The Postal Service declined to say how many arrow keys are in use with the nation's nearly 250,000 letter carriers.īut efforts by criminals to intercept the mail go beyond robberies to steal those keys. On Thursday, federal officials announced two more people were charged on allegations of pulling a letter carrier off a home’s front steps while stealing an arrow key and using a knife to rob another carrier last year in Massachusetts. Thirty-one postal carriers were injured, and one of them was killed last year, according to the data. The robberies have more than quadrupled over a decade, and weapons were used in most of the 496 robberies last year, according to data provided by the Postal Inspection Service to the AP under the Freedom of Information Act. The spike in postal carrier robberies has put letter carriers on edge. We are hardening targets - both physical and digital - to make them less desirable to thieves and working with our law enforcement partners to bring perpetrators to justice,” Postal Inspection Service Chief Gary Barksdale said Friday in a statement. “We’re doubling down on our efforts to protect our postal employees and the security of the mail. ![]() The announcement came days after the National Association of Letter Carriers expressed outrage as The Associated Press reported that nearly 500 postal carriers were robbed last year. The Postal Service is replacing 49,000 so-called arrow locks with electronic versions to make them less attractive to criminals who have been targeting them to steal mail from secure receptacles, and it is placing 12,000 hardened blue collection boxes in high-risk areas, according to the Postal Service and Postal Inspection Service. ![]() Postal Service is replacing tens of thousands of antiquated keys used by postal carriers and installing thousands of high-security collection boxes to stop a surge in robberies and mail thefts, officials said Friday.
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