![]() ![]() Mail theft reports flow into the Postal Inspection Service through a variety of sources: postal officials, local police and customers who can file online or by phone. If they steal mail that you don’t know was coming, you don’t report it.” Mail theft has gone through the roof,” said one Postal Police officer who works on the East Coast and requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. But interviews with postal inspectors, police officers and supervisors, as well as local police officials, suggest parts of the country are seeing spikes in the crime. Without reliable figures, it’s difficult to say if the nation is facing an epidemic of mail theft. NBC News initially requested 10 years' worth of data on mail theft reports but was told the Postal Inspection Service only had records dating back three years. A spokesperson for the Postal Service Office of Inspector General referred questions to the Postal Inspection Service. The Postal Service did not respond to requests for comment. “The trend in the data still indicates something, and it seems that their statements are designed to minimize alarms over the state of the Postal Service,” said Lauritsen, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St. The data provided to NBC News, which was shared with Lauritsen, showed a rise in complaints from 99,506 in all of 2019 to more than 177,000 through the first nine months of 2020. Lauritsen said that despite the Postal Inspection Service’s explanation, the sharp spike in complaint numbers is troubling. “They are supposed to investigate these issues, so how can it be possible that they do not have the data necessary to do those investigations? I can’t make sense of it.” “To me, it’s rather startling,” said Janet Lauritsen, a criminologist who has done extensive research on national law enforcement statistics. The disclosure of the agency’s complaint data - and the revelation that mail theft is not being closely tracked - comes during a time of intense scrutiny of the Postal Service’s ability to manage and safeguard the influx of mail-in ballots expected for the 2020 presidential election. “For fiscal year 2021, we are developing a plan to more effectively capture our internal review of these complaints in order to track and report mail theft complaint data,” the agency said. The Postal Inspection Service said it was planning to develop a system to better track mail theft complaints. In addition to including complaints beyond mail theft, the data provided to NBC News was misleading because the 2017 figures reflected only Aug. “The reporting system allows for an individual to label their complaint as mail theft, however, the system is not designed to automatically discern which of these are legitimate complaints of theft of U.S. “We discovered that the mail theft complaint numbers provided to you were overstated due to the fact they included a significant number of reported customer complaints unrelated to mail theft, such as mailbox vandalism, mail delivery issues, and matters unrelated to the mail or Postal Service,” the agency said in a statement. The agency said it couldn’t provide figures on mail theft alone due to limitations in the internal system it uses to capture customer reports. ![]() 24 of this year.īut when asked to explain the apparent explosion in mail theft, the Postal Inspection Service said the figures actually reflected multiple types of customer complaints, not just those involving theft. ![]() The Postal Inspection Service data showed that mail theft reports soared by 600% over the past three years, from about 25,000 in 2017 to roughly 177,000 through Aug. “If they have any information about who could potentially be behind this, or if they have any information about these crimes if it’s happened to them, make sure they report that to the Marysville Police Department,” Larsen added.The Postal Service’s law enforcement arm acknowledged the shortcoming after NBC News, prompted by anecdotal accounts of an uptick in mail theft around the country, sought and received mail theft figures through a Freedom of Information Act request. More on mail disruptions in Washington: Residents fed up as delivery issues continue on Vashon Island If you’re telling me this has happened before, what measures are they putting in place to make sure that these master keys to these places are kept secure?” asked Angela Poe Russell, who was filling in as co-host on “Gee & Ursula.” “Meanwhile, somebody needs to tighten it up. The service also has package tracking data and notifications through text and/or email alerts about the status of a package and its delivery details. Gee Scott, co-host of “The Gee & Ursula Show,” recommended residents sign up for USPS Informed Delivery - a free service that sends Daily Digest emails previewing any mail and packages scheduled to arrive soon and images of incoming letter-sized mail. ![]()
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