As a post office manager, I worked on a few cases with the postal inspectors, where suspected thieves were set up, video-taped stealing, and prosecuted. Federal crime, federal court, federal penitentiary. Depending on the scale of the operation, loss of pension.
Most theft takes place behind the scenes, in mail processing, where the majority of postral employees work, often at night, in large facilities, sorting mail and dispatching it to delivery stations for your carrier to sort again and get it to you.
Can't trace cleks stealing so easily because the individual clerk doesn't necessarily handle the same area's mail all the time. But a carrier stealing from mail coming through his own route has got to want to be caught. When you fill out a report of theft, the inspectors match it up with as many other reports as they can. If there are enough reports on one route, they check out the carrier. If he's dirty, he gets picked up real quick at that point.
Post offices are built with galleries overhead, and new employees get told right away that inspectors staff those galleries -- you can't tell when they're in there, but they can see you. Steal, and they climb down, stroll out onto the workfloor, handcuffs, goodbye. They also work undercover. We had a big, dumb, quiet guy in one station I worked, pushed mail to the elevators to dispatch. A few years later I was working at the General Post Office and I met him on his new assignment in the office. He was an inspector all along, watching everyone.
Three-quarters of a million postal employees nationwide. Of course some of them are no good. You miss a package or its contents, help us all out and report it. Your property is gone, yeah, stolen, sold off. but we'll get the thief faster if you report it.
Man, I retired 8 years ago, and I feel like I'm still part of it. Good job, I liked those people, post office and customers.
