PITTSBURGH — The U.S. Postal Inspection Service and Pittsburgh Police are investigating a mail carrier being robbed. The postal worker was pumping gas at noon on Friday, Aug. 4, at the Sunoco on North Negley Avenue, when police say two men approached him and made small talk. Police say the men then demanded the mail carrier’s “arrow” key. It’s a master key that opens all mail receptacles in a given zip code.
Related >>> Target 11 Investigates: Mail carrier attacks on the rise
While it’s the first instance of a mail carrier being targeted in Pittsburgh, law enforcement says it sadly will not be the last. Frank Albergo is the President of the Postal Police Officers Association.
“It’s at epidemic proportions,” Albergo tells Channel 11. “It has spiraled out of control. Thieves are stealing the mail, stealing personal identifying information, they are washing checks, they are counterfeiting checks, they are opening up fraudulent bank accounts.”
In some cases, criminals are selling checks online and unknowing victims are having their bank accounts drained.
Geroge Jarbo was shocked to hear a local letter carrier was targeted.
“I think that’s awful,” Jarbo tells Channel 11. “Especially if you live on a fixed income.”
11 Investigates reporting on the epidemic of crimes against postal workers in February. In 2021, a mail carrier was shot and killed in Collier Township. Then, last May, a mail carrier was beaten with a baseball bat in Brookline. Just this past January, a mailman escaped gunfire when someone got out of a car and started firing an AK-47 where that postal worker was making deliveries in Perry North.
Albergo says the problem is that postal police are no longer able to go out and protect letter carriers. That ended in 2020.
“And since then, mail theft has exploded,” Albergo added. “The inspection service released an internal memo which basically grounded us, it benched us. We were no longer able to protect postal workers and we were no longer able to do these proactive mail theft prevention patrols.”
Albergo says since 2019, robberies against mail carriers, a federal crime, is up 1400%.
Fortunately, the local mail carrier robbed was not hurt.
Police say the suspects are two men in their 20s who were driving a black sedan with a heavily tinted back window.
Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW