CHARLOTTE — Charlotte Mecklenburg Police say an armed robber recently held up a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service in the Cascades at Northlake apartment complex in north Charlotte.
Officers say the gunman stole his universal key, called an arrow key, which accesses many boxes.
“I ain’t had no idea. I didn’t even know that was a thing nowadays so that’s just something else we got to worry about,” said Montres Walker, who lives at the complex. “Definitely something to worry about, especially around this time of the year, the holidays, money being moved around.”
According to the Postal Inspection Service, nationwide from Fiscal Year 2019-23, letter carrier robberies went from 64 to more than 600 and mail theft complaints went from more than 98,000 to more than 255,000.
A lot of times, stolen mail means stolen checks.
The Treasury Department looked at mail theft check fraud and determined that over a period of six months, more than 840 financial institutions reported more than 15,000 cases. In dollars and cents that’s more than $680 million at stake.
Postal Police, which are different than Postal Inspectors, blame a lot of this on the Postal Service itself.
“In August of 2020, the inspection service released an internal memo which basically ... grounded us, it benched us,” the Postal Police Officers Association’s Frank Albergo told Action 9 investigator Jason Stoogenke in the past. In other words, it took them off the streets and assigned them to guard mail facilities instead. “But there’s not much crime in postal lobbies,” Albergo added.
Last year, the Postal Service launched Project Safe Delivery, a plan to install more than 10,000 high-security blue collection boxes and replace 49,000 arrow locks with electronic ones.
But the Service’s Inspector General just released a report that mentioned “delays.” It says the agency has had trouble rolling out the new measures because of a lack of “communication,” some postal facilities not following “accountability procedures,” and the “inability to track initiatives.”
Plus, Postal Police say there are far more than 49,000 arrow locks across the country. They say it’s more like 9 million and it would cost more than $2 billion to swap all of them out, a job for Congress. The House did introduce a bill and it’s going through committee.
Stoogenke’s 10 Ways to Protect Yourself:
1. Pick up mail quickly. Don’t leave it in the mailbox for a long time.
2. If you can’t, use USPS’s hold service.
3. Drop mail in blue boxes close to pick-up times.
4. Better yet, drop off mail inside the post office directly if you’re worried.
5. If you’re expecting money in the mail and don’t get it, don’t hesitate to tell the sender right away.
6. Don’t mail cash.
7. If you move, make sure everyone important has your new address.
8. Use gel pens to write checks. They are hard to erase, especially the uni-ball 207. You can get them almost everywhere and they’re pretty cheap, costing about $2 each.
9. Use online or mobile banking features instead of checks.
10. Think about using cashier’s checks instead of personal checks.
And, just in case, someone does steal your mail:
1. Keep a close eye on your accounts.
2. Freeze your credit (if you haven’t already).
If you think someone stole your mail, report it online here or call the U.S. Postal Inspection Service at 877-876-2455.
VIDEO: Officers work with postal service to get 50 pounds of stolen mail returned to owners
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