Such lawlessness and violence has made the job of letter carriers — once coveted for its government benefits and respected for its service to America since the country’s founding — an increasingly hazardous job.
Mail carriers, especially those such as Norris who’ve been assaulted, want their federal government employer, the United States Postal Service, to do more — much more — to protect them.
That, however, may not be possible because of restrictions on who can actually patrol the streets where letter carriers work.
Because of a 2020 statute reinterpretation from the Postal Service, its own dwindling uniformed police force of 450 officers no longer patrols streets where letter carriers like Norris deliver the mail.
Instead, postal police officers, whose numbers exceeded 2,600 in the 1970s, are relegated to only working on postal properties, such as neighborhood post offices and regional distribution centers. This shift in policing responsibilities, largely unknown to the general public, has embroiled the Postal Service and the Postal Police Officers Association union in a four-year-long dispute that remains unresolved.