Members of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) recently held a rally in front of Harlem’s Manhattanville Post Office on West 125th Street.
NALC members joined with residents and local politicians to speak out about the increase in assaults against U.S. postal workers and how it is affecting their lives and work.
“It was cold and just pouring down rain, but it was a good turnout,” said national NALC President Brian Renfroe in an interview with the AmNews. “We were right there in front of the Manhattanville Station Post Office. And we’ve done events like this over the last, I’d say, year and a half all over the country. The reason we do them is just to raise community awareness about these issues that are happening.”
NALC, which represents 295,000 active and retired mail delivery workers, has been coordinating these rallies to draw attention to increasing incidents of assault and other crime against the country’s uniformed letter carriers. Last year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that “cases of serious crime [against letter carriers] have increased almost every year from fiscal years 2017 through 2023. This is largely due to an increase in robbery cases, which increased nearly sevenfold from fiscal years 2019 through 2023. GAO’s review found that these robberies have generally targeted letter carriers, increasingly involved firearms, and targeted the universal keys which USPS employees use to access mailboxes.”
There have been more frequent cases of New York City mail carriers getting robbed at gunpoint and occasionally assaulted for their mailbox keys. There have also been instances of criminals prying open mailboxes to steal checks and credit cards. And last month, Ray Hodges, a 36-year-old postal worker, was tragically stabbed to death while in uniform and on duty, reportedly after stepping in front of his assailant to place an order at a Harlem deli.
“The murder of Ray Hodges was horrific,” said Renfroe. “In addition to that, we’ve had several armed robberies, so the idea of raising community awareness among the people in the community, the people that we serve, is important. They 100 percent support us being safe, that almost goes without saying. But the more they are aware –– the more the public expresses concern about this –– it really has a dual benefit for us.”
NALC is calling for the passage of the Protect Our Letter Carriers Act, a bipartisan bill that would give the U.S. Postal Service the funding to, in the span of five years, update their lock and key system for securing postal mailboxes and standardize sentencing guidelines for assaults on letter carriers.
“That legislation,” said Renfroe, “would also designate a prosecutor in every U.S. Attorney’s Office to prioritize these crimes, and it would modify the sentencing for these crimes. Currently – and I by no means am an attorney or an expert on federal sentencing guidelines, I just know we’ve had some really pretty wild inconsistencies and some very light sentences. So it would modify the sentencing guidelines so that they would be the same for a similar crime committed against a federal law enforcement officer. It’s really all just designed to deter people from committing these crimes.
“You know, the Postal Service has been around for 250 years. And until just a few years ago, there was just sort of a mindset, I think, among the public that a letter carrier was a public servant, they’re part of the community [and] they’re a federal employee. And even in what otherwise would be considered the most dangerous neighborhoods, nobody bothered the letter carrier. But that’s changed. And what we’ve seen there in Harlem over the last couple of months is, you know, really, really strong evidence of that.”
NALC plans to continue holding rallies across the country to support passage of the Protect Our Letter Carriers Act. The next rally should take place in Philadelphia and organizers are trying to settle on a date and time for the event.
“We as a union are going to ‘Fight like hell,’” added Renfroe. “That’s been the mantra to get this legislation done and be sure the community is aware of this and be sure the people that commit these crimes are held accountable.”