For 50 years, Postal Police Officers (PPOs) — the unformed division of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) — protected the Postal Service’s most important assets; its employees and the mail — no matter location. PPOs had police authority to patrol anywhere connected with postal assets, whether at mail-processing facilities, public roads used to transport mail, or letter carrier routes prone to violent crime. In short, PPOs were—and still are—the most effective tool to prevent postal-related crime.
The best illustration of the effectiveness of PPOs in preventing postal-related crime was the Postal Police Letter Carrier Protection Program. For instance, in 2013, after a series of violent crimes targeting letter carriers in New Jersey and Puerto Rico, USPIS instituted a comprehensive intelligence-led policing program wherein PPOs were equipped with smart technology that could pinpoint the location of letter carriers in real time. PPOs were then strategically deployed using crime mapping to protect those letter carriers. The results were astounding—assaults and robberies of letter carriers plummeted by 88%.