USPS cracking down on postal crime, crimes against employees

The US Postal Service and US Postal Inspection Service have provided an update on their Project Safe Delivery campaign to crack down on postal crimes, including attacks against postal employees.

Announced in May 2023, Project Safe Delivery is a USPS initiative to combat the recent rise in threats and attacks on letter carriers and mail theft incidents by protecting Postal employees and the security of the nation’s mail and packages.

To help strengthen this effort, the Inspection Service has also significantly increased monetary rewards for information leading to the arrest or conviction of a perpetrator of postal crimes.

Since the launch of Project Safe Delivery in May 2023, the Postal Service and Inspection Service have taken the actions to address postal crime nationwide, including:

• Postal inspectors completed a series of targeted law enforcement surges in Chicago, San Francisco, and cities across Ohio, major metropolitan regions facing significant threats from organized postal crime.
• Since May, the Inspection Service has made 109 arrests for robberies and more than 530 arrests for mail theft.
• The Postal Service is installing high-security blue collection boxes making access to their contents more difficult for criminals. Since May, over 10,000 high-security blue boxes have been deployed in high-security risk areas.

The Inspection Service is also authorized to issue monetary rewards for certain types of offenses against the United States Postal Service. Relevant criminal behavior includes homicide, assault, mail fraud, mail theft, counterfeiting and forgery, and destroying, obstructing, or limiting the passage of mail.