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Frank Albergo, Executive Director of the Postal Police Officers Association Interview · Curtis Sliwa & Larry Mendte In The Morning

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, for months we have been on this
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: subject of mail theft from your blue mailboxes. I brought
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: it to everybody's attention, but our program director, Tom Cuddy, said, hey,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: it's systemic where we are, and he's out in the suburbs.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: And then Jim Kerr of 50 years, classic rock, said, yeah,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I saw it four to five in the morning. Natalie Migliore,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: our street reporter, yeah, I saw it four or five
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: in the morning. Same M.O., So we have an expert
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: on the line right now, Frank Albergo, Executive Director of
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Postal Police Officers Association. Frank, why is this so rampant
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: and systemic?
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks for having me, Curtis. Well, frankly, because the
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Postal Service has been caught with its pants down. You know,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: you have male theft at that crisis level. It's a
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: criminal free-for-all. It's evolved way beyond mailbox fishing. Criminals now
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: have the keys to every mail receptacle in a given
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: zip code. So these are the universal keys that carriers carry.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: And those keys are being stolen. They're being counterfeited. And
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: criminals are just stealing mail by the pound. And at
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: the same time, while this is happening, while postal crime
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: is skyrocketing, The Postal Service, in their infinite wisdom, decided
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: to strip postal police officers of their law enforcement authority
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: away from postal property and fetch us. So postal police officers,
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: and there are over 100 in New York, are sitting
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: guarding buildings, not protecting the mail. I mean, this is
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: crazy stuff. Crazy stuff, what's happening.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: Well, first of all, if you can give any kind
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: of logic to that, explain what their explanation was. And
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: then also, I just don't understand this. So you are
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: not allowed to go outside of those buildings?
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Right. So I know this is hard to believe, but
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: this is really what happened. So for 50 years, when
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Malpep spiked, postal police officers responded. We can no longer
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: do that today. We literally just let mail theft get
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: worse and worse. So what happened was, in 2020, Postal
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Legal in Washington, DC, so a bunch of lawyers sitting
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: behind a desk decided that postal police officers can no
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: longer do proactive patrolling for mail theft. And the reason is,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: it kind of neuters the union from getting higher wages.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Because we're doing less. You know, if you think about it,
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: a Postal Police Officers Association is a labor union, right?
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: You know, we are a police union, but we are
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: a labor union that wants more work for the same pay,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: and the Postal Service is like, no, we don't want
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: you to do it. It's insane.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Well, Frank, on the issue of what I have witnessed
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: and so many others, bold brazen mail theft right in
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: front of us. The NYPD is doing nothing. I've reported
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: it and they've told me, Curtis, don't knock yourself out.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: They don't want us to make collars and put it
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: on the books. We know what these banditos are looking for, checks,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: they're looking for gift cards, anything of value, and they
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: toss the rest of the mail they steal. It is
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: more important than ever because the mail-in balloting starts now
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: and a lot of these elections are going to be
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: very close that means you can seal your ballot you'll
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: walk to your mailbox you mail it and a lot
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: of it will be discarded not that it's part of
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: anybody trying to change the election but just by these
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: thieves and nobody seems to care frank.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Right well i mean that's the problem um This wasn't
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: a decision made by the Postal Inspection Service. So a
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: lot of people don't know the Postal Service has a
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: law enforcement arm. It's called the Postal Inspection Service. And
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: there are postal inspectors who are basically criminal investigators. Think
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: of a detective. And you have postal police officers, which
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: are uniformed officers. Mail theft is a street-level crime. You
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: cannot investigate your way out of a street-level crime. I mean,
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: think of NYPD trying to stop shoplifting by having detectives
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: investigate every instance of shoplifting. It can't stop. You have
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: to proactively patrol and you have to respond to crime
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: in real time. So the ballots are just the collateral
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: damage of mail theft. So, I mean, this is getting
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: worse and worse and worse. It's been going on for
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: six years now, where Postal Police cannot patrol a blue
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: collection box that we know is getting hit over and
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: over and over again. And it won't stop.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: What I can't believe is that there's no... Is there
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: no way to stop it? I mean, who can people
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: write to? How can we make a change? How can
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: we help in getting you back on the street? Because
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: this makes absolutely no sense.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Right, so we do have a... a bill in Congress,
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: HR 2095, introduced by New York's own Congressman Garbarino, who's awesome.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: But quite frankly, that legislation is even unnecessary. The Postal Service,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: so PMG Steiner, the Postmaster General, can tomorrow say, Postal Police,
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: I have jurisdiction. Okay.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: I think people are going to be really upset about
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: this and they're going to be out there. Frank Albergo,
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: Executive Director of Post Office Police Officers Association. Thank you
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: so much.