7/12/17 GLASELL PARK, Calif. (FOX 11) – At first glance Drew Street is like many others in this Northeast Los Angeles neighborhood, however a long history of gang violence including a shooting on June 27 that almost killed a letter carrier has led to a big change in this neighborhood.
The mail is no longer being delivered on the 3300 block, instead residents have to make about a five minute drive to the post office in nearby Eagle Rock and pick up their mail in person.
It’s an inconvenience of course but from the Postal Service this point to view the safety of their personnel takes priority.
See what happens when we are encouraged to carry guns everywhere. In Canada, people aren’t allowed to walk everywhere with their favorite possession. In Canada one can’t go into a bar with a loaded gun. In good old America, you can. That is insane! In America a barber can have his gun with him at work cutting hair. In Canada a barber can’t have his gun with him. Our wonderful government encourages people to be violent.
So move to Canada.
When the welfare checks were on paper twice a month we were treated like Gods, even in the worst inner city project where I used to work. With EBT cards loaded with value automatically who needs us anymore?
When a carrier complains about being unsafe when delivering the mail, let the supervisor deliver the mail, and see how bad it is.
Here is South Florida, there is a epidemic of robbing carriers for their ARROW KEY, they mostly rob women.
Kudos to management for standing by their carriers. It’s in the NALC contract, Article 14 to be exact – carriers cannot be ordered to, or forced to do anything they feel is a genuine threat to their safety, and cannot be ordered to violate their health restrictions such as eight hour restrictions or a limit on walking, etc.
Of course, there will always be those who try to be dishonest and claim unsafe conditions where none really exist. Excessive heat affects the whole country, and a carrier can’t refuse to work just because they think it’s too hot, or in winter, too cold. If they get overheated, then they can get medical attention, and they may also take a few minutes to cool off, get a cool drink, whatever. But this is the life of the carrier, and they (myself until retirement) understand that.
However, if a neighborhood is plagued with gang violence and is otherwise a very high crime area, carriers certainly have every right to refuse delivery to these places. I saw a short video where one woman in a particularly nasty housing project, I don’t recall the city, found out letter carriers at least temporarily would not go into their projects because they had been robbed, beaten, and threatened by gang bangers. She was inexcusable, saying just because her neighborhood was a hell hole in so many words and full of extreme violence that carriers should have to deliver her mail anyway because she didn’t want to go three blocks to the nearest office. Reminds me of a former customer on my last route, and I’m not making this up, who finally came to the door to sign a certified letter. She lived directly across the side street from her NDCBU, and insisted I go get her mail because her husband wouldn’t be home with the car until 5:00. I told her I wouldn’t do it because I couldn’t hand out mail individually but I was thinking “this has to be the laziest customer I ever had on one of my routes”, among other thoughts I won’t type here.
The point is, you make no effort to try to make your kids behave, let them run amok, look away while they deal drugs all day and all night, shoot each other for the slightest offenses, like wearing the wrong “colors”, and then wonder why people don’t want to come into your part of town.
Universal service is a trademark of the USPS, but at no time is obligated to subject its workforce to this kind of atmosphere. This neighborhood in E. Oakland and lots others like it should have street delivery cancelled permanently. No life is worth taking the risk of hauling a stupid pizza circular into an urban war zone.