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.
