PHOENIX — A national union for postal workers will rally at the Arizona State Capitol Thursday afternoon after they said they've experienced an uptick in violent attacks.
Letter carriers, residents, and community leaders will demand an end to assaults and robberies of letter carriers delivering along their routes during the National Association of Letter Carriers' "Enough is Enough" rally at the Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza at 3:30 p.m.
According to the U.S. Postal Service, 412 mail carriers were robbed on the job in 2020, while just in the first half of this year, that number already sits at 305.
"The United States Postal Service needs to protect its employees here and around the country, and prosecutors need to prosecute these crimes against federal workers to the full extent of the law," said the NALC in a press release. "These crimes need to stop now. The Postal Service needs to protect us, and prosecutors/law enforcement need to send a clear message through their actions that such attacks will not be tolerated."
The NALC said violent attacks on letter carriers were once extremely rare, but now are happening more often.
The group said at least ten robberies or attacks have happened in the Phoenix area in the past couple of years.
Not only do these assaults produce fear, trauma, and sometimes even physical injuries, but they can also hurt the communities the letter carriers serve, according to the group.
"Because we deliver routes for years or even decades, know our customers, notice when something is amiss and often are first on the scene, we often alert authorities to an elderly resident's health crisis, find a missing child, or put out a small fire before it engulfs a house," the NALC said in a press release. "But it is more difficult to pay attention to the wellbeing of the neighborhood if we constantly have to look over our shoulders or wonder why someone is approaching us."
In a statement emailed to ABC15, an Arizona USPS representative said, in part, "The Postal Service respects the right of our employees to participate in off-the-clock informational picketing on issues of concern to their membership."
In October, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service announced it was increasing the monetary rewards for information leading to an arrest or conviction of someone who commits a postal crime.
And in May, Project Safe Delivery was announced to "crack down on mail theft, enhance employee safety, and strengthen consumer protections."
