Ohio’s issues with mail theft and violence against postal workers do not appear to be slowing, as postal workers in Cleveland are taking extraordinary measures to keep thieves from stealing mail.
Just a week after The Ohio Star reported on a string of robberies of postal workers in the Columbus area, Cleveland’s United States Postal Service (USPS) employees have been forced to tape shut their ubiquitous blue mailboxes to prevent thieves from breaking in and stealing mail, according to reports.
USPS says it is aware of the string of mail thefts, and that it is investigating.
“Thieves are reportedly stealing checks, altering the payee and amount, and cashing them, with Parma residents out more than $100,000, according to police there,” WOIO said. “There have been arrests, most recently in Euclid, but police report other incidents in Parma, South Euclid, Lyndhurst, Richmond Heights, and Garfield Heights among other areas.”
Reporter Vic Gideon took a photo of one the mailboxes that is taped shut in Cleveland:
Many outdoor mailboxes taped shut in Northeast Ohio, residents encouraged to deposit inside @USPS amid rash of thefts @cleveland19news pic.twitter.com/SFLdHvJTqV
— Vic Gideon (@VicGideon) February 11, 2022
Last week, Frank Albergo, the head of the Postal Police Officers Association (PPOA), reached out to The Ohio Star and said that as postal crimes have skyrocketed, funding for postal police has plummeted.
“The Postal Inspection Service data revealed that mail theft reports soared by 600% over three years, from about 25,000 in 2017 to roughly 177,000 through August of 2020,” Albergo said, noting that “[Postal Police Officers] (PPOs) are a highly trained uniformed police force specializing in mail theft prevention and protection of postal employees.”
Describing mail theft as an “epidemic,” Albergo said PPOs were rendered ineffective by the federal government when they were needed the most.
“PPOs, for years, were conducting mail theft prevention patrols by using data to target specific zip codes where mail theft was most prevalent. Unsurprisingly, it was working,” Albergo told The Star. “But then on August 25, 2020, the Postal Service reinterpreted enabling statute in order to decrease postal police law enforcement jurisdiction thereby ending all postal police patrolling activities.”
Back in Columbus, it’s not just mail theft that is concerning.
Over the past month, at least three postal workers have been robbed at gunpoint, and their keys to the universal mailboxes stolen.
Police are investigating.
It is a federal crime to tamper with mail.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Minnesota Sun and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “USPS Mailbox” by Tony Webster CC BY-SA 2.0.
