Robbers targeting mail carriers

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Updated: August 25, 2011 12:31AM

Even though their jobs regularly place them on foot in some of Chicago’s roughest neighborhoods, the men and women who deliver mail for the U.S. Postal Service will tell you they usually feel quite safe.

Whether it’s out of respect for the service the mail carrier provides or out of fear of the consequences of interfering with them, mail carriers have long been treated as off limits by the same predators who might normally pose a danger to anyone else walking down the street with a bag full of potential goodies.

All of sudden, though, that seems to be changing.

At least four mail carriers have been robbed in Chatham and Englewood in the last month alone, two of them at gunpoint. Another was robbed at gunpoint in Englewood in February.

This follows a series of less violent thefts from mail carriers on the West and Northwest Sides last year.

Nobody can say whether the targeting of mailmen is just another sign of desperate measures in a bad economy or part of some criminal strategy, but it’s prompting the union that represents mailmen to appeal to the public for help in watching their backs.

The public may have a bigger stake in this than just receiving its mail on time. In at least two of the recent incidents, the robbers specifically targeted the carriers for their “arrow keys”—the master keys that not only give a mailman access to a bank of mailboxes or a collection box but also in some cases to the locked front doors of apartment buildings.

One arrow key could allow a criminal to get inside the front door of most apartment buildings in a given zip code — and inside all its mailboxes. But it’s the possibility of someone wanting inside a building for more sinister purposes than rifling through the mail that could be a real cause for concern.

In that case, consider it one more reason for residents to be on their toes in Chatham, where both arrow key thefts took place — at 79th and Champlain on April 15 and 78th and Indiana the following day.

The other robberies, which took place in Englewood, have more earmarks of your run-of-the-mill crimes of opportunity — by assailants looking to steal checks or medications from the mail or personal items from the mail carriers.

“What once was a code of the street is no longer in play,” lamented Mack Julion, president of the Chicago branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers.

That code held that mailmen should be treated with respect and left alone to do their job. How did it develop?

“They knew their parents or their grandparents were waiting on this mail,” explained Alvin Charleston, one of the carriers who was robbed. “They themselves might be looking for something.”

In addition, there also was a fear factor because interfering with the mail is a federal offense enforced by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

“Bothering the mailman, that was an offense you’re going to have to answer for. Postal inspectors, they generally catch who they’re after,” said Charleston, who has delivered the mail for 38 years.

Letter carrier Tiffany Marshall, 31, who has been on the job four years, said she’s afraid of going back on the Englewood route where she was knocked to the ground April 8 in the course of an attempted robbery. She said her assailant approached her from behind and asked: “Hey, mail lady, do you have any rubber bands?” That’s apparently a question mail carriers get asked often.

“I’ve never had a problem like this,” Marshall said. “People used to be afraid to bother the mailperson. I don’t know what the difference is now.”

Charleston, for whom being robbed was also a first, said he finished out his route that day after the robbery and has no particular concerns going forward, not that he believes the attacks are at an end.

“Given the times, it’s going to happen again,” he said.

My phone call Tuesday to the Chicago office of the U.S. Postal Service happened to coincide with federal postal inspectors putting the finishing touches on a video instructing mail carriers how to best handle the increase in street violence and how to avoid it, post office spokesman Mark Reynolds told me.

Tom Brady, inspector in charge of the Chicago division of the Postal Inspection Service, said the agency has suspects in the robberies here and is working with Chicago police to solve the crimes.

Now there’s another reason to keep an eye out for the mailman.