Still, even through escalated violence, postal service employees continue to aid in the delivery of 212 billion pieces of mail to over 144 million homes from 40,000 post offices, and they must continue to do so safely. Unfortunately, as it continues its operations, one of the Postal Service’s answers has been to cut its law enforcement operations.
For example, on Aug. 25, Deputy Chief Inspector David Bowers revoked postal police officers’ law enforcement authority, except when they are on property owned or leased by the USPS. This seems like the wrong strategy given its employees are sustaining increased attacks on the streets of America. If the postal police aren’t there to protect those employees and respond to these incidents, who will handle these crimes?
This change of operations has left a target on most postal employees and mail as well as using U.S. postal inspectors, who traditionally handle investigations of terrorism, international criminals, child predators and mail fraud, to fill the gap in some cases. So instead of focusing on fighting crime and protecting postal facilities, postal inspectors have been used for other law enforcement operations while postal police officers’ duties are further eroded.