In a previous FedWeek op-ed, I chronicled the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s (USPIS) decades-long saga of waste and abuse — from the botched 1990s drug stings and resistance to creating the USPS Office of Inspector General to the billions lost through unchecked mission creep. Those failures were not isolated scandals; they revealed a deeper structural rot, an agency more focused on protecting itself than safeguarding America’s mail system. Now, in Part 2, the picture grows even darker: as mail theft surges to crisis levels, USPIS has layered outright extravagance on top of its dysfunction, squandering resources, dodging accountability, and refusing to reinstate the one capability that consistently deterred postal crime — the Postal Police Force.
The pattern is unmistakable. When faced with a public-safety crisis, the Postal Inspection Service does not adapt. It deflects, obscures, and protects its bureaucracy at all costs.
Newsflash to USPS Leadership: U.S. Postal Inspection Service outcomes don’t improve until priorities align with frontline reality. The data in this piece should prompt a serious internal review.
DO SOMETHING BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.
If anyone takes the time to read this – they will quickly learn that the Postal Inspection Service is a scam. Let’s save nearly a billion dollars of postal revenue a year by eliminating the USPIS. Put postal police under OIG control and then let the OIG handle everything. This is a no brainer.
The Postal Police Officers Association (the union for the uniformed cops) has been screaming for years to restore their full street jurisdiction that USPIS yanked away in 2020. Back in the day, Postal Police could patrol routes, ride along with carriers, chase robbers off-property—the works. Then COVID hit, USPIS said budget reasons and confined them to just standing post inside facilities like glorified security guards. The union’s like: Mail theft and carrier robberies are through the roof, give us our old powers back so we can actually do the job and protect people. There’s zero extra cost—same officers, same pay, just let them work outside the building again. USPIS and top USPS brass hate it because: – It would force them to admit the 2020 decision was a disaster. – Inspectors (the plainclothes, higher-paid, mostly non-union folks) want to keep all the sexy fieldwork and arrests for themselves. – Management loves offloading perimeter security to cheap contract guards (paid from a different budget bucket) while the real cops twiddle their thumbs. So you’ve got this insane situation where the union is literally begging to do more dangerous work for zero extra money to fix a national crime wave… and leadership keeps blocking it out of ego and turf wars. There’s actually a fresh bipartisan bill right now—the Postal Police Reform Act of 2025 (H.R. 2095 in the House, S. 3356 in the Senate)—that would force the change by law. It’s got decent support, but USPS is still dragging its feet. Total clown show.
To fix this mess—both the turf war sidelining Postal Police and the broader waste in USPIS—here’s what realistically needs to happen, starting with the most urgent and achievable:
1. Pass the Postal Police Reform Act ASAP. The bipartisan bill (H.R. 2095 in the House, reintroduced in March 2025) would legally restore full jurisdiction to Postal Police Officers, letting them patrol routes, protect carriers, and handle off-property threats without adding a dime to the budget. It’s zero-cost, common-sense reform backed by law enforcement groups like the Fraternal Order of Police and National Association of Police Organizations. As of now, it’s stuck in committees (Judiciary and Oversight), but with mail theft and carrier robberies still surging, Congress should prioritize it in the 119th session. Contact your reps/senators to push it—public pressure is the only thing that overrides USPS brass ego.
2. Force USPS/USPIS leadership to actually deploy Postal Police properly. Even without new law, management could reverse the 2020 restriction tomorrow (they imposed it unilaterally). But they won’t, because it means admitting failure and sharing “glory” with the uniformed force. The Postmaster General and Chief Postal Inspector need direct congressional grilling—hold oversight hearings demanding why they’re benching trained officers while outsourcing security to cheaper (and less effective) contractors.
3. Ramp up OIG audits and enforce consequences on waste. The USPS Office of Inspector General has already flagged millions in dumb spending (purchase cards at entertainment spots, botched contracts, vanity projects). Make their recommendations binding or tie funding to fixes. Cut perks for inspectors diverting hours to VIP events while ignoring core crimes like counterfeit postage (hundreds of millions lost annually).
4. Broader structural tweaks.
• Fill the vacant seats on the USPS Board of Governors so there’s real adult supervision.
• Tie executive bonuses to measurable drops in crime and waste, not just internal metrics.
• Encourage more whistleblowers from inside—protect them so the petty turf battles get exposed faster.
Bottom line: This isn’t rocket science; it’s bureaucracy protecting itself. The union’s right—they’re begging to do more work for free to solve a real crisis. Until Congress forces the issue or public outrage boils over, expect more of the same clown show. If enough people (carriers, customers, victims of mail theft) make noise, change happens fast.
The Postal Inspection Service’s Twelve Days of Postal Crime:
On the twelfth day of Christmas,
the Postal Inspection Service sent to me
Twelve-hundred letter carriers robbed and assaulted at gunpoint,
Eleven thousand collection boxes broken-into,
Tens of thousands of mailed parcels stolen,
Nine hundred thousand first class letters rifled,
Eight hundred thousand stolen checks washed and cashed,
Seven thousand missing arrow keys,
Sixteen million wasted on a Postal Inspector Saturday morning kid’s TV show ,
Five million cases of mail-related fraud,
Four million mailed gift cards stolen,
Three hundred uniformed postal police officers stripped of authority and idled,
Two thousand postal inspectors falsely claiming arrests,
And a mail theft-related stolen i-den-tit-y!
Harry Ballsdale – This wasn’t only a crime wave — it was a policy choice.
This wasn’t bad luck — it was deliberate institutional sabotage.
This wasn’t criminals getting smarter — it was USPIS getting dumber.
They had a deterrence force.
They shut it down.
They had uniformed patrols.
They benched them.
They had visibility.
They chose invisibility.
USPIS then stood back and watched criminals steal mail like candy and responded with tweets, press releases, and propaganda.
Millions wasted while letter carriers get pistol-whipped for keys and Postal Police are told to sit down and shut up.
Harry — your song is grotesque but it’s true.
USPIS didn’t lose control.
They surrendered it.
USPIS didn’t just fail to stop the flood — it dismantled the levee, sold the sandbags, and then held a photoshoot in the rain.
This isn’t Twelve Days of Christmas. It’s Twelve Counts of Self-Inflicted Postal Inspection Service Failure.