Sourcehttps://www.fedweek.com
The Postmaster General then outlined the causes: regulatory constraints that suppress pricing power; billions in misallocated pension costs; a borrowing cap frozen in 2006; investment restrictions that inflate long-term liabilities; and a universal service mandate requiring delivery to 170 million addresses regardless of cost. Added to this are rising inflation, declining mail volume, mailing restrictions, a growing delivery network, and billions in unfunded public-service mandates.
But Mr. Steiner overlooked another major burden: the surge in mail theft, and the failure of its law enforcement arm — the U.S. Postal Inspection Service — to contain it.
Sourcehttps://www.fedweek.com
This really isn’t complicated. Spending nearly $900 million a year to investigate crime after it happens—while doing almost nothing to prevent it in the first place—isn’t strategy, it’s self-sabotage.
And merging the Inspection Service with the OIG? That’s just rearranging the org chart and calling it reform.
Here’s a simpler idea: eliminate the Inspection Service, let the OIG handle investigations—internal and external—and put the Postal Police back where they belong so they can actually do the job they were hired to do.
Prevention first. Investigation second.
This isn’t rocket science—it just requires a willingness to stop doing what clearly isn’t working.
This supposed news story is just an opinion piece by Frank Albergo, Postal Police Officers Association who has an ax to grind because he failed to get his fellow Postal Police Officers 20 year law enforcement retirement. Albergo’s facts are skewed toward his arguments that the reason mail theft went up was because his extremely small Posta Police force (300) was sidelined by the USPIS. Do your own research on this subject because these skewed facts are just opinions presented as facts to support increasing the number of postal police and to get 20 year law enforcement retirement. Not once has Albergo ever proposed to increase the number of Postal Inspectors who are the one who actually investigate Mail Theft. Not once as Albergo ever released the arrest stats for the Postal Police and don’t cheat by including the arrest stats of Postal Inspectors or Postal OIG Special Agents…
What’s taking so long? This is one of the few problems at the Postal Service that’s actually easy to solve—and it’s still sitting on the shelf. Steiner can diagnose billion-dollar structural issues and testify that the agency is “drowning,” but when it comes to a self-inflicted problem—spending nearly $900 million a year on a law enforcement model that isn’t even protecting the mail—suddenly we’re in slow motion. 
You’d think using the uniformed police force you already pay for would be the easy win—the low-hanging fruit. Instead, the nitwits in Washington DC scratch their heads wondering what to do about stolen mail.