and wait for her local mailman, and eventual mail lady, each day.

In her 20s, Norris realized her dream, and ever since, she’s delivered mail on Chicago’s West Side.

But that dream became a nightmare....

The United States Government Accountability Office has released a critical report about the U.S. Postal Service, bolstering the findings of a recent Raw Story investigation that details a dramatic spike in crime against letter carriers.

The Government Accountability Office found that “serious crime” — including homicides, assaults, burglaries and robberies — nearly doubled during a six-year span, from 656 in 2017 to 1,198 in 2023. Robberies alone grew nearly sevenfold between fiscal years 2019 through 2023, according to the report.

Raw Story found that letter carrier robberies skyrocketed by 543 percent between 2019 and 2022, coinciding with the timing of a 2020 Postal Service decision that effectively benched its uniformed police force of 450 officers. The decision resulted in the officers losing their mandate to patrol the streets where letter carriers deliver the mail and these robberies often occur. They’re now relegated to protecting postal facilities, such as mail sorting centers and post offices....

As United States Postal Service letter carriers face increasing violence and assaults on the job, the police officers who could protect them have been sidelined by the government, a new Raw Story investigation revealed.

With letter carrier robberies skyrocketing by 543 percent between 2019 and 2022, the issue has spurred a bipartisan group of Congress members to introduce legislation aimed at providing more secure mailbox equipment and better protecting letter carriers.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), who introduced the Protect our Letter Carriers Act last week, said Raw Story's investigation should urge Congress to turn the bill into law....